Essay: Why is Plato so critical of democracy? (The Republic)

In The Republic, Plato is extremely critical of democracy. He believes that democracy cannot function due to the fact that ordinary people have minimal knowledge about the necessary matters of running government, such as economics, military strategy, conditions in other countries, and the intricacies of law and ethics. These people tend not to have an inclination to attain such knowledge, as the efforts to seriously learn and study are not very enjoyable or desirable. Since they are given the power to elect government officials, they tend to vote based off of superficial matters, leaving them at the mercy of politicians who have little control over their surroundings. By having the freedom to elect politicians, people are actually prisoners to freedom. This freedom allows trivial matters to become the most prominent discussions in politics while the most important subjects are quickly neglected. The most emotional and theatrical politicians end up in positions of power because their concern with social issues is much more attractive to the average person than those concerned with the actual necessities of a functioning and successful country. From Plato’s criticism of democracy, we can learn to educate ourselves on the most important matters in politics. Rather than voting emotionally and impulsively, we can think about what politicians are saying and who will truly have our country’s best interest at heart. Plato is trying to teach us the importance of education because it leads us to make wise and rational decisions.
In Book VIII of The Republic, Plato describes the four kinds of government and the characters that are analogous to them. He predicts a oligarchy with an enormous socioeconomic gap, where the poor are extremely poor and the rich are extremely rich. Here, “it is impossible for a city to honor wealth and at the same time for its citizens to acquire moderation.” (555c) The poor will develop such a longing for freedom and liberty that they will spark a revolution against the rich, their oppressors. Plato describes that “democracy comes about when the poor are victorious, killing some of their opponents and expelling others, and giving the rest an equal share in ruling under the constitution, and for the most part assigning people to positions of rule by a lot.” (557a) Since many people will inevitably be killed in battle, people will turn to a common leader that they view as their savior. The people will expect him to bring liberty and equality to the land, which seems like the generation of a better country, however Plato views this as even worse than before.
The issue here is that nobody truly cares about who is best suited to govern because people are so desperate for freedom. In his writings, he describes the distinction between necessary and unnecessary desires. Necessary desires are things we actually need like food and shelter. We cannot overcome these desires, as they are essential towards our survival. Unnecessary desires, on the other hand, are the luxuries and lavish possessions that we want more than need. Plato predicts that in the face of liberty, the need for unnecessary desires will become far too prominent and people will become greedy. There will be a growing desperation for more and more freedom and people will become willing to sacrifice social order in order to attain it. The unlimited desire for freedom causes the city to neglect good governance. The new leader will fall in love with luxury and lavish possession and therefore, become corrupted by it. The leader naturally develops into a tyrant and the people begin to rebel against him.
He criticizes the democracy of his time due to its main components. Plato genuinely views freedom, the first component of democracy, as an important value in society. However, democracy does not just emphasize the value of simple freedom. It goes above and beyond this by creating the need for excessive freedom, which can become dangerous as it leads to anarchy. Plato believes the second component, equality, is distributed “to both equals and unequals alike.” (558c) This means that equal respect is granted to “an ignorant, callow youth and a man who has proved his wisdom…a lazy, pleasure-seeking man and one who labors to improve himself and serve others.” Every individual has the equal right and capacity to rule, meaning power inevitably ends up in the hands of power-seeking individuals with personal motives rather than a desire for a common welfare. For this reason, democracy is easily corrupted. Consequently, Plato’s main issue with democracy is its instability and ability to easily digress into tyranny. He believes democracy lacks leaders with the appropriate expertise and ethics to be in control of a government. Therefore, he believes that government requires expert rulers that have been carefully selected due to their extensive preparation and training. Plato believed philosophers would make the best rulers of government because making important political decisions requires good judgment and competence. With philosophers in power, “correct judgements will be reached, and knowledge will prevail.”
