Good in Theory: A Political Philosophy Podcast
Good in Theory: A Political Philosophy Podcast
27 - Plato's Republic 10: Degenerate Cities, Degenerate Souls
How does politics affect personality? In the ideal city, the perfect laws and education create philosopher kings. But what about everywhere else?
In this chapter, Socrates gets down to some real-world political science and analyzes the four kinds of regime that actually exist in the Greek world. And because the city matches the soul, each of the regimes has its own distinctive personality type.
Socrates reckons that living in a state like Sparta will make you spirited and proud; living under oligarchy will make you cheap; and living under democracy should chill you right out. Unfortunately, chilling out is the last thing you’ll do before the tyrant takes over the city and enslaves you. Easy come, easy go.
This episode covers book 8 of Plato’s Republic.
Credits
Adeimantus: Rebecca Amzallag
Glaucon: Zachary Amzallag
Ancient music: Michael Levy
Intro theme: Clayton Tapp
Today, before degenerate regimes, and how failed parenting can cause political revolution, or the other way around. I'm Clif Mark. And this is good in theory. How does the political regime that you live in effect your personality? Do you think that you would be a different person if you grew up under American democracy, as you would have been if you grew up under Soviet communism, or absolute monarchy or some kind of theocracy? Because one of the basic premises of the city in speech is that the laws and practices of a society make a big difference to how the individuals turnout. The city in speech is designed as a perfect environment for growing philosopher kings. That, of course, is a utopia. But the basic principle that politics affects personality should also be true in the actual world. And that's what Socrates and the boys are going to talk about today. This episode covers book eight of the Republic, which is a very systematic portion of the book. They go through the different regimes that exist in ancient Greece, one by one, and they say, what these regimes are, like, what kind of people they produce, how they come into existence, and how they transform into the next regime. And that means there's a lot of material in this episode. There's a typology of regimes. There's a matching set of Psychological Types. And there's a theory of political change that gets you from one regime to the next. It's a lot of material. But there's no divided line. There's no theory of the forms. There's no complicated metaphysics, so it's all much more straightforward than it was last time. Before we jump into the dialogue, I just want to quickly run through the regime types because some of the words are unfamiliar and some of them are familiar words, but used in weird ways. First up, is aristocracy. Do not think of Dukes and duchesses in horse drawn carriages and fancy people. In this book, aristocracy means the ideal regime. Estoy means the best aristocracy means ruled by the best, and in the Republic, the best or the philosopher's. So aristocracy is the regime we've been talking about this entire time, that's ruled by philosopher kings. Next up, we have timocracy, or temaki. Those words are interchangeable. You hardly hear either of them outside of Plato. So it may be a new word. Team A is the ancient Greek word for honor. So democracy is ruled by the honorable warrior class. This is what they had in Sparta. When democracy degenerates, it turns into oligarchy which is ruled by Rich people, and oligarchy turns into democracy, which is ruled by the people, aka poor people. And democracy eventually degenerates into tyranny. And that's the end of the line. Getting back into the dialogue. Last episode, Socrates and glaucon, finished talking about the education of the philosopher kings, and decided that their discussion of the ideal city, and the ideal soul was complete, and they decided to turn to an analysis of the flawed regimes that exist in the actual world. Then our discussion of the best city and the corresponding person is complete. Agreed. And do you agree on what the best possible political arrangements are? Sure.
Glaucon:Fancy education, no private property, no private families, no private houses and philosophers as kings?
Socrates:That's right, clock on. Let's call this regime aristocracy, since it's ruled by the best, short,
Glaucon:but what about the other regimes like the ones that actually exist?
Socrates:What would you like to know?
Glaucon:Everything? What kinds are there? How do they come into being?
Socrates:What are their people like? Alright, glaucon. Aside from our regime, there are four types of constitution. When aristocracy falls apart, it turns into democracy, which is what they have in Sparta and Crete. And then democracy turns into oligarchy and oligarchy turns into democracy, and democracy turns into tyranny. And that's the end of the line. So what do you say? We just go through them one by one from most just to lease just and we'll see who lives the happiest life. Sounds good, Socrates.
Glaucon:But how does their perfect regime fall apart? Shouldn't it last Forever,
Socrates:nothing lasts forever glaucon when the regime changes, it's probably because the rulers start making mistakes in their calculations for breeding new citizens. What do you mean? You know that for the birth of a divine being, you need a period of a perfect number.
Glaucon:Sure, and for a human.
