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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.
Plato categorized governments into five types of regimes: aristocracy, timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, and tyranny. The starting point is an imagined, alternate aristocracy (ruled by a philosopher-king); a just government ruled by a philosopher king , dominated by the wisdom-loving element.
Plato famously opposed democracy, arguing for a 'government of the best qualified'; James Madison extensively studied the historic attempts at and arguments on democracy in his preparation for the Constitutional Convention; and Winston Churchill remarked that "No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that ...
38. “Life must be lived as play.” 39. “No one ever teaches well who wants to teach, or governs well who wants to govern.” 40. “Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the ...
Plato establishes the comparison by saying that Zeus was one of the best models of describing the steering of a ship as just like any other "craft" or profession—in particular, that of a statesman. He then runs the metaphor in reference to a particular type of government: democracy .
Plato in his book The Republic divided governments into five basic types (four being existing forms and one being Plato's ideal form, which exists "only in speech"): democracy: government by the many; oligarchy: government by the few; timocracy: government by the honored or valued; tyranny: government by one for himself
Plato grouped forms of government into five categories of descending stability and morality: republic, timocracy, oligarchy, democracy and tyranny. One of the first, extremely important classical works of political philosophy is Plato's Republic, [14] which was followed by Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics and Politics. [15]
Too many Americans are skeptical about and alienated from our democracy, and they are willing to entertain some pretty extreme authoritarian “reforms” as an outlet for that skepticism.