Why Socrates Hated Democracies: An Animated Case for Why Self-Government Requires Wisdom & Education

How often have you heard the quote in one form or anoth­er? “Democ­ra­cy is the worst form of Gov­ern­ment,” said Win­ston Churchill in 1947, “except for all those oth­er forms that have been tried from time to time.…” The sen­ti­ment express­es two cul­tur­al val­ues many Amer­i­cans are trained to hold uncrit­i­cal­ly: the pri­ma­cy of democ­ra­cy and the bur­den­some­ness of gov­ern­ment as a nec­es­sary evil.

In his new book Toward Democ­ra­cy, Har­vard his­to­ri­an James T. Klop­pen­berg argues that these ideas arose fair­ly recent­ly with “most­ly Protes­tants, at least at first,” notes Kirkus, in whose hands “the idea of democ­ra­cy as a dan­ger­ous doc­trine of the mob was reshaped into an ide­al.” Much of this trans­for­ma­tion “occurred in the for­mer British colonies that became the Unit­ed States, where, at least from a British nobleman’s point of view, mob rule did take hold.”



The mod­ern revamp­ing of democ­ra­cy into a sacred set of uni­ver­sal insti­tu­tions has defined our under­stand­ing of the term. Just as the West has co-opt­ed clas­si­cal Athen­ian archi­tec­ture as sym­bol­ic of demo­c­ra­t­ic puri­ty, it has often co-opt­ed Greek phi­los­o­phy. But as any­one who has ever read Plato’s Repub­lic knows, Greek philoso­phers were high­ly sus­pi­cious of democ­ra­cy, and could not con­ceive of a func­tion­ing egal­i­tar­i­an soci­ety with full suf­frage and free­dom of speech.

Socrates, espe­cial­ly, says Alain de Bot­ton in the School of Life video above, “was por­trayed in the dia­logues of Pla­to as huge­ly pes­simistic about the whole busi­ness of democ­ra­cy.” In the ide­al soci­ety Socrates con­structs in the Repub­lic, he famous­ly argues for restrict­ed free­dom of move­ment, strict cen­sor­ship accord­ing to moral­is­tic civic virtues, and a guardian sol­dier class and the rule of philoso­pher kings.

In Book VI, Socrates points out the “flaws of democ­ra­cy by com­par­ing a soci­ety to a ship.” If you were going on a sea voy­age, “who would you ide­al­ly want decid­ing who was in charge of the ves­sel, just any­one, or peo­ple edu­cat­ed in the rules and demands of sea­far­ing?” Unless we wish to be obtuse­ly con­trar­i­an, we must invari­ably answer the lat­ter, as does Socrates’ inter­locu­tor Adeiman­tus. Why then should just any of us, with­out regard to lev­el of skill, expe­ri­ence, or edu­ca­tion, be allowed to select the rulers of a coun­try?

The grim irony of Socrates’ skep­ti­cism, de Bot­ton observes, is that he him­self was put to death after a vote by 500 Athe­ni­ans. Rather than the typ­i­cal elit­ism of pure­ly aris­to­crat­ic think­ing, how­ev­er, Socrates insist­ed that “only those who had thought about issues ratio­nal­ly and deeply should be let near a vote.” Says de Bot­ton, “We have for­got­ten this dis­tinc­tion between an intel­lec­tu­al democ­ra­cy and a democ­ra­cy by birthright. We have giv­en the vote to all with­out con­nect­ing it to wis­dom.” (He does not tell us whom he means by “we.”)

For Socrates, so-called “birthright democ­ra­cy” was inevitably sus­cep­ti­ble to dem­a­goguery. Socrates “knew how eas­i­ly peo­ple seek­ing elec­tion could exploit our desire for easy answers” by telling us what we want­ed to hear. We should heed Socrates’ warn­ings against mob rule and the dan­gers of dem­a­goguery, de Bot­ton argues, and con­sid­er democ­ra­cy as “some­thing that is only ever as good as the edu­ca­tion sys­tem that sur­rounds it.” It’s a potent idea, and one often repeat­ed with ref­er­ence to a sim­i­lar warn­ing from Thomas Jef­fer­son.

