Quote (Giannis @ Jun 18 2020 08:43am)
I don't take issue with people being born into affluence. Plato explains that in Aristocracy, society is ruled by a "philosopher king" or in other words a rule that is grounded in wisdom and reason. Surrounded by council members who advise him.
Plato discussed 5 tiers of regimes and they are Aristocracy, Timocracy, Oligarchy, Democracy, and Tyranny
The aristocratic state that Plato idealizes is composed of three caste-like parts: the ruling class, made up of the aforementioned philosophers-kings (who are otherwise identified as having souls of gold); the auxiliaries of the ruling caste, made up of soldiers (whose souls are made up of silver), and whose job in the state is to force on the majority the order established by the philosophers; and the majority of the people (souls of either bronze or iron), who, in contrast to the first two classes, are allowed to own property and produce goods for themselves, but are also obliged to sustain with their own activities their rulers' — who are forbidden from owning property in order to preclude that the policies they undertake be tainted by personal interests.
Oligarchy degenerates into a democracy where freedom is the supreme good but freedom is also slavery. In democracy, the lower class grows bigger and bigger. The poor become the winners. People are free to do what they want and live how they want. People can even break the law if they so choose. This appears to be very similar to anarchy.
Plato uses the "democratic man" to represent democracy. The democratic man is the son of the oligarchic man. Unlike his father, the democratic man is consumed with unnecessary desires. Plato describes necessary desires as desires that we have out of instinct or desires that we have to survive. Unnecessary desires are desires we can teach ourselves to resist such as the desire for riches. The democratic man takes great interest in all the things he can buy with his money. Plato believes that the democratic man is more concerned with his money over how he can help the people. He does whatever he wants whenever he wants to do it. His life has no order or priority.
Note that in the animal kingdom, closest to human society are ants and bees. When ants and bees have an established hierarchy working as a hive mind, they are not deterred by so much individuality. On the surface individuality sounds like a good thing, but it is severely damaging to order. More important than any one mans life or freedoms is order.
Lol you remind me of my Sophomore year in college when we learned this shit. That was a cool little philosophy class, easy A & some good conversations to philosophically get into some sorority ass.