Socrates:For that, you need to take the first number where the power of roots combined with squares, with three dimensions and for defining limits of the numbers which create likeness and unlikeness, in which wax and wane make all things conversable and rational with one another. Of these, the ones that form the basis of the musical force, when coupled with five and three times increase produced two harmonies, the first harmony is a square the product of equals so many times 100. The second harmony is of equal length one way but a rectangle, one side is the square of a rational diagonal of a five by five square minus two times 100. The other side is three cube times 100. taken as a whole, this geometrical number is what controls better and worse births.
Glaucon:Of course, everybody knows that.
Socrates:Yes, they do. But the calculations still aren't easy. And when the guardians don't get the baby math perfect, the babies aren't perfect. And slowly, generation by generation, they let the education fall apart, in each generation of rulers will be a little bit worse until they can't distinguish between the gold, silver, iron and bronze classes of
Glaucon:people. You mean the different kinds of souls we talked about before?
Socrates:That's right. And this is a problem because when the different metals get mixed together, that leads to confusion in discord, and eventually war.
Glaucon:It's the beginning of the end.
Socrates:That's right. The bronze and iron pull the city towards moneymaking in private ownership, and the golden silver pulled towards virtue and tradition.
Glaucon:Well, who wins?
Socrates:The democracy is born when the rulers reach a compromise. They divided the land and houses so they can be done privately, and the enslaved the freemen they used to protect his friends. Which means now they have to guard against them as well as outsiders. Wow, okay. No more perfect city. Still, it's not quite an oligarchy either. Think of democracy as halfway between aristocracy and oligarchy. A lot stays the same as before. The Warriors still live in barracks, they still train a lot. They respect the rulers, and they aren't allowed to make money in commerce or farming
Glaucon:can't make money, then how are they halfway to being an oligarchy?
Socrates:Well, they're not supposed to make money. But they have their own houses and storerooms now. So they start hiding their wealth away in them. Strange,
Glaucon:I guess it really is a mix of different regimes.
Socrates:Yes, it is. It is like other regimes in some ways, but don't forget, it also has its own particular character. The big shift in democracy is that they start choosing their leaders for their skill of war rather than for their wisdom.
Glaucon:If they're warlike, I guess they're a spirited people.
Socrates:Definitely, victory and honor are the highest values in democracy. If you remember our three part model of the soul, the best regime is ruled by the rational element. But democracies are ruled by the spirited part of the soul.
Glaucon:Interesting. So what's the democratic man like?
Adeimantus:Oh, he's like you black on he loves winning?
Socrates:Maybe. But he's also different from glob con here in lots of ways. Like what? Well, the democratic man is more stubborn than glob con. He's more into gymnastic and hunting all the stuff to do with war, and less educated in the arts. The Democratic man, he's the kind of guy who bows and scrapes to his bosses. But it's cruel to his slaves, because he's never really sure that he's better than them.
Adeimantus:Interesting. And what about money? Does he secretly love it like an oligarch?
Socrates:Not when he's young, then he's still focused on victory and honor. Our guardians, they had that education of reason blended with music and that preserve their virtue. But the democratic man, he never had that. So as he gets older, he gets more and more fond of money. Okay. And how does technocratic man appear in the first place? Imagine his father is a good reasonable man who happens to live in a bad regime. So he keeps to himself. He doesn't get involved with other people. he avoids public life.
Adeimantus:And why doesn't the sun turn out like the father,
Socrates:because he also has a mother. And the whole time he's growing up. She's complaining that her husband's a coward for not going out and getting what he deserves. And the servants back are up. They they tell the son that when he grows up, he can't let people treat them like they treat his father
Adeimantus:and he believes them.
Socrates:He's torn. His father always encouraged the rational part of his soul. But everyone else is feeding the desire and spirited parts. In the sun, he looks around the city. And he sees that people like his father getting respect. And that's when he lets the spirit and part of the soul take charge. He becomes arrogant and he starts living honor above everything else.
Adeimantus:In other words, he turns himself into the kind of man the city does respect. Precisely.
