He will have lost his inheritance, so he will have to work arduously for his sustenance, and money will come to dominate him. His son, the oligarchic man, will see what has happened to the father the son will live in fear of the same thing happening to himself, and his great fear will be that of being penniless. We may imagine, Socrates says, a timocratic man, say a great general, who suffers major defeats in battle, so that when he comes home from the war he is deprived of his rights and property and is perhaps driven into exile. Thus we perceive the second kind of unjust state. Eventually, the rich will become profligate, simply getting and spending money, in no way of any service to the state the poor will likely become beggars or criminals, an impediment to the state. Money in and of itself does not ensure a good political atmosphere in fact, in such a state, the gap between the rich and the poor will be so wide that the two classes (rich and poor) will be actively antagonistic to one another. In this oligarchy, the rulers will be chosen for their wealth alone. The erstwhile timocracy thus declines to oligarchy. The rich will not be able to sate their desire for more and more wealth for them the love of money will overtake their desire for honor. Oligarchy is a society in which the rich are in control the wealthy are extremely wealthy and the poor quite poverty-stricken.
He will become unreasonable and no longer in control of himself. When young, he might not care for money, but as he ages, he will become avaricious, and he will be unable to maintain his spiritual balance. The timocratic man will value physical exploits, and he will be courageous and ambitious. Such rulers will be unable to secure justice for the state and its citizenry. For them, reason will no longer prevail no matter if they be courageous, they will possess only the intellectual attributes of auxiliaries. Their level of intellect will decline they will value honor and ambition over wisdom. These rulers will lack wisdom they will become ambitious and desirous of money and property they will prefer the comforts of private lives to the welfare of the state. Some of these children, although inferior, might eventually come to power as rulers, but they would lack the character aptitudes for good rule. Theoretically, this situation might come about because a ruler could have made mistaken "marriage matches" at a state-marriage festival, thus producing inferior children with the wrong "mix" of metals flowing through their veins (see the Myth of Metals, discussed in Book III). Socrates descries government by timocracy (from timé, honor) in Sparta and in Crete, where the military was in power ( kratos) and honor and ambition were highly valued.Ī given state seems always to fall into ruin because people in power disagree, quarrel among themselves, and come to violence. We may begin by examining timocracy and the timocratic man. We are to imagine that our ideal (just) state is slowly decaying and falling into ruin, and that it proceeds from good to bad, worsening as it falls to the worst form of government, despotism. By determining these types, we shall be able to determine why it is better to be just than unjust. We have already in the conversation discovered a just man and a just state we shall now determine four types of unjust men corresponding to four unjust states. Socrates says that timocracy is the closest to the Ideal State that we have thus far experienced the others descend in value as they are listed. Socrates argues that there are four main types of unjust states: timocracy, oligarchy (plutocracy), democracy, and tyranny (despotism).
Now (in Book VIII) Socrates returns to his examples of unjust societies and unjust men.
In Book V, Socrates was about to develop his theories of injustice by arguing examples of injustice, when Polemarchus and Adeimantus asked him to continue his conversation about the Guardians.
0 kommentar(er)
