I didn't highlight comments from the last post for a simple reason: I was approaching the email word limit! And I hate when my posts get cut off in your email.
I actually loved this chapter, here's a couple small reasons.
First, I loved seeing Plato's definition of Aristocracy, as it let me detach it from the current general understanding. The aristocrats of days past were not aristocrats by Plato's standards, as they kept wealth and power within their families unlike in the perfect Republic. I'd place some of them as Oligarchs (new money), and some of them as Timocrats (old money).
I also loved the line (inexact quote) where Plato very ironically says "Democracy is equality amongst non-equals". What most interested me here is that Nietzsche is often touted (by himself) as Anti-Plato, but we can see this kind of positive elitism and aversion to ressentiment in both Plato and Nietzsche. No idea what that means but it muddies my understanding of both of them (always a good thing to dispel preconceived notions).
I also felt like Plato's explanations of each of these terms totally cleared up my sense about him being some sort of proto-fascist. Yes and no, but now I feel mostly no. I think he'd look at Fascism and Stalinism both as the last stage of democracy that leads to Tyranny, were people dissatisfied by their rulers (who are granted no longer fit to rule them) trust in a tyrant to tear down the system and put the people in power. He also correctly gets that the rise of Authoritarianism (and not to be controversial, but the far-right today) is due to inherent flaws in a democracy ruled by those who are not serving selflessly for the benefit of the system.
There's so much that feels relevant here, but I'll stop typing haha. The only niggle I can say is there seems to be no way to create a pure Aristocracy, and it feels like a "Paradise Lost" that never did and never will exist.
"He also correctly gets that the rise of Authoritarianism (and not to be controversial, but the far-right today) is due to inherent flaws in a democracy ruled by those who are not serving selflessly for the benefit of the system."
I don't remember any "far-right" people promising to cancel debts 5 years ago ;) The entire charade grows more rotten to the core and proving Socrates right with each passing year and money-raising media circus "vote" pandering cycle. Or: don't hate the player hate the game :P
I mean I'm personally neither here nor there on debt cancelling (I'm from Europe education is subsidised quite heavily in my country anyway) but I think you could frame what you're saying in favour of my argument (government appeals to voters with debt cancelling, causes outrage as people are perceived as not being treated fairly, tyrants continue to grow in power)
Maybe I've just missed what you're trying to say! Think you're being a bit cheeky though anyway but if you have a different perspective feel free to state it plainly and we can discuss
There was some cheekiness but my point was that in the USA the last several cycles of vote pageantry exhibited various shades of Socrates' tyrant. Meaning, the candidate in 2020 promised "debt cancellation" as a sort of bribe. There is no benevolence in our candidates, our system is long on the track to outright tyranny, and thus I wouldn't blame only a nebulous "far right," it will just be a matter of time before someone can synthesize all the hallmarks and emerge the most delightful of tyrants.
Ah that makes sense – to me this bribing is prime democracy at its worst as described in the Republic. The far left has very few (in western democracies) authoritarian figures who you might call tyrants in comparison to the left. I actually 100% agree with you, my point being that the rise of tyrants (which I see as currently only existing on the far right) is caused by the failures of democracy, potentially like the ones you point out.
To put another way – the worst parts of democracy on both sides of the spectrum have led to the rise of tyrants, currently mainly on the far right. I'd be interested to see if in the future we see the rise of far left tyrants (we've seen this in the past, or in different political climates e.g Nicaragua, Venezuela, ...)
I don't think it's the right that has given rise to tyrants if that was what you were disagreeing with.
There are two ideas that I struggle with in this section, the unidirectional transition from aristocracy to tyrrany; and the thought that the soul could go through a similiar transition.
With the city-state, Plato's view seems to be that it is inevitable that aristocracy falls to timocracy, then to oligarchy, democracy and tyranny, either because the system itself has flaws which leads to a failure, or that generation following one of the forms of government will react (rebel) with a less ideal form of goverment. Plato doesn't suggest how gets back to a more appealing form of governement; his message seems to be more about preventing change through education.
The city-state as an analog for the human soul kind of falls apart in this chapter for me. He seems to be writing about how the souls of a people in the aggregate may change, but not how an individual soul would change. So that model got left behind.
Khmer Rouge even tried expelling all the old and starting new with only young people, leading to unbelievable massacres and no beautiful Republic. Totally agree that it feels very hopeless.
I thought of the people in the city state as individual desires in a person, with it only taking a few misunderstandings to turn an Aristocratic spirit into a Timocratic one, much like it'd only take a few bad Aristocrats to convert a whole society into a Timocratic one. That was my take anyway.
