What Are Four Restraints the U.s. Constitution Has to Limit a Path Towards Tyranny?

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FALL 2010 (Volume 26, No. 1)

Tyranny

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Plato and Aristotle on Tyranny and the Rule of Police

Nearly two,400 years ago, the Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle explored political philosophy. Aristotle concluded that "it is evident that the form of regime is best in which every man, whoever he is, can act best and live happily."

In Philadelphia some 2,000 years afterwards Plato and Aristotle'due south fourth dimension, a group of men was trying to write a constitution. George Washington, James Madison, and the other framers of the Constitution were dedicated to constructing a merely government. Americans had overthrown what they considered a tyrannous British government. The framers wanted to create a national government free of tyranny, governed by the dominion of law.

The new American nation was quite different from the aboriginal Greek city-states. Still, many of the framers at Philadelphia had studied and understood Plato'due south and Aristotle's political philosophies. And they were grappling with many of the aforementioned political questions.

Tyranny and the Dominion of Law

Plato and Aristotle both developed important ideas about government and politics. Two of the many political subjects that these men wrote about were tyranny and the rule of constabulary. Tyranny occurs when absolute power is granted to a ruler. In a tyrannical government, the ruler becomes corrupt and uses his ability to further his own interests instead of working for the common good.

The rule of law is the principle that no one is exempt from the law, even those who are in a position of power. The rule of law can serve as a safeguard against tyranny, considering just laws ensure that rulers practise not go corrupt.

Athenian Democracy

Both Plato and Aristotle lived in the democratic Greek city-state of Athens. In Athenian democracy, all male citizens directly participated in making laws and deciding jury trials. Yearly elections decided who would make full of import authorities positions. Citizens drew lots to see who would staff the remaining posts.

Athens had reached its superlative in political power before Plato was born. Its decline began with a long war with Sparta, a rival city-land. The war ended in 404 B.C. with Athens' defeat. Athens regained its republic, just presently after Plato's death, the city-state vicious nether the control of Macedon, a kingdom north of Hellenic republic. The city remained, all the same, a cultural centre.

Plato (c. 428–347 B.C.)

Plato was a pupil of Socrates. Socrates taught past asking questions about a bailiwick and getting his students to think critically virtually information technology. Today, this is known as the Socratic method, used by many professors in law schools.

Socrates' questioning ofttimes led to criticism of Athenian democracy and its politicians. An increasing number of Athenians viewed Socrates as a threat to their city-country.

A few years later losing the war with Sparta, Athens put the 70-year-old Socrates on trial for not accepting the gods of Athens and for corrupting the immature. Socrates denied the accusations, simply he was establish guilty and sentenced to decease.

When Socrates died, Plato concluded that democracy was a corrupt and unjust form of government. He left Athens for a decade. Returning in 387 B.C., he established a schoolhouse of college learning called the Academy.

Plato's Republic

Plato's most important piece of work on politics is his Republic, published around 380 B.C. Written every bit a dialogue among characters and ready in a private home, the book describes a small grouping of Athenians discussing political philosophy. The principal graphic symbol is Socrates, who voiced Plato'southward ideas. (The real Socrates never wrote down his ideas.)

The Republic examines the meaning of justice, looks at dissimilar types of government, and outlines the ideal land. Information technology touches on many subjects, including constabulary and tyranny.

Plato looked at four existing forms of regime and found them unstable. The best, in his view, is timocracy, a war machine state, like Sparta, based on honor. Just such a state will fall apart:

The accumulation of golden in the treasury of private individuals is the ruin of timocracy; they invent illegal modes of expenditure; for what exercise they or their wives care nearly the law? . . . . And then i, seeing some other grow rich, seeks to rival him, and thus the great mass of the citizens become lovers of money. . . . Then at concluding, instead of loving contention and glory, men become lovers of trade and money; they honor and look upwardly to the rich man, and make a ruler of him, and dishonor the poor man.

An oligarchy, the rule of a few (the rich), leads to

a city of the rich and a urban center of the poor, dwelling together, and ever plotting confronting ane another. . . . [The authorities] will non be able to wage war, because of the necessity of either arming and employing the multitude, and fearing them more than than the enemy, or else, if they exercise non make use of them, of finding themselves on the field of boxing . . . And to this must be added their reluctance to contribute money, because they are lovers of money.

