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In the Republic, Plato's Socrates raises a number of criticisms of democracy.He claims that democracy is a danger due to excessive freedom. He also argues that, in a system in which everyone has a right to rule, all sorts of selfish people who care nothing for the people but are only motivated by their own personal desires are able to attain power.
Thucydides, the famous ancient Greek historian of the Peloponnesian War, witnessed the fall of Athenian democracy and applied scientific history in his critique of the democratic government. [10] At the heart of his critique were how democracy failed "in the search for truth " and how leaders and citizens attempted "to impose their own speech ...
Leonard Cohen's song "Democracy" contains the line "Sail on. Sail on, o mighty ship of state. To the shores of need, past the reefs of greed, through the squalls of hate." Also, in his second novel Beautiful Losers (1966), Cohen writes "Sail on, sail on, O Ship of State, auto accidents, births, Berlin, cures for cancer!" (p. 12).
In Books V–VII the abolition of riches among the guardian class (not unlike Max Weber's bureaucracy) leads controversially to the abandonment of the typical family, and as such no child may know his or her parents and the parents may not know their own children. Socrates tells a tale which is the "allegory of the good government". The rulers ...
The Trial of Socrates (399 BC) was held to determine the philosopher's guilt of two charges: asebeia against the pantheon of Athens, and corruption of the youth of the city-state; the accusers cited two impious acts by Socrates: "failing to acknowledge the gods that the city acknowledges" and "introducing new deities".
The Statesman (Ancient Greek: Πολιτικός, Politikós; Latin: Politicus [1]), also known by its Latin title, Politicus, is a Socratic dialogue written by Plato.The text depicts a conversation among Socrates, the mathematician Theodorus, another person named Socrates (referred to as "Socrates the Younger"), and an unnamed philosopher from Elea referred to as "the Stranger" (ξένος ...
There are four works of Xenophon that deal with Socrates. They are Apology of Socrates to the Jurors (which apparently reports the defence given by Socrates in court), [11] [12] Memorabilia (which is a defence of Socrates and so-called Socratic dialogues), [11] Oeconomicus (which concerns Socrates' encounter with Ischomachus and Critobulus), [12] and Symposium (which recounts an evening at a ...
The image used by Socrates is applied in modern politics: [4] a gadfly is someone who persistently challenges people in positions of power, the status quo or a popular position. [6] For example, Morris Kline wrote, "There is a function for the gadfly who poses questions that many specialists would like to overlook. Polemics is healthy." [7]