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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 27, 2025

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If we're talking about ancient political philosophy, I tend to prefer Aristotle's politeia to Plato's aristokratia. A mixed constitution with all the best aspects of aristocracy, monarchy and democracy and with checks and balances to reign in the weaknesses of each of those systems seems like a better way to constitute a society than by trying to cultivate a truly virtuous and wise ruling class. I also feel like Aristotle's methodology (researching the constitutions of 158 Greek city states to see what makes them tick, and then distilling his findings into a book on politics) is more likely to arrive at viable, real world conclusions than Plato's comparatively more limited exposure to different constitutions. (There's also the fact that Plato's efforts to make Syracruse into his ideal republic ended in disaster, and resulted in his later political work "The Laws" being much less ambitious and utopian as a result.)

Plato was undoubtedly a genius, and his systematic approach to philosophy meant that he is often a great starting point, but I definitely don't think he should be taken as the last word on anything. He had a tendency to be lost in the airy heights, and I think a more grounded pragmatic approach can often outdo him.

The usual positions in later (I'm thinking e.g. early modern) political philosophy were (at least, I'm pretty sure):

  1. Some measure of virtue among those with power is indispensable for a well-functioning polity.

  2. Mixed regimes (that is, between monarchy, oligarchy, democracy), of some variety, are best.

I would be pretty careful about taking the portions of any dialogue and saying that this is definitively the opinion of Plato. I don't know that he actually intended anyone to form his proposed aristocratic regime. But I haven't looked at any of this for a few years, so I'd want to reread.

It wouldn't be very Socratic to hold an opinion.