I would like to ask a drastically different kind of question--one about epistemology, about how we validate knowledge claims.
Most of the things that Plato talks about in this chapter (e.g., the classification of forms of government; their operations and transformations; the behavior of their citizens, both as individuals and collectives; etc.) would nowadays be considered as falling within the social sciences, especially political science and sociology. The relevant point is this: from the perspective of modern epistemology, Plato's claims would be treated as theories and hypotheses to be supported or refuted by empirical scientific research; in the absence of any empirical data, they would be considered as philosophical speculation at best.
Here's my question: what support has Plato given for his empirical claims in this dialogue? If he hasn't, then are we to take him simply on faith or reputation?
Working in a university, lines 563 a-b are all too real. The student contempt for the instructor, and the instructor's pathetic attempt to pander to the student. It is painful to watch every day.
I also found it interesting that every time Socrates bemoans the slide into a worse form of government, it's because of lack of education. And in the oligarchy, where "wealth and the wealthy are valued more in a city, so goodness and the good are valued less" (551a) and the "high regard for wealth in a city is incompatible with the possession of self-discipline on the part of the citizens" (555c-d). It further goes against the modern contention of the university system that it's "to get a good job" -> An "education" solely towards the end of money-making is no education at all. Full stop.
Another note, for those who have read China Miéville's "The City and the City," I've been recently thinking that it's more an allegory for how we interact (or don't) with homeless people. It's clearly not about Cold War Berlin or something that people have pushed, because the action has to occur in the literal same place and people just pretend not to see each other. As in 555e "the money-makers pretend not to see them" i.e. those without money/property. It'll be cool to re-read City & City with this lens.
Overall, I find almost nothing to disagree with in Book 8. I find every description to be reasonable, especially the one regarding the downfalls of "democracy" due to the hellscape I am surrounded by. And for clarity, it is entirely a systemic and cultural problem that has been brewing for decades, no one participant is worse than the other, it is all functioning the only way it can according to its nature.
I do wonder if there’s a specific timeframe Plato/Socrates has in mind related to the use of the word ‘Eventually’ when describing how one regime eventually becomes another. Maybe it’d be easy to say it takes a few generations at least.
I didn't highlight comments from the last post for a simple reason: I was approaching the email word limit! And I hate when my posts get cut off in your email.
I feel like Plato had Alcibiades in mind when he was describing the timocratic man.
I actually loved this chapter, here's a couple small reasons.
First, I loved seeing Plato's definition of Aristocracy, as it let me detach it from the current general understanding. The aristocrats of days past were not aristocrats by Plato's standards, as they kept wealth and power within their families unlike in the perfect Republic. I'd place some of them as Oligarchs (new money), and some of them as Timocrats (old money).
I also loved the line (inexact quote) where Plato very ironically says "Democracy is equality amongst non-equals". What most interested me here is that Nietzsche is often touted (by himself) as Anti-Plato, but we can see this kind of positive elitism and aversion to ressentiment in both Plato and Nietzsche. No idea what that means but it muddies my understanding of both of them (always a good thing to dispel preconceived notions).
I also felt like Plato's explanations of each of these terms totally cleared up my sense about him being some sort of proto-fascist. Yes and no, but now I feel mostly no. I think he'd look at Fascism and Stalinism both as the last stage of democracy that leads to Tyranny, were people dissatisfied by their rulers (who are granted no longer fit to rule them) trust in a tyrant to tear down the system and put the people in power. He also correctly gets that the rise of Authoritarianism (and not to be controversial, but the far-right today) is due to inherent flaws in a democracy ruled by those who are not serving selflessly for the benefit of the system.
There's so much that feels relevant here, but I'll stop typing haha. The only niggle I can say is there seems to be no way to create a pure Aristocracy, and it feels like a "Paradise Lost" that never did and never will exist.
"He also correctly gets that the rise of Authoritarianism (and not to be controversial, but the far-right today) is due to inherent flaws in a democracy ruled by those who are not serving selflessly for the benefit of the system."
I don't remember any "far-right" people promising to cancel debts 5 years ago ;) The entire charade grows more rotten to the core and proving Socrates right with each passing year and money-raising media circus "vote" pandering cycle. Or: don't hate the player hate the game :P
I mean I'm personally neither here nor there on debt cancelling (I'm from Europe education is subsidised quite heavily in my country anyway) but I think you could frame what you're saying in favour of my argument (government appeals to voters with debt cancelling, causes outrage as people are perceived as not being treated fairly, tyrants continue to grow in power)
Maybe I've just missed what you're trying to say! Think you're being a bit cheeky though anyway but if you have a different perspective feel free to state it plainly and we can discuss
There was some cheekiness but my point was that in the USA the last several cycles of vote pageantry exhibited various shades of Socrates' tyrant. Meaning, the candidate in 2020 promised "debt cancellation" as a sort of bribe. There is no benevolence in our candidates, our system is long on the track to outright tyranny, and thus I wouldn't blame only a nebulous "far right," it will just be a matter of time before someone can synthesize all the hallmarks and emerge the most delightful of tyrants.