Clif Mark:The city in speech was perfect, in orderly unjust regime ruled by golden sold philosophers. But as we've all learned from ponyboy, Curtis and the outsiders, nothing gold can stay. And eventually, the aristocratic rule of philosopher kings degenerates into the technocratic rule of the warrior class. As a reminder, the political structure of aristocracy is a pyramid, philosophers on top soldiers in the middle producers on the bottom, everyone minds, their own business obeys the philosophers, and that's what makes it just. And the ideal soul has the same structure, reasons on top, and it teams up with spirit to rule over the appetites or the bodily desires. within the city. The philosophers are doing everything they can to create policies that will maintain the structure of the city and maintain order in their souls. There's no visible flaw in the design. So glaucon is kind of surprised that it won't go on forever. And fair enough. So how do we make the leap from a perfect utopia that's supposed to be self perpetuating, to sloppy real world politics. And this is where Socrates brings in the very complicated baby math. Remember, aristocracy was premised on this eugenics program, where the rulers of the city planned who would have sex, so they could have perfect little babies with gold souls, so they could be trained to be philosopher kings? Well, it turns out that human reproduction is actually pretty difficult to run as an exact science. getting that right involves a number. So complicated, that scholars from ancient times to present cannot agree on what the number is, or what it means. Now this little bit is famous people call it Plato's number, or the nuptial number, if you want to look it up. And there have been a ton of interpretations. But there's no real agreement on what it means or what the number actually is. And personally, I can't tell you, I haven't taken a position. However, I can tell you that this passage is obviously an intentionally confusing and obscure. And I think what Socrates is trying to say is that running a successful eugenics program is so complicated, it may actually be beyond human grasp. And maybe don't try that at home. Anyway, when the guardians calculations are off, they no longer get babies that are born with pure gold and silver souls. Instead, their souls are mixed. In since the metals stand in four parts of the soul human motivations, this just means that the people in the ruling class the people who are supposed to go on to become philosopher kings, they're no longer purely motivated by reason. They're also influenced by spirit and appetite. And this is the normal human condition. Everyone has mixed motivations, everyone has all three parts of the soul. So the fact that babies are being born this way, just means that we've left this kind of impossible utopia. But the whole structure of aristocracy depended on having these superhuman perfectly virtuous people on top. So what happens when you replace those philosopher kings, with actual human beings with normal human motivations? Well, the first thing that happens is they look around. And they think that they're doing a lot of work for nothing. They're training their whole lives are being educated, they're devoted to virtue, they fight for the city, they're running the whole show, and yet they have nothing, they have to live on an allowance from the lowly producer class. And that strikes them as wrong. So they take over ownership of the land and the houses from the producer class, and they turn them into slaves and serfs, and make them work the land for them so they can carry on being soldiers. And of course, their soldierly duties now include oppressing the working class, rather than just fighting against foreign enemies. This may seem like an extreme move, but it's based on a true story. This is essentially what Sparta did. So now instead of philosophers in charge, organizing all of society around truth and knowledge in the form of the good, the soldiers are in charge, and they're organizing all of society around victory, and Marshal virtue and honor. And because the laws affect character, this change in political organization also implies a change in psychological organization. Socrates describes a change from one type of soul to the next, in a kind of Freudian psychodrama, a conflict between father and son. In this case, the democratic boy has a good rational father who would have fit in in the aristocratic regime. But since he doesn't live in an aristocratic regime, he's unappreciated. And he keeps to himself. And he avoids getting involved in public life.
Socrates:The mom and the servants see this as humiliating, and the son doesn't want to suffer the same fate. So he says, I don't care about reason anymore. I just want to win and not be looked down on by everyone in town. So he let spirit take over his soul. And it becomes all about honoring victory, which is the social standard of the time. So when the political level, you have a shift from philosophers to soldiers, and on the psychological level, you have a shift from reason to spirit. And then the next section, we're going to see how this honor obsessed democratic regime turns into money obsessed oligarchy?
Adeimantus:Okay, well, that covers democracy. But how does that regime turn into oligarchy?
Socrates:It's the storerooms full of gold out of manthis. Once the democratic men have private houses, they start hoarding away golden them, and secretly trying out luxuries, and eventually change the laws to allow what they're doing.
Adeimantus:So it goes from a city devoted to honor to a city devoted to money.
Socrates:Exactly. And it officially becomes an oligarchy, when they create a property qualification for politics.
Adeimantus:Of course, that's pretty much the definition of an oligarchy. But what's wrong with that,
Socrates:to start choosing bad leaders is the essence of oligarchy.
Adeimantus:I thought the essence of oligarchy was the rule of the rich, it's the same thing out of axis.
Socrates:Imagine you need to take a sea voyage. What do you think will happen if you just hand the tiller to the richest guy on board?
Adeimantus:I see your point. nobody in their right mind would do that. Are there other problems with oligarchy,
Socrates:there's the fact that they're always divided between rich and poor. And because the rich are too afraid of the poor, they will arm them in their armies are therefore always weak. And instead of specializing in one job, like in our city, they have the same people trying to be farmers and businessmen and soldiers all at the same time. And maybe Worst of all, oligarchies create a new class of people that have no property, and no purpose.
Adeimantus:Who do you mean? What do these people do?
