The Democratic Man
Plato's view of a virtueless society
School of Athens, by Raphael, 1511.
Some people say that wokeness emerged from progressive counterculture in the 1960’s; some hold that it has its roots in the 1930's with FDR and the New Deal. Others say that the origins of wokeness go back to the writings of certain nineteenth century European academics. But I submit that the foundations of wokeness are older than any of that — and, indeed, very old.
In The Republic, Book VIII (c. 375 BC), Plato described a social and political faction whose agenda included moral relativism, lax enforcement of criminal laws, multiculturalism, equality of outcomes, and the repudiation of their society’s founding principles and traditional values. Plato called the adherents of this ideology demokratiko ántras [Greek: democratic men] — or, in modern terms, Democrats. Plato wrote that a state ruled by such "democratic men" is on the brink of descending into tranny. Steps along the path to tyranny, as Plato describes it, include dismantling the patriarchy, aggressive taxation of the rich, expansion of the welfare state, open borders, forgiveness of debts, suppression of dissenting speech, and the confiscation of weapons owned by private citizens. Ironically, two and a half thousand years later, people who advocate these same policies refer to themselves as “progressives”.
Woke-leaning thinkers today — in case that they are aware of it at all — respond to Plato’s narrative in several ways. First, they point out that Plato does not give specific names, dates, or places in his narrative, or give us any basis to relate his narrative to identifiable events of history. Second, they observe that some of Plato’s own political opinions could be considered leftist if not Marxian1. Finally, they note that many of Plato’s views are antiquated, authoritarian, or simply Quixotic (for example, he tacitly condones slavery and seems to believe in numerology). In my opinion, all of these criticisms miss the point that ought to jump out at us from the pages of The Republic. The point is not how closely Plato’s narrative can be traced to events of a particular time and place in Ancient Greece, or which side Plato would be on in any contemporary controversy, or whether or many of Plato’s views are relics from a bygone era that was in some ways less enlightened than our own (which of course they are). The point is simply that there is are several notable parallels between Plato’s narrative and certain events of our own time. If these parallels are factual then ancient history is repeating itself before our eyes — and if they are fictitious, then Plato was not a historian but a prophet. Whether you love wokeness or hate it, you must realize that it is nothing new; in fact, it is ancient as the Ring of Doom2.
This section will briefly discuss
the historical context of Plato’s views on democracy and tyranny,
the theory of government outlined in Book VIII of The Republic, with emphasis on dēmokratía (democracy) and aristokratíā (aristocracy), and
Plato’s description of the demokratiko ántras (“democratic man)” and the dēmokratía (“democratic state”) — which I claim exhibit parallels with the modern-day progressive agenda.
Historical Context
In the two centuries leading up to The Republic, Plato’s home city of Athens suffered through numerous revolutions and violent coups d’etat, as well as three different tyrannical governments — including those of Pisistratus (559-556 BC, 546-528 BC) and Hippius (527-510 BC), and the government of the Thirty Tyrants (404 - 404 BC). Neighboring Greek city-states such as Thebes and Syracuse were little different in this respect, and many of them were even more tumultuous. As Alexander Hamilton would later write of the period,
It is impossible to read the history of the petty Republics of Greece and Italy, without feeling sensations of horror and disgust at the distractions with which they were continually agitated, and at the rapid succession of revolutions, by which they were kept in a state of perpetual vibration between the extremes of tyranny and anarchy. [Alexander Hamilton: Federalist #9]
So, Tyranny and upheaval in Athens and nearby city-states remained in living memory during Plato’s time, and Plato witnessed a good deal of it firsthand. Before writing The Republic, Plato had personally lived through two violent coup d’etat’s, as well as the regime of the notorious “Thirty Tyrants of Athens” — who, during their brief reign, ordered the deaths of some five percent of the population of Athens, and exiled or confiscating the property of many more of its citizens.
Plato also experienced despotic mob rule under democratic regimes, including the unjust execution of his mentor Socrates for the offense of asking uncomfortable questions. For this, Socrates was sentenced to death on formal charges of heresy and corrupting the youth (in today’s terms, spreading “disinformation”) — not by any tyrannical ruler, but by a democratic vote of several hundred ordinary Athenian citizens. Regarding this event, Plato wrote, “Such was the end, Echecrates, of our friend — concerning whom I may truly say, that of all the men of his time whom I have known, he was the wisest and justest and best” [Phaedo]. Cancel culture indeed.