What de Bot­ton does not men­tion in his short video, how­ev­er, is that Socrates also advised that his rulers lie to the cit­i­zen­ry, secur­ing their trust not with false promis­es and seduc­tive blan­d­ish­ments, but with ide­ol­o­gy. As the Inter­net Ency­clo­pe­dia of Phi­los­o­phy sum­ma­rizes, Socrates “sug­gests that [the rulers] need to tell the cit­i­zens a myth that should be believed by sub­se­quent gen­er­a­tions in order for every­one to accept his posi­tion in the city”—and to accept the legit­i­ma­cy of the rulers. The myth—like mod­ern sci­en­tif­ic racism and eugenics—divides the cit­i­zen­ry into an essen­tial hier­ar­chy, which Socrates sym­bol­izes by the met­als gold, sil­ver, and bronze.

But who deter­mines these cat­e­gories, or which vot­ers are the more “ratio­nal,” or what that cat­e­go­ry entails? How do we rec­on­cile the egal­i­tar­i­an premis­es of democ­ra­cy with the caste sys­tems of the utopi­an Repub­lic, in which vot­ing “ratio­nal­ly” means vot­ing for the inter­ests of the class that gets the vote? What about the uses of pro­pa­gan­da to cul­ti­vate offi­cial state ide­ol­o­gy in the pop­u­lace (as Wal­ter Lipp­man so well described in Pub­lic Opin­ion). And what are we to do with the deep sus­pi­cions of, say, Niet­zsche when it comes to Socrat­ic ideas of rea­son, many of which have been con­firmed by the find­ings of neu­ro­science?

As cog­ni­tive sci­en­tist and lin­guist George Lakoff writes, “Most thought is uncon­scious, since we don’t have con­scious access to our neur­al cir­cuit­ry.… Esti­mates by neu­ro­sci­en­tists vary between a gen­er­al ‘most’ to as much as 98%, with con­scious­ness as the tip of the men­tal ice­berg.” That is to say that—despite our lev­els of edu­ca­tion and spe­cial­ized training—we “tend to make deci­sions uncon­scious­ly,” at the gut lev­el, “before becom­ing con­scious­ly aware of them.” Even deci­sions like vot­ing.

These con­sid­er­a­tions should also inform cri­tiques of democ­ra­cy, which have not only warned us of its dan­gers, but have also been used to jus­ti­fy wide­spread vot­er sup­pres­sion and dis­en­fran­chise­ment for rea­sons that have noth­ing to do with objec­tive ratio­nal­i­ty and every­thing to do with myth and polit­i­cal ide­ol­o­gy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Socrates on TV, Cour­tesy of Alain de Bot­ton (2000)

Watch Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tions to 25 Philoso­phers by The School of Life: From Pla­to to Kant and Fou­cault

How to Know if Your Coun­try Is Head­ing Toward Despo­tism: An Edu­ca­tion­al Film from 1946

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness


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Comments (17)
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  • brian t says:

    Imag­ine what would hap­pen if soci­ety were divid­ed in to two by IQ, using a neu­tral “cul­ture fair” test that works for every­body. Score over 100, you get the vote, below 100, you don’t. These two cat­e­gories would rep­re­sent above-aver­age and below-aver­age, since an IQ score of 100 is aver­age by def­i­n­i­tion. You could build flex­i­bil­i­ty in the sys­tem to make it more inclu­sive, allow­ing peo­ple to retake IQ tests with­out restric­tion as they grow old­er and demo­graph­ics change (the “Fly­nn Effect”). IQ is not a pre­cise score and comes with a built-in mar­gin of error. It would­n’t be total­ly in line with Socrates’ think­ing, but it would be a start.