However, Plato’s real issue with democracy is seemingly more the democratic man and what he makes of democracy rather than actual democracy itself, but his analysis of the democratic man is problematic for many reasons. Plato makes it difficult to understand the true nature of the democratic character because his complete description of him is based upon the desires that he fulfills. He provides a description for the democratic character (558c-562a) and explains that his soul is a “microcosm for the democratic state,” but fails to identify the specific desires that are the issue and why those desires lessen his character. Another problem with Plato’s analysis is why he ranks the democratic man so low. He ranks the democratic third, just after the timocrat and the oligarch, and before the tyrant. If his analysis of the democrat is just based upon his desires, we must question why he is ranked below the oligarch. An oligarchic man is also obsessed with power and wealth, and much of his actions are driven by these factors.  The only large difference between the oligarchic man and democratic man according to Plato, is the distinction between unnecessary and necessary desires. The oligarchic man has a better perception of what is necessary versus what is unnecessary. He is more careful with his wealth, only spending it on the necessary appetites. However, a man transforms into a democrat once all appetites reach an equal playing field. The democrat fails to recognize the difference between unnecessary and necessary desires and therefore, chases after many unnecessary desires. This does not seem to be the democrat’s fault however, but rather a lack of education.
The oligarchic man seems to hold a significantly higher rank in Plato’s view because of the one redeeming quality he holds over the democrat: restraint. Due to his ability to repress his unnecessary desires, he comes quite close to attaining the order that a just person holds. He represents a shadow of morality, because he is still driven by desires he cannot be considered completely moral. His virtue is superficial, however, it makes him appear to have order and unity. The issue of order comes into play when Plato begins discussing the democratic man because he, on the other hand, has no order. Therefore, he has further digressed from the just man because a just man’s harmony of desires produces order and thus, unity. His life and soul itself is simply a jumble of desires, meaning he has taken a step beyond that of his oligarchic father. Plato accuses him of being disunified when he refers to him as “a complex man, full of all sorts of characters…and ways of living.” (561e3-7) He contradicts the oligarchic man in that he does not have a dominant end or dominant stable desire by which to bring order into his desires and make choices accordingly. The oligarchic man has a dominant desire to accumulate wealth and all other desires fall short of that. While Plato does not think the desire for wealth and power demonstrate the characteristics of a just person, they do create some sense of order and instrumentality. For this reason, the democratic person adopts the ideas of equality and freedom as his ultimate desire. Plato looks down upon this for what it ultimately leads to, however this mindset does not make the democratic man deserve a lower ranking than the oligarchic man. If the two dominant desires are simply compared side-by-side, wealth and power versus equality and freedom, it is quite clear that the latter represent a more just mentality. Plato criticizes democracy because it allows the democratic man to have absolutely no constraint on his desires and therefore, he becomes obsessed with fulfilling unnecessary appetites. However, this does not make the democratic man at his core unjust. It it his surroundings, according to Plato, that cause his rather just morals to become immoral.
From this, we can learn the importance of educating ourselves on worldly matters, rather than just topics of interest and desire. Due to the fact that opinion and judgment play a huge role in social practices and political institutions, having a high level of education has a positive effect on politics. Plato believes the basis for a stable political system is a sound education amongst the people. Therefore, an ideal ruler in his opinion is guided by a concern of what is true as well as what seems good and desirable: their education raises vexed practical and philosophic questions about the relation between civic and philosophic education. It is crucial for people to become educated on political affairs so that they have the ability to elect a leader with these qualities. Democracy can easily create a situation where an individual becomes carried away by his unnecessary desires. However with the implementation of a greater education system, this can be completely avoided. The common people would have the ability to place someone stable and educated enough to resist the temptations that democracy presents. Democracy only becomes dangerous when its citizens have a lack of constraint and ability to suppress their nature instincts. By focusing more on the education of politics, the entire problem with democracy can be avoided. The democratic man is rather innocent at his core, looking out for the good of the people and seeking equality and freedom. As long as he has the right tools to remain focused on the necessary needs for his city, the degeneration of democracy into tyranny can be avoided.
Therefore, the main reason Plato is so critical of democracy is because of the evil nature it brings out of the democratic character due to his lack of worldly knowledge. Democracy opens way too many doors to let him become carried away with his freedom and equality when it allows people who know very little about the necessary matters to run government to attain leadership. When one is uneducated on political factors such as economics and military strategy, it is easy to see how a city could fall into a tyranny. However, Plato is wrong to blame the democratic man and attack his core mentality for this. It is not his own internal factors that cause the city to degenerate into a tyranny. In general, he spends far too much time analyzing each person’s internal characteristics rather than focusing on the people around him, his surroundings, the things that influence his actions, and the political pressure he lives under. The main issue with democracy is its lack of education and the issue with the democrat is not his character, it is simply his lack of knowledge.