Plato’s Theory of Regimes
Plato is sometimes described as being anti-democratic. On a cursory reading, this seems to be the case: he holds a comparatively low opinion of what he calls dēmokratía (“democracy”) — preferring instead what he called aristokratíā (“aristocracy”). Yet, it would be a mistake to interpret Plato’s dēmokratía and aristokratíā in terms of their modern English cognates democracy and aristocracy and the forms of government that we associate with those words today. For one thing, while aristocracy, in modern terms, refers to rule by hereditary nobles, Plato explicitly repudiates this form of government. Moreover, far from being anti-democratic in the modern sense, Plato takes it as an axiom that a society’s government will be determined by the will of its citizens and reflect their values:
Do you know, I said, that governments vary as the dispositions of men vary, and that there must be as many [kinds] of the one as there are [kinds] of the other? For we cannot suppose that States are made of oak and rock, and not out of the human natures which are in them. [The Republic, VIII].
In particular, Plato believed that a society’s government is determined by the virtues that are honored by its citizens. Where a virtue is honored, Plato holds, men who exhibit that virtue eventually rise to positions of influence and power, regardless of the officially sanctioned apparatus of the current government. American founder Thomas Paine would later echo this view, writing, It is wholly owing to the constitution of the people, and not to the constitution of the government, that the crown is not as oppressive in England as in Turkey [Paine (1776) : “Common Sense”].
Plato recognizes five forms of government: aristocracy, timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, or tyranny. Consequentially, since a community’s government is determined by the virtues its citizens honor, he argues that there must be five basic human temperaments:
If the constitutions of States are five, the dispositions of individual minds will also be five [ibid]
The five human temperaments Plato discusses are as follows (though he is aware that flesh and blood human beings may be combinations of more than one type):
the aristocratic man honors wisdom and integrity;
the timocratical man honors martial valor and skill at arms;
the oligarchical man honors energy and discipline (the virtues that make one wealthy);
the democratic man honors nothing in particular;
the tyrannical man honors the merciless exercise of power over others.
Here we begin to see what Plato really means by aristokratíā and dēmokratía. For Plato, aristokratíā (Greek: literally, rule by the best) is not government by hereditary nobles (which, again, he explicitly repudiates), but the elevation of the wisest and most honest leaders to positions of power by the communal agreement of citizens who themselves honor wisdom and integrity. On the other hand, Plato’s dēmokratía (democracy) is not simply the election of leaders by majority vote, but government by leaders who lack virtue — and who are raised to power, one way or another, by citizens who do not care that they lack virtue.
Democracy and the “Democratic Man”
Foreshadowing the Christian doctrine of the “will of the flesh”, Plato argues that all men have unclean carnal passions, which he describes as follows:
I mean those [passions] which are awake when the reasoning and human and ruling power is asleep; then the wild beast within us, gorged with meat or drink, starts up and having shaken off sleep, goes forth to satisfy his desires; and there is no conceivable folly or crime -- not excepting incest or any other unnatural union, or parricide, or the eating of forbidden food -- which at such a time, when he has parted company with all shame and sense, a man may not be ready to commit.... In all of us, even in good men, there is a lawless wild-beast nature, which peers out in sleep. [Republic, IX]
Plato holds that all men have these beastly desires, but that they are restrained, more in some people and less than others, by law (nomos) and reason (nous):
Certain of the unnecessary pleasures and appetites I conceive to be unlawful; every one appears to have them, but in some persons they are controlled by the laws and by reason [ibid] .
Plato believes that when a society ceases to honor law and reason, leaders who flout law and reason grow more influential, and are able to recruit growing numbers into their camp. This recruitment proceeds by Orwellian manipulation of language — that is, by calling good things evil, and evil things good — and takes on a religious character, as if the acolyte is being initiated into a cult:
There is a battle and they [a man's less virtuous associates] gain the day, and then modesty, which they call silliness, is ignominiously thrust into exile by them, and temperance, which they nickname unmanliness, is trampled in the mire and cast forth; they persuade men that moderation and orderly expenditure are vulgarity and meanness, and so, by the help of a rabble of evil appetites, they drive them [the man's virtues] beyond the border.
