When Plato wrote “Democracy leads to Despotism” his thinking could have been sculpted by the era he lived in. Plato was most famously known for the story of Atlantis that he mentioned briefly in the dialogues of Timaeus and Critias. His writing described Atlantis as a “major naval power which conquered many parts of Western Europe and parts of Africa in the time of 9600 B.C.”. However after failing to conquer Athens the civilization sunk into the sea in one day. Atlantis was said to be a civilization ahead of it's time, and like most advanced civilizations they must have had some sort of democracy in place. I believe that Democracy does in fact lead to despotism, and if not real, Plato used the story of Atlantis as a tool of warning. Quoted from historian Paul Rahe describes this idea perfectly in his article on the subject: “ideas have consequences," that they have the power to guide and even make events, and therefore that they are not mainly caused by the conditions of their time or context but are, on the contrary, mainly the cause of these conditions.” Other than his thought to be fictitious stories, I believe living in Athens and seeing the rises and fall of many civilization caused him to form his views of the transition of a ever growing democracy.
I don't even really get what you're trying to say. Maybe if we were talking about thousands of years ago when democracy had no structure or rules and regulations, then obviously democracy isn't going to work. With our constitution, and all of the laws put in place to prevent despotism happening in our country, i doubt there's even a possibility that could happen. Plus, if a leader of our country threatened becoming a tyranny, he'd be taken down in minutes.
ReplyDeleteThis post is hard to understand and your argument is unclear. What exactly are you trying to present with using Atlantis as an example of a Democracy?I do agree that Plato's statement was influenced by the era he lived in and the democracies that were present during that time period.
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