NIRMA UNIVERSITY Institute of Law

VII Semester, B.A. LL.B (Hons.) Course

A Project in the Subject of Legal Philosophy For the Academic Year 2011-2012 on

Platos Critique of Democracy

Submitted by: Monika Deol 08 BAL 013

Declaration
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The text reported in the project is the outcome of my own efforts and no part of this report has been copied in any unauthorized manner and no part in it has been incorporated without due acknowledgment.

Date:- ___________ Roll No:- 08BAL013

Course Coordinator: Mr. Nitesh Choudhary

Name & Signature of the Student Monika Deol ____________________________

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
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I take this opportunity to express my profound sense of gratitude to all those, without whose encouragement, assistance and co-operation, successful completion of this project would not have been possible. I express my deep sense of gratitude for my dear friends for their support and cooperation throughout my study and work, without which this work would never have been completed.

Monika Deol (08 BAL 013) Institute of Law Nirma University

CONTENTS
1. INTRODUCTION..................................................................................................5 3

1.1. PLATO: A BRIEF INTRODUCTION............................................................5 1.2. DEMOCRACY: WHAT IT MEANS...............................................................6 2. A CRITIQUE OF DEMOCRACY..........................................................................8 2.1. ABOUT THE REPUBLIC................................................................................8 2.2. DEMOCRACY: CRITICISM..........................................................................9 3. CONCLUSION.......................................................................................................12 4. BIBLIOGRAPHY...................................................................................................

1.Introduction

1.1PLATO: A BRIEF INTRODUCTION

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Plato was a classical Greek philosopher born in 427 B.C. and dies in 347. The trio of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle laid the fundamentals of Western philosophy. Along with being a philosopher, he was also a mathematician. Socrates has a large influence on his thinking and teachings. Plato was born in a wealthy family to Ariston and Perictione, who came from old Athenina families. He had two elder brothers Glaucon and Adeimantus, and a sister, Potone. Plato also had a half brother, Antiphon when his mother remarried after his father died. Even though Platos family did have political connections, they were not commendable. His Uncle, Charmides was a member of the Thirty Tyrants who destroyed the Athenian democracy in 404 B.C. Plato began his political career under the guidance of Socrates. When Socrates died he travelled to Egypt and Italy, studied in Pythagoras and then remained as an advisor for the rulers of Syracuse. When he returned to Athens around the age of forty he started his own academy, where he tried to impart the Socratic style of teaching to his students. The Academy operated till 59 A.D. after which it was closed, for supposedly being a threat to Christianity.1 Plato stands at the head of the philosophical tradition, being the first Western thinker to produce a body of writing that touches upon the wide range of topics that are still discussed by philosophers today under such headings as metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, political theory, language, art, love, mathematics, science, and religion. He may in this sense be said to have invented philosophy as a distinct subject, for although all of these topics were, of course, discussed by his intellectual predecessors and contemporaries, he was the first to bring them together by giving them unitary treatment. He conceives philosophy as a discipline with a distinctive intellectual method, and he makes radical claims for is position in human life and the political community.2 Plato is, by any reckoning, one of the most dazzling writers in the Western literary tradition and one of the most penetrating, wide-ranging, and influential authors in the history of philosophy. An Athenian citizen of high status, he displays in his works his absorption in the political events and intellectual movements of his time, but the questions he raises are so profound and the strategies he uses for tackling them so richly suggestive and provocative that educated readers of nearly every period have in some way been influenced by him, and in practically every age there have been philosophers who count themselves Platonists in some important respects. He was not the first thinker or writer to whom the word
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http://www.philosophypages.com/ph/plat.htm. Richard Kraut, The Cambridge Companion to Plato, (New York: Cambridge University Press) 2010, P 1.

philosopher should be applied. But he was so self-conscious about how philosophy should be conceived, and what its scope and ambitions properly are, and he so transformed the intellectual currents with which he grappled, that the subject of philosophy, as it is often conceiveda rigorous and systematic examination of ethical, political, metaphysical, and epistemological issues, armed with a distinctive methodcan be called his invention.3 In his works Plato never makes himself a part of the dialogues nor does he claim that he heard any of the dialogues. While in some dialogues there is no narrator, in other dialogues Socrates is speaking to some unknown friend as first person. There are also dialogues which are narrated by students of Socrates.4

