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Does that make his criticisms of democracy any less valid?
by aaron-lebo 9y ago
Does that make his criticisms of democracy any less valid?
- emodendroket 9y agoWell, yes, for two reasons: 1. If democracy is bad, we should have some other system. Surely we should take into account the proposed alternative when we consider any criticism of democracy itself. 2. Implicitly any reference to the writings of Plato is burnished by the image of "wisdom of the ancients," so it is worth considering the flaws of these philosophers' work.
- aaron-lebo 9y agoDirect democracy has flaws, we do have another system: representative democracy. The Greeks were certainly wise, but my main point is this is not untrod ground, we've got at least 2000 years of experience to draw from.
- emodendroket 9y agoAthenian democracy also frankly looks pretty different from direct democracy as is being proposed in this thread since it was made possible by the existence of slaves who did not participate. The Greeks were wise (or I guess we should say the ones whose writings we still read) but they were humans and products of their time.
- skariel123 9y agoDemocracy is still better than any alternative