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Democracy

Plato’s Warning

Stuart Greenstreet on why global warming won’t be stopped.

Plato was deeply pessimistic about the ability of the human race to govern itself. In The Republic he has Socrates say:

“Unless either philosophers rule in our cities or those whom now we call rulers and potentates engage genuinely and adequately in philosophy, and political power and philosophy coincide, there is no end, my dear Glaucon, to troubles in our cities, nor I think for the human race.” [473c-d]

By ‘troubles’ Plato means both civil strife, such as he had lived through, and that there would be no end of trouble for human societies if they sought democratically to decide what is the best thing to do. He believed democracy to be inherently flawed. To show why, Plato gives us an allegory of a ship at sea.

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