Was Plato making an anti-democracy argument? Book VI, 493d-e

Yes. Plato dislikes democracy for many reasons. He's saying that the elect, gifted, and wise should not (must not) be "chained" to the whims multitude, which are (almost by definition for Plato) the opposite of wisdom. Everything that makes the wise man wise is a product of his refining base opinion INTO wisdom, and the mob is base opinion personified. It's the roil of baseness from which wise and select men are supposed to differentiate themselves.

He's combining that position here with a general disdain for the fickle mob. He dislikes it on a personal level as much as on a philosophical one. It killed Socrates and descended into demagoguery and tyranny during the War. Mere inclination, fickle opinion manipulated by petty demagogues who said whatever the mob wanted to hear in a given moment (i.e., always changing, inconstant thought) ruled Athens, choking out the wise, and even putting them to death when they tried to stand against it.

Plato doesn't like democracy.

>>9502538
Thanks anon.

Also, it just struck me that I'm reading a work called 'the Republic,' which goes opposite to a general democracy.

I'm still confused about how Plato suggests enacting his ideal. We want the philosopher-king to lead, but the philosopher-king rarely comes to fruition because because of the wants of the masses. Further, Plato suggests that those who want power are least equipped to wield it [sailors v. Stargazer]. So what's the deal? How do we enact the virtues of the philosopher-king without falling into all the traps along the way?

Yup. The greeks hated democracy. Aristophanes wrote his plays to denounce the demagogues; but the common rabble is the common rabble

yes but Greek democracy is different from what we call democracy. In Plato's time they literally drew lots to determine who was in charge

>>9502502
Plato is an aristocrat and in favor of aristocracy, yes, but he shows how you can go from democracy to tyranny before you know it, not enough people heeded him in the last century.

>>9502576
>So what's the deal?
You're reading a book that is more about education than politics.

>How do we enact the virtues of the philosopher-king without falling into all the traps along the way?
This is why Plato talks so much about the soul in this book - and other dialogues like the Phaedo.

>>9502502
how do u get that far and not already realize this. he is literally killed by democracy.

>>9502502
Yes. But you shouldn't take the greeks as instructions for the modern world. You should read them to understand what modern philosophers are on about.

After the Peloponnesian war, the political philosophy of Democracy in Athens was in a spot similar to national socialism in Germany today. Their fathers generation had been riled up by demagogues into making war upon all of their neighbors out of an idea of Athenian Democratic supremacy, justified by an idea of Might makes Right. The war might have been won had not the demagogues further riled up the people into even more war against even more enemies before finishing the first one against Sparta. Most of the characters in Plato's dialogues lived through these events including the destruction of the city's walls and the imposition of the government of the violent ultra reactionary Thirty Tyrants by Sparta.

Those same Thirty Tyrants were overthrown and replaced by another revolutionary Democratic government, which is the government that killed Socrates on charges of corrupting the youth, and conjecturally out of suspicion of being a political enemy who sympathized with the Tyrants. It is easy to see why they might not be so enthusiastic about Democracy, given their lived experience of it.

>>9502576
The Republic title is the Latin translation. De re publica, "regarding the state," but also "the commonwealth," etc. It's slightly wonky to say the English word "republic" for the translation of the Latin "res publica," because we're projecting back our conception of republic with its whole historical development onto the Roman concept (if it even was a discrete concept in the way we mean), as if it was already "there" and we're just taking up the term.

The original Greek is just Politeia, which is even more vague than the various possible translations of res publica. It can mean simply "government" or "means of government."

>So what's the deal? How do we enact the virtues of the philosopher-king without falling into all the traps along the way?
That's one of the biggest questions in history going back to Plato. There have been many answers and none of them is hegemonic. But you are right, virtually no one has ever simply agreed with Plato that we ought to set up some authoritarian state where the lower groupings of citizens are kept rigidly in certain roles.

Like the other guy was saying, it has often been read as an allegory for the cultivation of the soul. But I think consensus is probably that Plato was pretty serious about it. He may have tried to implement something like it in Sicily, for a brief time.

>>9502576
>Also, it just struck me that I'm reading a work called 'the Republic,' which goes opposite to a general democracy.
I did the exact same joke yesterday and I now see someone saying this unironically ... truly I have known the human mind and its ridicules.

>>9502502
Yes, and Socrates felt the same

Pretty much every single Greek philosopher hated democracy, anon.

Read Thucydides.

>>9502647
Nonsense, their arguments are solid and most people against democracy today pretty much use the same ones.

>Socrates seemed pretty clear on one sobering point: that “tyranny is probably established out of no other regime than democracy.” What did Plato mean by that? Democracy, for him, I discovered, was a political system of maximal freedom and equality, where every lifestyle is allowed and public offices are filled by a lottery. And the longer a democracy lasted, Plato argued, the more democratic it would become. Its freedoms would multiply; its equality spread. Deference to any sort of authority would wither; tolerance of any kind of inequality would come under intense threat; and multiculturalism and sexual freedom would create a city or a country like “a many-colored cloak decorated in all hues.” […] This rainbow-flag polity, Plato argues, is, for many people, the fairest of regimes. The freedom in that democracy has to be experienced to be believed — with shame and privilege in particular emerging over time as anathema. But it is inherently unstable. As the authority of elites fades, as Establishment values cede to popular ones, views and identities can become so magnificently diverse as to be mutually uncomprehending. And when all the barriers to equality, formal and informal, have been removed; when everyone is equal; when elites are despised and full license is established to do “whatever one wants,” you arrive at what might be called late-stage democracy. …

I think he was for democracy, but he believed in educating the populace first. Thus, philosophers will be kings.

>>9503460
Your interpretation is objectively wrong

>>9503333
Where are you quoting that from?

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OP here, thanks for all the feedback.

When I don't understand something, I'm glad I have /lit/ as a resource to give background on my ignorance. No sarcasm, sincere sincerity.

Thanks anons.