Socrates:It depends. I call these people drones, because they're like the drone bees that like honey but don't contribute to the hive. Now, some drones, the ones with wings. They don't have stings and they just become beggars. Haven't you noticed that oligarchies tend to have a lot of beggars in them?
Adeimantus:Yeah, pretty much everyone is a beggar and an oligarchy, except the rulers,
Socrates:pretty much. But at least the begging drones have no stings. The wingless drones, on the other hand, they have very nasty stings. These are the thieves and the temple robbers and the other kinds of people that the city needs to control with force. You may not notice them at first. But wherever you see beggars, there are also hidden nests of these kinds of people.
Adeimantus:These drones sound like trouble, Socrates, but what about the oligarchic man himself? What's his story?
Socrates:His father was a democratic man, honorable, prominent, maybe he was a general or something. And then one day, the father ends up on the wrong side of the regime. He gets dragged through the courts, he loses everything and he gets exiled or killed. All this terrifies the son, who also feels humiliated because he's forced to live in poverty. So he takes the love of honor and the love of victory that he learned from his father. And he pushes it out of his heart. And he puts the money making part of the soul on the throne. And from then on, the only thing will use his reason for is to think of new ways to make money. And the only thing he allows himself to be proud of is his wealth.
Adeimantus:So that's how you get an oligarchic soul. Does he show off his money, then splash it around?
Socrates:No, actually, he does the opposite. The oligarchic man scrimps and saves and he'll push down all his other desires, because he thinks that anything that doesn't make money is a waste.
Adeimantus:But he still has those desires, right? He's just too cheap to enjoy them.
Socrates:That's right. You can tell he loves to indulge himself because he's very lavish whenever he gets to spend someone else's money. The oligarchs man's life is a constant battle between his cheapness and his other desires.
Adeimantus:It's funny when you say it like that. These kinds of people seem good. They make a good impression, but they're actually very different from people who do genuinely love virtue,
Socrates:they're very different. And also, being greedy stops these people from ever achieving anything great in life, they won't risk it all to win in anything important. So they wind up losing, but staying rich aristocracy was the rule of a small elite based on wisdom. democracy was the rule of a small elite based on honor. And oligarchy is the rule of a small elite based on money. In all these changes, it seems like we're talking about a change within the ruling class. There's not a whole new group coming in and taking over. It's that the values and interests of the rulers are changing from philosophy, to honor to money, and the dominant part of their souls is changing from reason to spirit, to appetite. And, of course, all these changes are expressed by changes in law, officially, aristocracy became democracy when the ruling class adopted private property and enslave the producer class. And democracy officially switches over to oligarchy when they pass a property qualification for rule. That means you only get political rights, you can only be a full member of society if you have a certain amount of property. So on the political level, the shift to oligarchy is a shift from ruling based on honor to ruling based on wealth. And on the individual level, Socrates tells a similar story to last time, the Honorable TIMA kradic. Father, he gets screwed over by the regime, the son is humiliated by having to live in poverty. And then he pushes all the stuff about honor and virtue that he learned from his father out of his mind. And he adopts the prevailing values of the city, which is to get money. And just like reason, gateway to spirit, Spirit gives way to the third part of the soul, which is all about the bodily desires and appetites. Socrates associates this with money because you can use money to satisfy all these desires. What I find interesting about the psychology of oligarchy, is that Socrates doesn't sound to me like he's describing the psychology of an actual oligarch. There's no exotic cars, no mansions, no philanthropy foundations. The oligarchic man that Socrates describes, actually reminds me more of my immigrant grandparents, then of any of the rich kids that I've known in my life. He's krimson saves, he makes sacrifices, he pinches pennies. Why is that? I think that the best way to understand the oligarchic personality is not to imagine that you're rich, it's to imagine that you're very afraid of becoming poor. oligarchy, remember, is the regime where your political status is based on having a certain amount of wealth. So everyone has all the normal motivations to get rich, plus that one. And when people are motivated to get rich, and there's no regulations on buying and selling, that creates inequality, which creates poor people. And the poor people that Socrates is most concerned with, isn't just laborers who always had a low wage. It's people who used to own property, but then lost or sold it all, and now have no means of subsistence. These people appear first in oligarchy. And they're going to pay a much bigger role in politics later. But oligarchy doesn't just create poor people, it also makes life very difficult for them. If you don't have a certain amount of wealth, you lose your political rights, you become an outsider, you're disenfranchised. And when that happens, it's the people who still have money who are making all the rules. And they're not going to make it easy for the people who don't have money. And that means if and when you find yourself on the wrong side of the line, the law and the courts in the entire economic playing field are tilted against you. And a lot of the poor people in oligarchic regimes ended up in debt on very harsh terms, including that slavery, in fact, that slavery was a major issue in Athens that led to the revolution that turned it from an oligarchy, to a democracy. And this is what I mean when I say that policy affects personality. If you live in a society where a lot of your friends and neighbors are getting bankrupted and sold into slavery because of a bad break or economic hard times, you're going to be a lot more careful with your money. oligarchic man isn't cheap because he happens to be born with a Scrooge like nature. He's cheap because of the laws that he lives under. And the oligarchic policy of basing people's status on how much money they have. This leads to inequality, poverty, class conflict, and eventually My favorite regime to live in democracy.