1.2 DEMOCRACY: WHAT IT MEANS Democracy is a form of government in which all people have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives. While there is no specific, universally accepted definition of 'democracy', Democracy commonly in the modern world means, Government by the people, for the people and of the people. It is government by the people, exercised either directly or through elected representatives. Democracy signifies rule by the majority. The word democracy was coined by the Greeks. It is a conjunction of two words demos and kratos, meaning people and rule, respectively. Thus, the words conjoined together literally mean rule by the people. Democracy, as a form of government, was a radical idea when it manifested; many governments in the early history of the world were totalitarian or tyrannical in nature, due to overarching beliefs that the strong ruled over the weak.5

3 4

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato/ Supra note 1. 5 http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1824376/posts

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a CRITIQUE OF DEMOCRACY

2.1 ABOUT THE REPUBLIC

The two political parties or social classes that vied for power in classical Athens, as in most other Greek city states, were the oligarchs and the democrats. The oligarchs tried to establish a state in which only owners of substantial amounts of property could vote and hold public office, while the democrats insisted that all male citizens have the same rights. "An oligarchy is said to be that in which the few and the wealthy, and a democracy that in which the many and the poor are the rulers," as Aristotle put it in his Politics.

Athens was a democracy throughout most of the 5th and the 4th century. Only in 411 and 404 did oligarchs succeed in establishing a government where the few and wealthy ruled over the many and mostly poor. Neither oligarchic regime lasted even as long as a year. But tensions between oligarchs and democrats were always present in Athenian politics. There was rarely a time when the democrats did not suspect the oligarchs of conspiring against the democracy, or when the oligarchs did not fear hostile encroachments on their privileges and wealth. Commenting on the ever present antagonism between the two classes, Plato notes in the Republic that every city consists really of "two cities that are at war with each other."6 Platos best known and most comprehensive work is the Republic, possibly published around 377. This is the work in which Plato has criticised democracy and the democratic man. In 411 the Athenian oligarchs executed a great number of their democratic opponents, and forced many others into exile. Even in exile death squads and other supporters of the oligarchic regime assassinated particularly popular leaders of the democrats. Plato was in his early twenties when Athens was defeated by Sparta, and when the second oligarch dictatorship was established. His inclination was to turn his back on politicsit seemed altogether too hopeless a mess. He had no faith in the rule of the rich, nor any confidence in the ability of ordinary citizens to run a city like Athens. Athenian politics seemed an irremediably corrupted affair, and all a rational person could do was to attend to personal matters, and to pursue wisdom in the privacy of ones solitude and a small circle of friends. In the end Plato could not see himself living a private life of the mind; he felt that he had to make his contribution to the construction of a rational and just society. Reason and justice, he thought, could not be a matter of personal conduct alone; they had to become attributes of society at large. If peace and just conditions were to be secured in the future, an alternative to the limiting choice between oligarchy and democracy had to be found. A convincing blueprint for such an alternative was the task that Plato set for himself in writing the Republic.7 Plato's Republic is certainly one of the most, if not the most, influential philosophical work in Western Civilization. Therein the great philosopher addresses the proper condition of the state. The state's chief duty according to Plato is to assist its citizens in the search for the
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Ibid. http://faculty.frostburg.edu/phil/forum/PlatoRep.htm

good, the truth. States that are administrated in such a way uplift their citizens and lead to right action by all, enlightenment for all, and the best of possible nations. States that fail in this facilitation have failed their citizens, and degrade into carnival, frivolity, and senseless war. As I have heard it said: Failed states rot the soul, and failed souls rot the state. Platos Republic is about the search for the nature of justice, and this pursuit leads its participants to consider the constitution of the truly just society. In his discussion of the merits of the various systems of government that fall short of the ideal, Plato says the following of democracy: Think of the considerateness of the city, its entire superiority to trifles, its disregard of all those things we spoke of so proudly when we were founding our [ideal] city; we said that, except from altogether extraordinary natures, no one could turn out a good man unless his earliest years were given to noble games, and he gave himself wholly to noble pursuits. Is it not sublime how this city tramples all such things under foot, and is supremely indifferent as to what life a man has led before he enters politics? If only he asserts his zeal for the multitude, it is ready to honor him.8 In this treatise, Plato addresses various forms of government, and in conclusion, he finds democracy as one of the worst forms of governments.