Ah that makes sense – to me this bribing is prime democracy at its worst as described in the Republic. The far left has very few (in western democracies) authoritarian figures who you might call tyrants in comparison to the left. I actually 100% agree with you, my point being that the rise of tyrants (which I see as currently only existing on the far right) is caused by the failures of democracy, potentially like the ones you point out.
To put another way – the worst parts of democracy on both sides of the spectrum have led to the rise of tyrants, currently mainly on the far right. I'd be interested to see if in the future we see the rise of far left tyrants (we've seen this in the past, or in different political climates e.g Nicaragua, Venezuela, ...)
I don't think it's the right that has given rise to tyrants if that was what you were disagreeing with.
There are two ideas that I struggle with in this section, the unidirectional transition from aristocracy to tyrrany; and the thought that the soul could go through a similiar transition.
With the city-state, Plato's view seems to be that it is inevitable that aristocracy falls to timocracy, then to oligarchy, democracy and tyranny, either because the system itself has flaws which leads to a failure, or that generation following one of the forms of government will react (rebel) with a less ideal form of goverment. Plato doesn't suggest how gets back to a more appealing form of governement; his message seems to be more about preventing change through education.
The city-state as an analog for the human soul kind of falls apart in this chapter for me. He seems to be writing about how the souls of a people in the aggregate may change, but not how an individual soul would change. So that model got left behind.
Khmer Rouge even tried expelling all the old and starting new with only young people, leading to unbelievable massacres and no beautiful Republic. Totally agree that it feels very hopeless.
I thought of the people in the city state as individual desires in a person, with it only taking a few misunderstandings to turn an Aristocratic spirit into a Timocratic one, much like it'd only take a few bad Aristocrats to convert a whole society into a Timocratic one. That was my take anyway.
I would like to ask a drastically different kind of question--one about epistemology, about how we validate knowledge claims.
Most of the things that Plato talks about in this chapter (e.g., the classification of forms of government; their operations and transformations; the behavior of their citizens, both as individuals and collectives; etc.) would nowadays be considered as falling within the social sciences, especially political science and sociology. The relevant point is this: from the perspective of modern epistemology, Plato's claims would be treated as theories and hypotheses to be supported or refuted by empirical scientific research; in the absence of any empirical data, they would be considered as philosophical speculation at best.
Here's my question: what support has Plato given for his empirical claims in this dialogue? If he hasn't, then are we to take him simply on faith or reputation?
Working in a university, lines 563 a-b are all too real. The student contempt for the instructor, and the instructor's pathetic attempt to pander to the student. It is painful to watch every day.
I also found it interesting that every time Socrates bemoans the slide into a worse form of government, it's because of lack of education. And in the oligarchy, where "wealth and the wealthy are valued more in a city, so goodness and the good are valued less" (551a) and the "high regard for wealth in a city is incompatible with the possession of self-discipline on the part of the citizens" (555c-d). It further goes against the modern contention of the university system that it's "to get a good job" -> An "education" solely towards the end of money-making is no education at all. Full stop.
Another note, for those who have read China Miéville's "The City and the City," I've been recently thinking that it's more an allegory for how we interact (or don't) with homeless people. It's clearly not about Cold War Berlin or something that people have pushed, because the action has to occur in the literal same place and people just pretend not to see each other. As in 555e "the money-makers pretend not to see them" i.e. those without money/property. It'll be cool to re-read City & City with this lens.
Overall, I find almost nothing to disagree with in Book 8. I find every description to be reasonable, especially the one regarding the downfalls of "democracy" due to the hellscape I am surrounded by. And for clarity, it is entirely a systemic and cultural problem that has been brewing for decades, no one participant is worse than the other, it is all functioning the only way it can according to its nature.
I do wonder if there’s a specific timeframe Plato/Socrates has in mind related to the use of the word ‘Eventually’ when describing how one regime eventually becomes another. Maybe it’d be easy to say it takes a few generations at least.
Perhaps if our modern democracies all turn into Tyrannies perhaps we can stop the clock and measure haha
Great read. I’ve read The Republic twice now!