Adeimantus:I get oligarchy and the oligarchic man. Now, how does it all fall apart?
Socrates:Same as the other regimes by single mindedly chasing one ideal and forgetting about everything else.
Adeimantus:Right? But how does liking money lead to revolution? You remember the drones with stings, we were talking about? Sure What about them,
Socrates:we appear in the first place, because all of our keys will not put any limits on buying and selling. And that means that some people who used to have property end up poor and in debt and disenfranchised from politics, but they don't disappear. They stay buzzing around the city, plotting against the rich and hungry for political change.
Adeimantus:But why do the oligarchs let that happen? Why don't they just make it illegal to sell all your property or make lenders lend at their own risk?
Socrates:That would solve the problem at a mantus. But they'll never do it because then they couldn't get rich off predatory loans and buying up people's property. So they just keep doing what they're doing. And they close their eyes, the poverty they're creating.
Adeimantus:But if that's what they're doing, how are they any better than the people they're ruling?
Socrates:I'm not sure they are adamant is. And the poor don't think so either. When they find themselves in the same place as the rich, like on a sea voyage or at war, they start to look at these fat oligarchs wheezing up the stairs, and they start thinking, maybe these people shouldn't be bossing us around. Maybe it's our turn.
Adeimantus:The Birth of democracy.
Socrates:Yes. And the date of birth is when the people make a new constitution that makes everyone equal in the science public offices by lottery, not by wealth.
Adeimantus:Right? And what's it like to live in a democracy? You don't already know? Yeah, of course I do. But we want you to tell us like you did with the other machines.
Socrates:Okay. Well, the key thing about democracies is that freedom is the ultimate value. democracies love freedom, like oligarchies love money. And that's why in democracies, everyone can say whatever they want, everyone can live however they want. And democracies are full of different types of people and regimes.
Adeimantus:Well, that doesn't seem so bad.
Socrates:No, it doesn't seem so bad. It's actually pretty pleasant to live under a democracy. It's colorful, easygoing, they aren't at all fussy about the things we were strict about in our city. There are almost no rules, and there's a kind of equality for everyone.
Adeimantus:Yeah, that is what they say about democracy, isn't it? And how does democratic man come from his oligarch father,
Socrates:the father spends all this time telling his son to forget his unnecessary desires, and to focus only on the necessary desires that help him make money and survive. But the son makes friends with some of the drones, and they show him how to enjoy different kinds of pleasures.
Adeimantus:So he struggles between the stingy desires he got from his father and the new desires he got from his party friends, I guess the new desires when it goes back and forth,
Socrates:but the problem is that the father never really taught his son virtue because he never really knew virtue himself in the boy, that means he's very vulnerable to arguments that justify his worst impulses. What do you mean, you know, the kinds of arguments you hear them all the time that turn values upside down, just to flatter people's desires? For example, when people say that not indulging yourself is actually a kind of cowardice or that being moderate is being cheap, or that anarchy is freedom.
Adeimantus:No, I've got one, when people say someone's being courageous, when they're really just being shameless, you get it.
