Platos Republic
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Democracy : An Attempt at Freedom
Jean Lachapelle Marc Belley
IB Science November 6, 2003
Intro to Philosophy
Champlain College St-Lambert
Democracy : An Attempt at Freedom
Hundreds of years before Christ, in Ancient Greece, there was a man who believed in an ideal state. Much like Marx's system of equality in communism, the state would revolve around the needs of the people in general and not the needs of individuals. Since everyone is not born equal, and everyone has different inherent abilities; some people can not be rulers and should therefore never try to be. Too much freedom in the ideal state is not good, and the goal of democracy is to distribute as much freedom as the populace can take, therefore democracy is flawed. Plato's The Republic explains the ideal state and how democracy is this ideal state's antithesis due to inherent problems with the way democracy functions.
It is important to have a clear understanding of Plato's ideal state to see the contrast with his idea of democracy. His ideal state consists of three classes, one being the ruler class of guardians. They mainly consisted of wise philosopher rulers who lived for the state. Plato believed the best way to create a philosopher ruler was to mate people from the guardian class with themselves. Plato defines the guardian class as the class of rulers who make the republic run, they are golden...