    Why IQ? Because it’s not a mea­sure of what you have learned, but it is an abil­i­ty of your abil­i­ty to learn. So, even if you don’t have the knowl­edge rec­om­mend­ed by Socrates, IQ is cor­re­lat­ed with one’s abil­i­ty to absorb knowl­edge from any source, inside or out­side the class­room, and with BS detec­tion. *

    How­ev­er, straight away you would have a prob­lem along racial lines, since as things are today in the USA, Asian and Whites *tend* to be high­er than Blacks and His­pan­ics. There are socio-eco­nom­ic rea­sons why this can hap­pen, but when it comes to the neg­a­tive out­comes from low IQ, they don’t real­ly mat­ter. In that sense an IQ score is heart­less and not “fair”, since it make no allowances for per­son­al his­to­ry.

    Note that I have empha­sised the word *tend*: this trend describes groups only, *not* indi­vid­u­als, and IQ was nev­er intend­ed to be, used to dis­crim­i­nate against peo­ple. But if you are to fol­low Socrates advice, lim­it­ing vot­ing rights to the edu­cat­ed (or at least the edu­ca­ble), you are going to end up dis­crim­i­nat­ing against peo­ple. So, no easy solu­tion, then!

    * http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/scientists-find-a-link-between-low-intelligence-and-acceptance-of-pseudo-profound-bulls-a6757731.html

  • Rich H says:

    It is our fed­er­al gov­ern­ment con­trolled edu­ca­tion sys­tem that is fail­ing our coun­try. Uni­ver­si­ties do not teach wis­dom but teach left­ism and that teach­ing now begins at kinder­garten. Left­ism is the antithe­sis of the Repub­lic our Founders estab­lished. Left­ism is Amer­i­ca’s great­est threat and its great growth of gov­’t (which con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly is sup­posed to very lim­it­ed) is why Amer­i­ca has been in decline as its ten­ta­cles reach into every aspect our econ­o­my, soci­ety and our lives. The Peo­ple have become painful­ly aware of the decline, even if not know­ing the cause and so the unin­formed actu­al­ly vote for more of it.
    I would argue that virtue is also a neces­si­ty. Knowl­edge with­out wis­dom and virtue is hard­ly bet­ter than amoral igno­rance. And yet the Left also active­ly against virtue as it works to dri­ve Chris­tian­i­ty out of the pub­lic square to under­mine Judeo/Christian val­ues and god­ly faith over­all.
    The Left works to undo all that is need­ed for a democ­ra­cy to work well because Left­ism is total­i­tar­i­an in nature and seeks to con­trol every­thing and thus every­one. So, the democ­ra­cy is manip­u­lat­ed to fail so left­ists can rule. It is not just a nat­ur­al occur­rence but a devi­ous delib­er­ate one.

  • octaaf coeckelberghs says:

    In Eng­lish : he must have meant Bour­geois Democ­ra­cy… for decades caus­es war, unumployment,pollution and to keep this goi­ing a high­er wel­fare for some as well, but no eco­log­i­cal pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion, stressed life styles and not enough time to be busy with the true mean­ing of life
    laat ons zeggen “why Socrates hat­ed BOURGEOIS DEMOCRACY http://philosophicalresistance4.skynetblogs.be   ‘t zou me alle­maal niet zo kun­nen sche­len ware het niet dat al die oor­logen daar­door kun­nen begin­nen, jon­geren mas­saal zon­der werk zit­ten in bepaalde regio’s en er geen tijd genoeg is wegens het kap­i­tal­is­tis­che lev­en­sritme om din­gen te doen die met het wezen zelf van het lev­en te mak­en hebben.…alleen nut­tige din­gen mak­en, meer col­lec­tieve voorzienin­gen, ecol­o­gisch pro­duc­eren en soci­aal verde­len
    http://hetvoortijdigtestament.skynetblogs.be

  • Vítor Barreira says:

    Mr. Josh Jones,

    Thank you for your excel­lent text on democ­ra­cy and its ene­mies.