Socrates:And because of all these arguments, democratic man can't explain why one thing is any better than the other. So he just does whatever he feels like, whenever he feels like it. One day, he gets drunk at a symposium The next day, he's a philosopher, then he gets into politics or business or war, whatever crosses his mind. And eventually, we hope that his desires settle down into some kind of equilibrium. So he has a pleasant enough life, but it's totally random. This is where the action is. Almost all the cities in ancient Greece were either democracies or oligarchies. And therefore, almost all of the internal struggles and revolutions in those cities were switches between oligarchy and democracy. And the reason for that is because ancient Greek politics, like politics and many other times in places was all about the struggle. between the rich and the poor. And if you are interested in how class conflict helped shape the different constitutions in ancient Greece, listen to the episodes on the polis, Athens and Sparta, I talked about it, they're here in Republic, Socrates summarizes the class struggle like this. The rich people are getting rich by predatory lending, buying up people's property, and otherwise bankrupting their fellow citizens. In this creates a lot of inequality. In the new class of people you might call the nuvo, broke. These are citizens who used to have property, but are now poor, disenfranchised, and resentful, they still feel like they should be full citizens. And so they hate the rich, and they're hungry for political change. Socrates doesn't speak highly of these people, he seems to think that they're just dangerous troublemakers, but I am a little bit more sympathetic. They have expectations of belong to society that are disappointed because of the economic system that they live in. They remind me a little bit of people of this generation who graduate from college and university hoping to join the middle class, only to find that there is only student debt and no jobs. being hungry for political change under these circumstances, makes a lot of sense to me. In any case, these drones are not a natural occurrence. They aren't just people with bad natures, they're creatures of policy. The oligarchs could prevent poverty, Adam Mantis gave two policy proposals that would prevent the creation of drones. But Socrates says that the rich would never enact these policies, because they prefer to enrich themselves by impoverishing their fellow citizens. I find this point interesting, because a lot of times people seem to think that poverty is just a natural occurrence, and you can't get rid of it. Socrates is saying that even under the ancient agricultural economy of Athens, which was way less prosperous than modern economies, poverty was not a problem of scarcity. It was a political choice in the political choice that the oligarchs make, not to put any limits on buying and selling leads to inequality, poverty, and it sets up the class conflict between the rich and the poor, that's going to eventually end oligarchy. Economics is one of the main factors driving this revolutionary change. But the switch between oligarchy and democracy isn't just about economics. It's also about ideology. The second factor in the fall of oligarchy is that there's a breakdown of legitimacy. ruling classes usually need some kind of rationale for the rule, they need an explanation of why they should be calling the shots, and everyone else should be obeying them. In aristocracy, the philosopher kings could say that they've been chosen by the stars and educated till they were 50. And that they alone understood justice in beauty and the good in that they acted according to reason. And that's why everyone should listen to them. In democracy, the leaders could say they had warrior virtue, they care about honor. They live like Spartans. They risked their lives for the city, they work out all the time. So maybe those are good reasons to listen to that. But when you get to oligarchy, there's really nothing that important setting apart the rich from the poor, they're both motivated by the same things, the appetitive part of their soul. The only difference is that the rich actually have money. They have no claim to wisdom or to martial virtue, they have no special leadership abilities. They're just the ones who are better at saving and better at exploiting their fellow citizens, or who just started off with more money in the first place. And those, according to Socrates, are not very compelling reasons to obey. So the poor start getting ideas that maybe the oligarchs don't deserve their position. They hold revolution, and they abolish the property requirement. And instead, they introduce a system where everyone has political rights. And you assign public office by lottery instead of by wealth. And the result of all that is a transfer of power from the rich minority to the poor majority, so much for the political revolution. But we still have to talk about the psychological family drama. This time, the son is torn between the stingy values of his dad and his more fun loving friends. And he can't think of any good reason not to indulge himself. So he goes for it. The Democratic man is someone who just does whatever seems good to them at the time. He's a much more easy going indulgent character than the oligarchic man. Now, I know that this is a stylized anecdote from ancient Greece. But I swear I have seen this exact conflict happen between people I know. I have a good friend, who's the kind of guy who enjoys life eats in restaurants, like Travel in his dad is a stingy, small business owner who immigrated to Canada with nothing. And my friend, he's been saying to me for years that he really wants to start saving and paying attention to his money and budgeting or investing. And he always feels bad about not doing it. But he never does it. And eventually, after reflecting on it, he told me that he thinks that the reason he has such a hard time budgeting is because being careless with his money is in his words, an act of defiance against his father, who's cheating cheapness, I should add, the sun quite resents. We weren't even talking about Plato. And he was straight up telling you the story of the Democratic man and his oligarchic that. Of course, these are anecdotes, but we can link them back to policy. I said, the reason the oligarchic man is so cheap, is because the consequences of being poor under oligarchy are so harsh. Under democracy, it's not great to be poor, it's still way better to be rich. But if you're poor, you don't get disenfranchised, you won't be made a debt slave. The consequences of poverty under democracy are not so serious as they were under oligarchy. And these policy differences show up on the individual level in a different kind of attitude or ethos towards money. In oligarchies, the most important thing to do is to have a nest egg, they need to have a cake. But in democracy, they can afford to eat it. And I think the same is true of my friend and his father, the father grew up with a much more real danger of poverty in his life. The son grew up in the middle class, he spoke the language of the country, he got a higher education, the threat of poverty was never so pressing for him as it was for his father. And I think that accounts for their different attitudes towards money. The shape of the soul depends on the shape of the regime that forms it. So what is democracy like? Technically, it should be pretty bad. Democracy is the second last on a five step scale of degenerating regimes. But when Socrates describes it, it sounds pretty good to me. They have equality, everyone has political rights, they can participate in politics and in the justice system. And they also have a lot of freedom. Freedom is the highest value in democracy. According to Socrates. This is the opposite of the aristocracy. In the ideal regime, everything was very strict. Everything that kids and adults did was completely controlled by the state, they had no individual freedom. Whereas in democracy, everyone just does whatever they want. It's totally Live and let live. And the result of that easygoing, culture is a lot of diversity. There's a lot of different kinds of people there a lot of different kinds of groups. And it's also a pleasant life. Socrates calls it the fairest regime. And we can also add, that it's the only regime where somebody like Socrates, could actually be Socrates. But he still sees a serious problem with democracy. And that's that they have no substantive values. aristocracy valued wisdom in the good. Democracy valued honor, oligarchy valued thrift, and money. But democracy just values freedom, it's the ethos of Do you. And while this may be great to live under, Socrates is worried that this kind of lack of moral compass exposes democracies to the threat of tyranny.