2.2 DEMOCRACY: CRITICISM

In the Republic, Plato describes the Utopian society as having a tri-partite structure, consisting of three different kinds of classes. The first class corresponds to bodily desires and appetites of the soul, consisting of people who are involved in the economy of a state. This class is in a majority, consisting of craftsmen, farmers, merchants, manufacturers, and money changers or bankers, etc. Plato classifies all of them as lovers of money. The second class corresponds to spirited emotions in the soul. This class of the military that is responsible for the safety of the community. This class is smaller in number. Plato classifies them as lovers of honor. The third class, the class corresponding to the faculty of reason is the smallest

http://longwind.wordpress.com/2008/07/22/platos-critique-of-democracy-holds-true/

class, consisting of scientists, scholars, etc. Plato classifies them as lovers of wisdom, i.e., philosophers.9 According o Plato, as a just and healthy person is governed by knowledge and reason, a just society must be under the control of societys most cultivated and best informed minds, its lovers of wisdom. Just societies cannot be run by the wealthy or armed forces with their narrow agendas. Thus is introduced the concept of philosopher kings. Since the lovers of wisdom i.e. the philosophers are the best trained and best informed minds, they must be assigned the task of running the state. Plato compares the state to an elaborate and expensive ship. For a safe and successful journey, there is a need of an expert navigator who knows the capacities of the vessel, geography, meteorology, water currents, navigational astronomy, supplies management, and other related matters. An ignorant and untrained person on the other hand would endanger the vessel and everyone who is on it. Similarly, the ship of state needs expert who are well informed about such things as law, economics, sociology, military strategy, history, and other relevant subjects. Ignorant and incompetent governors can be and have been disasters for citizens and states. Democratic self-government does not work, according to Plato, because ordinary people have not learned how to run the ship of state. They are not familiar enough with such things as economics, military strategy, conditions in other countries, or the confusing intricacies of law and ethics. They are also not inclined to acquire such knowledge. The effort and selfdiscipline required for serious study is not something most people enjoy. In their ignorance they tend to vote for politicians who beguile them with appearances and nebulous talk, and they inevitably find themselves at the mercy of administrations and conditions over which they have no control because they do not understand what is happening around them. They are guided by unreliable emotions more than by careful analysis, and they are lured into adventurous wars and victimized by costly defeats that could have been entirely avoided.10 Plato defines the democratic city by the principles of equality and freedom of all the citizens; and he mentions some institutions and procedures by which the equality of citizens was
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Plato: The Failure of Democracy, available at http://faculty.frostburg.edu/phil/forum/PlatoRep.htm

10

Ibid.

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achieved. Democracy comes into being, he tells us, when everyone in the city is granted an equal share in both citizenship and offices and for the most part these offices are assigned by a lot. The equality of the citizens is strictly satisfied in the Assembly: every citizen is a member and has exactly one vote; while in the Council and the Jury Courts equality is achieved by rotation in office and selection by lot. In the principle of freedom Plato includes freedom of speech, the freedom to do as one pleases in his life, including the freedom to choose any career one pleases and to move from any vocation into politics. Plato ends his description of democracy with a heavy dose of ironic criticism: it is a delightful form of government, anarchic and motley, assigning any kind of equality to equals and unequals alike.11 Plato's criticisms of the democratic person, though not entirely explicit, assume the two conditions by which Plato defined him: psychic equality of desires and freedom of desires from psychic (presumably reason's or spirit's) constraints. The first objection is that since the democratic person has no dominant desire but treats them all alike, he has no rational way for making choices when his desires conflict with each other and cannot all be satisfied at once, perhaps not even successively. The objection takes it as a fact that our desires sometimes do conflict, and suggests that the theory of democracy, when applied to the psyche, has no way of guiding choices in such cases. So at best, the theory is incomplete, and if such conflicts are frequent, as they appear to be, the theory may be devastatingly incomplete. The second objection is that some desires are for things known to be bad for us: for example, if we happen to have no desire for food we may hasten our death; if we have desires for fat foods, their satisfaction may be bad for our health. The desires for smoking, for fat foods, for avoiding school, are all desires for things known to be bad for us. And if this is so, it is a mistake to treat all desires as equal.12 Thus, as Plato sees it, democracy is a menace because it rejects the idea that the society should be directed by expertise, and thus blocks changes that would encourage people to think less individualistically. It drags gifted people down to the lowest level of shared understanding. On the other hand, in the world as it is, the bureaucracy and splitting-up of power that democracy encourages do prevent abuse of power by uncontrolled, misguided individuals who merely think that they are experts.13
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Gerasimos Santas, Plato's Criticism of the "Democratic Man" in the "Republic", The Journal of Ethics, Vol. 5, No. 1, Ancient Greek Ethics (2001), p 61, available at http://www.jstor.org/stable/25115678 . 12 Ibid at 65. 13 Julia Annas, Plato: A Very Short Introduction, (New York: Oxford University Press), 2003, p 63.