    It is an informed, well artic­u­lat­ed text and writ­ten in an exem­plary prose.

    I espe­cial­ly liked its dialec­tic struc­ture: The­sis, Antithe­sis and Anti-Antithe­sis.

    My best regards,

    Vítor Bar­reira (Lis­bon, Por­tu­gal)

    ***

  • Ersi Samara says:

    I was born and grew up in Athens, Greece, so the lega­cy of ancient greek phi­los­o­phy weighs heav­i­ly on me, believe me. But we live in the twen­ty first cen­tu­ry and we don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly need to assume that our ances­tors’ ideas are set in stone. Things change, soci­ety evolves, phi­los­o­phy does too.

    I agree that our actions are the result of uncon­scious process­es to a large extent. The uncon­scious is a tricky lit­tle beast that can manip­u­late us bet­ter than any pro­pa­gan­da can. But that is true of every­one’s actions, rulers and lead­ers includ­ed, illu­mi­nat­ed and cul­tured as they may be. So we’d bet­ter leave it out of the equa­tion since it’s ever-present.

    This is a fine arti­cle on democ­ra­cy though most­ly restrict­ed to abstract con­sid­er­a­tions. I think that to dis­cuss democ­ra­cy today we must nec­es­sar­i­ly con­sid­er the needs and desires of the pop­u­la­tion. A demo­c­ra­t­ic soci­ety would strive to sat­is­fy those needs, not only the craves of a cer­tain race, reli­gious group or an elite, be it finan­cial or cul­tur­al. Equal­i­ty is much more than the right to vote, espe­cial­ly know­ing what politi­cians tend to do with our vote once in office.

    Human affairs have lit­tle to do with per­fec­tion, I think. Democ­ra­cy does­n’t need to be per­fect ‑it can’t- but it does need to address the neces­si­ties of all. And to guar­an­tee that, every­one would bet­ter be involved in the every­day process­es.

    P.D. Edu­ca­tion is extreme­ly impor­tant, I total­ly agree with that. And I mean edu­ca­tion, not tech­ni­cal train­ing.

  • J-M Barreto says:

    Popper´s “The Open Soci­ety and Its Ene­mies” is always rel­e­vant when revis­it­ing Socrates and Pla­to. Pop­per relates both thinkers to author­i­tar­i­an­ism. His­tor­i­cal­ly both of them were will­ing ene­mies of Athen­ian democ­ra­cy and sup­port­ers of Spar­ta author­i­tar­i­an regime.

  • Joseph (Joe) Frame says:

    I agree that good edu­ca­tion, that which engen­ders inde­pen­dent thought and con­se­quences for one’s won actions/decisions, is vital for good gov­ern­ment. Gov­ern­ment mon­ey spent on this kind of edu­ca­tion is mon­ey well spent; mon­ey spent on “test­ing” and “the col­lege expe­ri­ence” is not.

  • Kerry King says:

    The core val­ues of Left­ism’ are free­dom and equal­i­ty. Chris­tian­i­ty val­ues super­nat­ur­al enti­ties and dog­mat­ic sub­servience. Since God’s exis­tence can­not be proven or any of ‘his’ un-sci­en­tif­ic mir­a­cles, how long could you sur­vive with­out god and how long could you live with­out what nature pro­vides you?

  • Kbj says:

    Ah, that would be con­ser­vatism you are describ­ing so well.

  • David says:

    The com­par­i­son of the republic’s caste sys­tem is noth­ing like racism, that’s a total mis­char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of the pas­sage. Socrates makes pro­vi­sions for mov­ing chil­dren up and down the sys­tem based not on genet­ics, not on intel­li­gence alone but most impor­tant­ly on moral char­ac­ter. Those of the high­est caste would live almost like monks. In any event cit­i­zens of the USA need not fear, such a state could nev­er devel­op here because moral char­ac­ter has nev­er been a sought after require­ment in pol­i­tics, busi­ness or any form of lead­er­ship in the USA!