Adeimantus:You really nailed the democratic character, Socrates. Now, tell us how it leads to tyranny.
Socrates:Ah, the most delightful regime of all, democracy goes down the same way the other regimes went down, single minded pursuit of one value.
Adeimantus:With oligarchy, it was money. Are you saying that democracies fail because they're too obsessed with freedom?
Socrates:Precisely. You know how it gets in a democracy. They can't stand anyone telling them what to do. And they can't send anyone acting like they're better than anyone else. So they love rulers who act like common people, and they love it when common people start acting like rulers, and nobody cares about the law.
Adeimantus:Sounds like anarchy to me.
Socrates:Me too. In the anarchy spreads through society, fathers are acting like the children and vice versa. immigrants are on a level with citizens, young and old, slave and free men and women. Everyone acts like they're equal. Even animals walk freely around the streets and people have to get out of their way.
Adeimantus:It happens to me all the time.
Socrates:Well, it's that it's when the people can't stand being bossed around when they think they're all equal, that they're ready for a tyrant.
Adeimantus:Oh, well, what happens next?
Socrates:You remember the three classes that make up a democracy,
Adeimantus:the rich, the people and the drones? Yeah, the people with no property or jobs,
Socrates:right? These people, they really thrive in a democracy, because no one's controlling them. So there's more of them than ever. And the most dangerous ones. They go into politics, they start standing up in the assembly, and making fiery speeches and going after the rich.
Adeimantus:all makes sense. That's where the money is. Or should I say, Honey, but it's a democracy. Still, the people are still the most powerful group. So why would they help the drones? Usually, the people don't bother about politics.
Socrates:Usually they don't, unless they're getting some honey to. And that's why the drones give them a little taste, even though they keep most of it for themselves. But the drones keep going back for more and more until the rich finally stand up and defend themselves in the assembly.
Adeimantus:Oh, I bet that goes over. Well,
Socrates:what? You don't think that the common people will be moved by the plight of their richest citizens?
Adeimantus:Yeah, hardly, it's more likely, they'll accuse the rich of plotting to take over the city.
Socrates:They may not be at first. But eventually, the rich have to defend themselves. And they start doing it with lawsuits and litigation, and impeachments. And they'll do that until the people start to get angry, and choose a champion to help their cause.
Adeimantus:And that is who becomes the tyrant, right?
Socrates:That's the one. And the people's champions first step towards tyranny is when he falsely accuses an enemy in court. It's like the myth of a man who has one taste of human blood and turns into a wolf. The line is crossed. And soon, the champion is killing and exiling all his enemies, and talking about canceling debts and redistributing the land.
Adeimantus:He goes to war against the rich.
Socrates:At a certain point, he has no choice. They want him dead. So we can either let them kill him, or become a tyrant. And that's when he makes his famous request to the people and ask them to provide him with a personal bodyguard.
Adeimantus:More like a personal army. And I guess that's when the rich flee the city and the people's champion becomes tiring.
Socrates:That's right.
Adeimantus:So what's the regime like?
Socrates:It seems all right at first, the champion, canceled debts redistributes the land, and he is a friendly word for everyone.
