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Plato believes Democracy is the second lowest form of government.
by nickthemagicman 13y ago
Plato believes Democracy is the second lowest form of government.
- edem 13y agoWhich are the highest then. Or there are only 2 of them?
- netrus 13y agoThe one named after an engineer* [1]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato's_five_regimes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato's_five_regimes * Just kidding.
- downer95 13y ago1. Aristocracy 2. Timocracy 3. Oligarchy 4. Democracy 5. Tyranny
- nickthemagicman 13y agoDemocracy in his perception is when the uneducated masses who operate based on their 'instinctual' desires run the show. He believes Democracy is just a brief transition phase to Tyranny. The highest is an aristocracy run by philosopher kings who rule by reason and wisdom and dedicate their lives to this and are not allowed to own property.
- fennecfoxen 13y agoWhich sounds great on paper and all, but in practice is more likely to be a brief transition phase to Tyrrany.
- nickthemagicman 13y agoI see your point but I think Plato may have been thinking at a higher level than either one of us so there may be more we need to consider.
- fennecfoxen 13y agoBy "a higher level" do you mean Plato was right in the same sense that "communism is a perfectly good economic/political system, it's just that real communism has never really been tried"? Or do you mean that Plato was possessed of a higher intelligence than puny mortals like us could hope to properly contemplate, possibly even incapable of error, and therefore we should defer to his musings without using our critical thinking to apply the benefit of 2,360 years of hindsight?
- nickthemagicman 13y agohttp://theonceandfuturecoffeeaddict.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/299140-that-really-rustled-my-jimmies.jpeg http://theonceandfuturecoffeeaddict.files.wordpress.com/2012...
- nickthemagicman 13y agoActually I'm just trying to get Karma by sounding smart. I really just copied and pasted everything from Wikipedia. I have no idea what I'm talking about.
- edem 13y ago+1
- Spooky23 13y agoPlato also was a fan of eugenics and communal child-rearing. I'm more in line with Churchill -- Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others. I don't accept that a man and particularly his descendants are better humans than me because they own the rights to a mine, or invented <technology X>, or that their great-great-grandfather owned a manor somewhere while mine was farming somewhere else.
- nickthemagicman 13y agoPlato also believed that truth was objective which I'm not so sure about.