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Thus, what is understood after going through Platos views and criticism of democracy is that according to Plato, democracy violates the proper order of the society by giving the power to rule to those people who are incapable and incapable of ruling. It is based on the assumption that every citizen is entitled to have a say in political affairs, no matter how unsuited he is in terms of ability, character, educations and training. Thus, no matter how ignorant and incompetent a person may be, he will still play a significant role in public affairs. Plato despised democracy as a system where value and merit were disregarded and instead unconditional equality was promoted. According to Plato, such equality is an artificial equality. In Platos view, the democratic system under which ignorant common people who are guided by passion and emotions and who are affected by outer appearances and not rationality, is a bad form of government. The government must be in the hands of people who have an expertise in matters which are important for proper governance such as law, economics, sociology, military strategy, history, etc., and only in such a system will there be public good and justice and equality in the true sense.

Conclusion
Platos contention that democracy is a bad form of government as it gives power to rule to those individuals who are incapable of governing and are inefficient, is a very valid one. In a democracy, the one with the majority votes forms the government and makes decisions on behalf of and for the majority that chose him and also the minority who do not support him. However, the issue is that generally, such an individual is chosen as a result of his appearance and his speeches and promises, which he may not intend to fulfil once he is chosen. Also, even if he is an honest individual and really wants to do good to the society, he may not have the necessary knowledge and experience. Being human, he may also fall prey to greed and lust for power at a later stage, which is obviously not beneficial to the people being governed.

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However, even if one admits that expert knowledge is necessary, and that most ordinary people do not have a sufficient grasp of all the social, administrative, legal, and other relevant details that are required for running a government, people cannot do anything if the results of their performance seem unsatisfactory. The owner of a ship may not know how to navigate, but he or she still has the power to determine where the ship will go. Voters in a democracy may not know all or even any of the technicalities of running a government, but they surely can judge the results and the performance of the person they choose. What is essential for a democracy is not that citizens should be able to understand and do everything themselves, but they should be able to determine and foresee the outcomes of their decision. The major challenge in a democratic process is to see whether the citizens are interested and informed enough to participate in the democratic process. Do they understand why a certain decision is taken by the government, why wars are declared, resources committed, debts incurred, relations denied, etc? India, the worlds largest democracy is a good example on this point. Majority of the voters are the poor people who have a hand-to-mouth existence. They are lured by the politicians who distribute money, food, liquor, etc during the election campaigns, and make elaborate, sentimental speeches to which the voters fall prey. The voters are misguided by the appearances and the masks put on by the power-thirsty politicians. What they cant see is how inefficient and incapable these leaders are for governing the country and for making decisions for the whole country. What needs to be done is to create awareness among these people about their rights, their powers as voters and also about what should be their criteria while deciding who to vote for. Further, the people who aspire to govern the country should be made to fulfil certain qualifications and training which are essential for the proper governance of a country. Experts are not necessary, nor are philosopher kings. What is required is individuals who are sensible enough to understand the requirements of their people and to realise the responsibility that they shoulder. Only then can a democracy be a successful and not a bad form of government.

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Bibliography

Books referred:

Annas, Julia. Plato: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press). 2003.

Kraut, Richard. The Cambridge Companion to Plato (New York: Cambridge University Press). 2010.

Articles referred: The Failure of Democracy, available at

Plato:

http://faculty.frostburg.edu/phil/forum/PlatoRep.htm Santas, Gerasimos. Plato's Criticism of the "Democratic Man" in the "Republic". The Journal of Ethics. Vol. 5, No. 1, Ancient Greek Ethics (2001).
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 Frank, Jill. Wages of War: On Judgment in Plato's "Republic". Political Theory. Vol. 35, No. 4 (2007).
Mara, Gerald M. Politics and Action in Plato's Republic. The Western Political

Quarterly. Vol. 36, No. 4 (1983).

Annas, Julia. Politics in Plato's "Republic": His and Ours. Apeiron: A Journal for

Ancient Philosophy and Science. Vol. 33, No. 4 (2000).

Christian, William. Waiting for Grace: Philosophy and Politics in Plato's Republic.

Canadian Journal of Political Science. Vol. 21, No. 1 (1988).

Websites referred: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato/ http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1824376/posts http://faculty.frostburg.edu/phil/forum/PlatoRep.htm http://longwind.wordpress.com/2008/07/22/platos-critique-of-democracy-holds-true/

http://www.philosophypages.com/ph/plat.htm

http://www.jstor.org

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