Hi koan; Re: "Will Durant and his wife spent their entire lives writing books on the history of civilization. You might want to ponder this!";
Sigh.
As if there is only one author on ancient history. Will Durant was born in 1885. Are you really sure his opinions on ancient Greece are still taken as the most accurate?
If you bother to read Plato (Socrates left no writings but Plato was his student) you will find that they were supporters of the concept of government being run by a few men who are superior to everyone else. Superior in what ways? Intelligence, breeding, bravery, etc. They were certainly not in favor of Democracy (which they considered "mob rule") and they were certainly not liberals.
Here, dumbass, read the wikipedia article on Plato's five regimes:
Plato's Five Regimes
Aristocracy is the form of government ( politeia) advocated in Plato's Republic. This regime is ruled by a philosopher king, and thus is grounded on wisdom and reason.
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Aristocracy degenerates into timocracy when, due to miscalculation on the part of its governed class, the next generation of guardians and auxiliaries includes persons of an inferior nature (the persons with souls made of iron or bronze, as opposed to the ideal guardians and auxiliaries, who have souls made of gold and silver).
A timocracy, in choosing its leaders, is "inclining rather to the more high-spirited and simple-minded type, who are better suited for war". [1] The governants of timocracy value power, but they seek to attain it primarily by means of military conquest and the acquisition of honors, instead of intellectual means.
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Plato defines oligarchy as a system of government which distinguishes between the rich and the poor, making of the former its administrators.
An oligarchy is originated by extending tendencies already evident in a timocracy. In contrast to platonic aristocrats, timocrats are allowed by their constitution to own property and thus to both accumulate and waste money. Because of the pleasures derived from it, money is valued over virtue, and the leaders of the state seek to alter the law to give way and accommodate to the materialistic lust of its citizens. As a result of this new found appreciation for money, the governors rework the constitution to restrict political power to the rich only. That is how a timocracy becomes an oligarchy.
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Oligarchy then degenerates into 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. Diversity is supreme. People are free to do what they want and live how they want. People can even break the law if they so chose. 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.
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Democracy then degenerates into tyranny where no one has discipline and society exists in chaos. Democracy is taken over by the longing for freedom. Power must be seized to maintain order. A champion will come along and experience power, which will cause him to become a tyrant. The people will start to hate him and eventually try to remove him but will realize they are not able.
en.wikipedia.org
Having read the above, do you *really* still think that Socrates, Plato and Aristotle were liberals???? You're a f'ing idiot.
I should add a note on how Socrates, Plato and Aristotle got such a good reputation in Western scholarship.
The sort of government Socrates, Plato and Aristotle supported was Aristocracy, where the best rule everyone else. This was completely compatible with the attitude of the Middle Ages governments where the King ruled everyone based on their intelligence, breeding, bravery, etc. [LOL, compare Barrack Obama, LOL] The intellectual toadies who wrote about ancient Greece during the Middle Ages naturally chose heroes among those who would make their rulers look good. They chose Socrates, Aristotle and Plato for this reason.
The Middle Ages opinion on Socrates lasted after the kingdoms of Europe collapsed. They lasted because their scholarship was all that was available on the Greeks. It was only fairly recently that scholars again examined the Greeks, but without the confusion added by the Middle Ages scholars. It is a fact that Socrates was executed by the Greek Democracy (which you cannot deny!) because he was a supporter of the oligarchs (which is implied by his pupils writing!). It is a fact that Plato's description of the trial shows Socrates trying to distance himself from the tyrants. He was not a liberal. He was a hard-assed conservative of the sort who bravely faces death and supports rule by aristocratic elite. The attributes of Socrates and his students were the "duty, honor, country" of conservatives, not the "liberty, equality, fraternity" of the liberals. This is a fact of history that you can easily verify by reading translations of the original sources, but without the mind numbing crap written by Durant in your mind.
-- Carl |
