What I found to be the most interesting was the inevitable degeneration of the Just City in book 9. There was no way to spare it from this fate, as long as people make mistakes (so everything). DUe to one lapse in judgment, the Just City falls to the honor and spirit-driven timocracy to the greed and appetite driven oligarchy. As things fall apart, the oligarchy devolves into a democracy with too many opinions, person pitted against person, with no common aims. At this point, there can no longer be said to be one city, because they are no longer looking for the common goal, but for their own protection from other citizens. As the city progressively declines, one individual stirs the poor to rise against the rich, and overthrow the apparent unjust, and they then replace the rule of the wealthy with the tyrannical rule of the one individual.
This decline is really concerning. If this can't be avoided, is this where we are headed? Was Plato right?
P.S. I commented on Brydon's post
Plato's description of the fall of democracy is actually close to being a parallel to our government system today, so there is a chance that tyranny may rise from our government's shadow at some point.
ReplyDeleteI agree. And I think that's how every society will eventually be. It's diffi to keep a pure government. And for that matter, what is a pure government? What would that even look like?
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