They proposed rule by a disciplined party elite with a monopoly on reason that would guide society toward a certain future according to supposedly fixed laws of history. We might be tempted to think that our democratic heritage automatically protects us from such threats. This is a misguided reflex. In fact, the precedent set by the Founders demands that we examine history to understand the deep sources of tyranny, and to consider the proper responses to it. Americans today are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism in the 20th century.
Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience. Now is a good time to do so. In my new book, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century , I present 20 lessons from the 20th century, adapted to the circumstances of today.
It is institutions that help us to preserve decency. They need our help as well. Get Word of the Day daily email! Test Your Vocabulary. Test your vocabulary with our question quiz! Love words? Need even more definitions? Homophones, Homographs, and Homonyms The same, but different. Merriam-Webster's Words of the Week - Nov. Ask the Editors 'Everyday' vs. What Is 'Semantic Bleaching'? How 'literally' can mean "figuratively". The city remained, however, a cultural center. Plato was a student of Socrates.
Socrates taught by asking questions about a subject and getting his students to think critically about it. Today, this is known as the Socratic method, used by many professors in law schools. An increasing number of Athenians viewed Socrates as a threat to their city-state.
A few years after losing the war with Sparta, Athens put the year-old Socrates on trial for not accepting the gods of Athens and for corrupting the young. Socrates denied the accusations, but he was found guilty and sentenced to death. When Socrates died, Plato concluded that democracy was a corrupt and unjust form of government. He left Athens for a decade. Returning in B. Written as a dialogue among characters and set in a private home, the book describes a small group of Athenians discussing political philosophy.
The real Socrates never wrote down his ideas. The Republic examines the meaning of justice, looks at different types of government, and outlines the ideal state. It touches on many subjects, including law and tyranny.
Plato looked at four existing forms of government and found them unstable. The best, in his view, is timocracy, a military state, like Sparta, based on honor. But such a state will fall apart:. The accumulation of gold in the treasury of private individuals is the ruin of timocracy; they invent illegal modes of expenditure; for what do they or their wives care about the law? And then one, seeing another grow rich, seeks to rival him, and thus the great mass of the citizens become lovers of money.
And so at last, instead of loving contention and glory, men become lovers of trade and money; they honor and look up to the rich man, and make a ruler of him, and dishonor the poor man. And to this must be added their reluctance to contribute money, because they are lovers of money. The poor will overthrow the oligarchy and set up a democracy, the rule of the people the poor. Like an oligarchy, a democracy pits the poor against the rich. The poor see the rich plotting, and they seek protection:.
The people have always some champion whom they set over them and nurse into greatness. This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears above ground he is a protector. After a while he is driven out, but comes back, in spite of his enemies, a tyrant full grown. The tyrannical man is enslaved because the best part of him reason is enslaved, and likewise, the tyrannical state is enslaved, because it too lacks reason and order.
To Plato, the law can guard against tyranny. Plato stressed the importance of law in his other works. In the Crito , a dialogue between Socrates and his friend Crito, Crito offers Socrates a way to escape his impending execution. Where the law is subject to some other authority and has none of its own, the collapse of the state, in my view, is not far off; but if law is the master of the government and the government is its slave, then the situation is full of promise and men enjoy all the blessings that the gods shower on a state.
He believed leaders needed to be wise and trained in how to run a state, just as captains of ships are trained in how to run a ship. He divided his ideal state into three classes. The lowest and largest class is the producers: the farmers, craftsmen, traders, and others involved in commerce.
The next class is the warriors, those who defend the state. I hope so. Photo by Levi Clancy on Unsplash. Paul Woodruff teaches philosophy and classics at the University of Texas at Austin.
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Or subscribe to articles in the subject area by email or RSS. This is nonsense. Second, there is a lot more nuance to Oedipus the character than is suggested here. He seeks advice from many sources, over and over. And, finally, the play is shot through with ambiguity. Anybody who would claim that it promoted a single message is misreading it.
I agree. This article, accurate and insightful, shows that someone has actually been listening to Sophocles—but when will the rest of us ever learn? Sophocles plays are works of art. Is art not on the eye of the beholder?
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