And when they have emptied and swept clean the soul of him who is now in their power and who is being initiated by them in great mysteries, the next thing is to bring back to their house insolence and anarchy and waste and impudence in bright array having garlands on their heads, and a great company with them, hymning their praises and calling them by sweet names; insolence they term breeding, and anarchy liberty, and waste magnificence, and impudence courage. And so the young man passes out of his original nature, which was trained in the school of necessity, into the freedom and libertinism of useless and unnecessary pleasures. [The Republic, VIII]
Through this process, the recruit is finally transformed into a full blown “democratic man”, who no longer distinguish between clean and unclean desires:
If any one says to him [the democratic man] that some pleasures are the satisfactions of good and noble desires, and others of evil desires, and that he ought to use and honour some and chastise and master the others -- whenever this is repeated to him he shakes his head and says that they are all alike, and that one is as good as another. [ibid].
After enough people have been corrupted, the community devolves into a dēmokratía: a society that holds nothing sacred, where carnal desires rule without restraint. This society disregards traditional social norms, permits criminals to freely roam the streets, and flaunts its own national constitution:
Have you not observed how, in a democracy, many persons, although they have been sentenced to death or exile, just stay where they are and walk about the world?... See too, the forgiving spirit of democracy, and the 'don't care' about trifles, and the disregard which she shows of all the fine principles which we solemnly laid down at the foundation of the city ... promoting to honour any one who professes to be the people's friend [ibid].
Since all ways of being are valued equally, the dēmokratía is heterogeneous in its norms and values — one might say “multicultural”:
And just as women and children think a variety of colours to be of all things most charming, so there are many men to whom this State, which is spangled with the manners and characters of mankind, will appear to be the fairest of States [ibid].
The society loses its sense of shared national identity and cohesion:
And there being no necessity, I said, for you to govern in this State, even if you have the capacity, or to be governed, unless you like, or go to war when the rest go to war, or to be at peace when others are at peace, unless you are so disposed [ibid].
It then rejects meritocracy, and embraces equality of outcomes:
These and other kindred characteristics are proper to democracy, which is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike [ibid].
Conclusion
Plato’s dēmokratía — a society whose members have ceased to distinguish between clean and unclean desires — sounds like a fun place to visit, and some might think of Plato as a stiff-necked old fogey for not approving. Indeed, there is nothing materially bad about the place— in the way that, say, a fire, or a famine, or a plague of frogs is materially bad. On the contrary, it sounds like a freewheeling party town where it’s “all good” (like the American cities of Portland or Seatle), and which is still relatively safe and prosperous (like Portland and Seattle used to be, until recently).
However, in Plato’s view, such a society is safe and prosperous only because it retains a vestige of the virtues of its forebears: the fruits of the labor of previous generations. Plato writes that a society that embraces such moral relativism is running on fumes and is ripe for descent into a tyranny. In the last section of Book VIII, Plato goes on to describe how the descent into tyranny unfolds. To those living in the West today, his description will sound eerily familiar — as will be the subject of my next post.
Indeed, in his 1987 book A Conflict of Visions, Thomas Sowell names Plato’s work as a classic example of the “unconstrained vision” — which Sowell equates with progressivism.
The “Ring of Doom” refers to a magical artifact in J.R.R. Tolkien’s novel The Lord of the Rings. The ring confers magical powers upon its wearer, including invisibility — but it also houses the life force of the “Dark Lord”, and must be destroyed in order to save the world from his evil reign. In the opening montage of Peter Jackson’s The Lord of The Rings movie, the elf queen Galadriel describes the ring as being “two and a half thousand years” old — which is roughly time span between Plato and us. Tolkien’s Ring of Doom is probably inspired by the mythical Ring of Gyges — a magical ring, originally belonging to an ancient, evil king, which turns its wearer invisible — which, coincidentally, is also an invention of Plato [The Republic, Book II].