  • Putput says:

    I agree that good edu­ca­tion. Gov­ern­ment mon­ey spent on this kind of edu­ca­tion is mon­ey well spent; mon­ey spent on “test­ing” and “the col­lege expe­ri­ence” is not.

  • zet says:

    I agree that good edu­ca­tion

  • Aurielle says:

    IDK

  • Gail says:

    Oh, do tell wise one. What is “left­ism?” Sci­ence?! And the alter­na­tive is what? Fan­ta­sy? Myth­i­cal think­ing, what you call Chris­tian­i­ty?
    Sci­ence isn’t polit­i­cal. There is no left agen­da. The sci­en­tif­ic method was designed to spot bias and cor­rect for it when found.
    Oh, I’m not done.
    In kinder­garten, you won’t find kids learn­ing crit­i­cal race the­o­ry.
    Crit­i­cal think­ing, or wis­dom if you will, is exact­ly what we should be teach­ing in schools. Giv­en the uneven, often deplorable con­di­tion of schools, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the south, we’re not ready for such a big par­a­digm shift. Of course, the right likes to keep their base dumb, so it’s not going to hap­pen any­time soon any­way, if ever.
    MAGA is the par­ty of “sim­ple solu­tions.” Your 5 year old boy feels like they’re a girl? Remove all books that men­tion trans­gen­der or even sug­gest it — that’ll solve the prob­lem! Not.
    Sim­ple solu­tions are the work of char­la­tans. Their lies appeal to the une­d­u­cat­ed bc it’s com­fort­ing to think big prob­lems have an easy fix. News flash. Com­plex prob­lems require com­plex solu­tions.
    Total­i­tar­i­an­ism by the left you say?! That’s bulls**t. It’s the RIGHT who believes govt should con­trol a wom­an’s body, con­trol who we love, con­trol who we mar­ry, con­trol gen­der iden­ti­ty, con­trol what’s taught in schools, con­trol the books we read, con­trol vot­ing, con­trol the results of elections…Sounds like total­i­tar­i­an­ism to me.

  • rasa says:

    Oh, do tell wise one. What is “left­ism?” Sci­ence?! And the alter­na­tive is what? Fan­ta­sy? Myth­i­cal think­ing, what you call Chris­tian­i­ty?
    Sci­ence isn’t polit­i­cal. There is no left agen­da. The sci­en­tif­ic method was designed to spot bias and cor­rect for it when found.
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  • rasa says:

    I was born and grew up in Athens, Greece, so the lega­cy of ancient greek phi­los­o­phy weighs heav­i­ly on me, believe me. But we live in the twen­ty first cen­tu­ry and we don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly need to assume that our ances­tors’ ideas are set in stone. Things change, soci­ety evolves, phi­los­o­phy does too.

    I agree that our actions are the result of uncon­scious process­es to a large extent. The uncon­scious is a tricky lit­tle beast that can manip­u­late us bet­ter than any pro­pa­gan­da can. But that is true of everyone’s actions, rulers and lead­ers includ­ed, illu­mi­nat­ed and cul­tured as they may be. So we’d bet­ter leave it out of the equa­tion since it’s ever-present.

    This is a fine arti­cle on democ­ra­cy though most­ly restrict­ed to abstract con­sid­er­a­tions. I think that to dis­cuss democ­ra­cy today we must nec­es­sar­i­ly con­sid­er the needs and desires of the pop­u­la­tion. A demo­c­ra­t­ic soci­ety would strive to sat­is­fy those needs, not only the craves of a cer­tain race, reli­gious group or an elite, be it finan­cial or cul­tur­al. Equal­i­ty is much more than the right to vote, espe­cial­ly know­ing what politi­cians tend to do with our vote once in office.

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