Adeimantus:But
Socrates:for one, he keeps starting wars. So the people always need a leader. And he starts getting rid of anyone who questions his authority, even the people he came into power with. And soon enough, he's going after anyone who even might be able to challenge him in the future, even if they haven't done it yet. And that means anyone who's brave or noble or wise or rich might be a target. And eventually, the champion trust so few of his fellow citizens, that He replaces his body guard with foreign mercenaries, or he frees the citizen slaves and uses them as a bodyguard.
Adeimantus:He rules his fellow citizens with their own slaves. At this point, every decent person must hate this guy,
Socrates:everyone but the poet's what, what do you mean? Haven't you ever seen a tragedy, they're always praising tyrants, calling them godlike. That's why poets are so popular in tyrannies and democracies.
Adeimantus:Well, that's also why the poet's aren't allowed in our city. What happens to the tyrant next?
Socrates:Being a tyrant with an army of drinking buddies isn't cheap. So he spends all the money stored in the temples, and all the money he takes from the rich. But eventually, he has to ask the people for support.
Adeimantus:But why would they give it to them? Why don't they make him stop?
Socrates:They try to make them stop. And that's when they find out what kind of monster they created.
Adeimantus:And they can't do anything to stop him because he's already disarmed them. Exactly.
Socrates:And at that point, it becomes clear to everyone that they're not living in a democracy anymore. And they're even worse off because before Yes, they were slaves, but they were slaves to free man. Now they're slaves to other slaves, and that is always the harshest form of slavery. So was all that a good enough description of how democracy is and how it turns into tyranny?
Adeimantus:Definitely.
Socrates:tyranny is the final outcome of the struggle between rich and poor. That started in oligarchy. The key factor that leads from democracy to tyranny, according to Socrates, is the easygoing, morally relativistic culture of democratic society. Yes, they care a lot about freedom and equality. But the way Socrates sees it, these aren't lofty goals. They just mean that these people can't stand anyone telling them what to do. And they can't stand anyone that acts better than them. So all the normal hierarchies that structure social life start to fall apart and democracy, rulers and ruled parents and children, citizen slaves, humans and animals, students, teachers, everyone's equal. And there's a gradual erosion of respect for the law in general. So democracy is kind of anarchic. And that's the context for the next round of class struggle that leads to tyranny. It goes like this, the rich, they were oppressing the poor, using the property qualification and debt under oligarchy, then the poor, they had a democratic revolution, they won their political rights. That's great. But the struggle between the two groups keeps going, the rich are still trying to get richer. But now the poor can fight back with politics. And that's where the drones come in. Some of them become populist politicians, they start riling up the poor to take more money from the rich. And when the rich get fed up and defend themselves, they do it using all the legal tricks that they can lawsuits, litigation, whatever. Eventually, the people get upset, and they pick a champion to help them. In the key moment in the struggle is when the champion of the people falsely accuses an enemy in court. It's not really important that there's this accusation in court. The point here is that, up till this moment, all the class struggle was being fought by legal means. This is the moment when the champion leaves the rule of law. Socrates compares this to a myth, where a man takes one drop of human blood, and then turns into a wolf turns into a monster. And that's what happened to the people's champion. From then on, the battle that was once a legal battle is now a battle of force, he gets a citizen bodyguard. And what that means is not that he has one Kevin Costner guide to protect him, it means he has a big gang of citizens who will kind of act as muscle and follow him around. This gives him a kind of personal army, outside the laws of the city. And that's the key difference between democracy and tyranny. Democracy, even though it's pretty lacks and easygoing, still has a rule of law. tyranny is the pure rule of force. Nobody notices this at first, because a lot of the policies that the tyrant does are very popular. He cancels debts, he redistributes the land. These are the goals of every popular political movement in the ancient world. So at first, things are really improving for the people. The only problem is that the tyrant is no longer bound by law. And he starts to get paranoid. He does everything he can to hold on to power. He alienates his allies. Eventually, he turns on the people. And that is when you get the ultimate betrayal. The tyrant brings in foreigners and he freed slaves and he uses them as a bodyguard to oppress the citizens that he was once the champion of the citizens wake up to what's happening, but it's too late. They're already being ruled by foreigners and former slaves, the worst possible political outcome for a free Greek citizen. tyranny is the final stage in the new generation of regimes. You can hardly even say there's politics anymore, because it's just the rule of force. But the degeneration of political regimes is also the degeneration of regimes of the soul. It goes from the philosopher soul, which is dominated by reason to the warrior soul dominated by spirit, down through the oligarchic democratic in tyrannical souls, which are all dominated by different kinds of appetites. We've talked about the oligarchic man and the democratic man but the tyrannical soul is different. The tyrannical soul is what happens when the most lawless desires in the human heart, take control of the individual. And that is the topic of our next episode.