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Compare And Contrast Plato And Aristotle's Criticism Of Democracy

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Both Plato and Aristotle hold that democracy is inefficient for various reasons. However, I wouldn’t necessarily conclude that both philosophers consider democracy bad per se. Plato and Aristotle’s critiques of democracy seem to stem from their metaphysical conceptions of human nature and how that nature has influenced human beings to interact with their environment. Democracy, or any form of government, is an extension of human nature because our existence precedes that of the state’s. In other words, political structures are completely dependent on human nature.
Both philosophers would most likely agree that it’s a sovereign's duty (referring to any political structure or centralized gov’t power) to act in accordance with nature and to promote …show more content…

However, this is tied directly to the fundamental understanding of democracy in that citizens have the power to influence their sovereign through becoming the sovereign (through majority decisions). Democracy is good. Democracy is bad whenever the majority abuses its freedoms to serve individual desire. In other words, the characteristics of a democracy are solely dependent on its citizens and there might be more of a convincing reason to believe that both Plato and Aristotle’s criticisms are a result of human nature, instead of democracy itself.
IV. Future Impact and Discussion Generally speaking, I agree with both of the secondary sources insofar that they never leave the realm of skepticism. Democracy, even contained within the primary sources, is left open to interpretation in order to individuals to form their own opinions and beliefs on the topic. The open-endedness of the secondary complimented the primary sources extremely well as the primary sources themselves tend to be ambiguous, leaving themselves to be open to interpretation as well. As far as the lessons we could extract today from Plato and Aristotle in regards to their political theories, our understanding more specific political structures (i.e. democracy) would improve and could possibly give way to future trends similar to that of

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