Ken Hanly wrote:
> Well if the stories are correct, Socrates accepted the death sentence of a
> democratic regime and argued at great length that it would be wrong for him
> not to accept the penalty.. He disobeyed orders from both a democratic and
> an oligarchic regime when his little voice told him the order was immoral.
Well, he hobnobbed with one of the sleaziest bunch of
rich young terrorists that a democracy ever produced --
the 30 tyrants. Cf. him to Pierre Laval in France or
Quisling in Norway. And even his accepting the death
penalty rather than fleeing was a bit sleazy -- the assembly
that sentenced him probably took it for granted that he
would go into exile.
The *Republic* is perhaps my favorite book, but what
informs the whole is absolute contempt for the "mob" --
i.e. the Athenian peasantry for daring to think they had
a right to their own opinions.
>
> You do things because they are right not because they are associated with
> democrats or oligarchs. Certainly Plato did not support democracy but
> neither did he support authoritarianism per se but rulers who ruled in the
> interests of the ruled.
Actually you should take the metaphor one of his sneaky arguments
against Thrasymachos literally. He establishes that the ruler rules in
the interest of the ruled by comparing that ruler to a shepherd, who
protects the sheep. Yeah, for a shearing. And that's exactly what
Plato thought the mass of the population were -- animals fit only
to serve their betters.
Plato argued in effect that the only real pleasure was pure thought
-- and he argued vigorously that the mass of people should be
forbidden that pleasure.
Really, just think of the horror implicit in that injunction that
"The unexamined life was not worth living" -- pronounced
by someone who believed that only an aristocratic elite
had the right and duty to rule.
Carrol
