Plato’s Ambivalent Assessment of Democracy

Abstract

In his 2016 article, “Democracies End When They Are Too Democratic,” Andrew Sullivan argued that Book VIII of Plato’s Republic accurately depicts a “mature” democracy, such as that found in the United States, as well as the process by which first a demagogue and then a tyrant can emerge from it. He expressed the fear that Donald Trump was just such a man. Part I discusses Sullivan’s article. Part II argues that he missed something important: the Republic VIII account of democracy is surprisingly ambivalent. Part III examines a notion explicitly stated in Plato’s Statesman, but implicit in Republic VIII as well: in the actual political world, where the vast majority of regimes fall miserably short, democracy is the “best of the bad.”