The poor will overthrow the oligarchy and set a republic, the rule of the people (the poor). Plato thought that democratic "life has neither law nor order." An unquenchable desire for limitless liberty causes disorder, because the citizens begin to

abrasion impatiently at the least bear upon of authority and at length, . . . they cease to care fifty-fifty for the laws, written or unwritten; they will have no ane over them.

Stressing moderation, Plato warned that "the excessive increase of anything oftentimes causes a reaction in the opposite direction," such that the "excess of freedom, whether in states or individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery."

Like an oligarchy, a democracy pits the poor against the rich. The poor meet the rich plotting, and they seek protection:

The people accept always some champion whom they set over them and nurse into greatness. . . . This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he commencement appears above ground he is a protector. . . . having a mob entirely at his disposal, he is not restrained from shedding the blood of kinsmen; . . . he brings them into court and murders them . . . at the same time hinting at the abolition of debts and partition of lands. . . . After a while he is driven out, but comes dorsum, in spite of his enemies, a tyrant full grown.

Plato deemed tyranny the "4th and worst disorder of a land." Tyrants lack "the very faculty that is the instrument of judgment"—reason. The tyrannical man is enslaved considering the best part of him (reason) is enslaved, and likewise, the tyrannical state is enslaved, because it too lacks reason and gild.

In a tyranny, no outside governing power controls the tyrant's selfish behavior. To Plato, the law tin can guard against tyranny. In the Republic, he called the constabulary an "external authority" that functions as the "ally of the whole urban center."

Plato stressed the importance of law in his other works. In the Crito, a dialogue between Socrates and his friend Crito, Crito offers Socrates a fashion to escape his impending execution. Socrates refuses, explaining that when a citizen chooses to alive in a state, he "has entered into an implied contract that he will do as . . . [the laws] command him." In Plato's Laws, his last book, he summarizes his opinion on the rule of law:

Where the law is subject to some other authority and has none of its own, the collapse of the land, in my view, is not far off; but if police is the main of the government and the authorities is its slave, so the situation is full of promise and men savour all the blessings that the gods shower on a state.

Plato's ideal and just land is an aristocracy, the rule of the all-time. He believed leaders needed to be wise and trained in how to run a state, but as captains of ships are trained in how to run a transport.

He divided his platonic country into three classes. The lowest and largest class is the producers: the farmers, craftsmen, traders, and others involved in commerce. The next class is the warriors, those who defend the state. They are educated in sports, combat, and philosophy and tested by both terrifying and tempting situations. From the best of warrior grade, the ruling form is drawn. Its members will report philosophy and be given government and military positions until age 50, when the best of them become philosopher kings.

Plato believed every man's soul is divided into three parts: ambition, spirit, and reason. Each of his 3 classes matches one aspect of a person's soul. The lower class is linked to appetite, and it owns all the land and controls all the wealth. The warrior class is spirited and lives by a code of honor. The ruling class is linked to reason and lives to gain wisdom.

The philosopher kings will prefer seeking truth to ruling, but a police will compel them to rule. They will obey the law and take their turns as rulers.

[T]he truth is that the State in which the rulers are virtually reluctant to govern is always the best and most quietly governed, and the State in which they are most eager, the worst.

The warrior and ruling classes live in barracks, consume together, and share possessions. None has families. All children of these classes are brought up without knowing their parents. In this style, Plato tries to keep these classes from gaining wealth or producing family dynasties.

Plato ended:

Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom see in i, . . . cities will never have rest from their evils . . . .

Aristotle (384–322 B.C.)

Born in the north of Greece, Aristotle came from a family linked to the kingdom of Macedon. His begetter worked for the rex as a courtroom md.

When Aristotle grew up, he studied philosophy at Plato's Academy for 20 years, leaving when Plato died. He traveled and and so tutored the rex of Macedon'south 13-yr-old son, Alexander (the future Alexander the Great).

When Alexander became king of Macedon in 335 B.C., Aristotle returned to Athens to fix up his own school, chosen the Lyceum. He studied, catalogued, lectured, debated, and wrote about every surface area of man knowledge.

Although Plato had been his teacher, Aristotle disagreed with much of Plato'due south philosophy. Plato was an idealist, who believed that everything had an ideal form. Aristotle believed in looking at the real earth and studying it.

Aristotle spent many years education in Athens, which was under the command of Macedon. When Alexander the Peachy died, however, anti-Macedonians took control of Athens. Linked to Macedon, Aristotle was defendant of not accepting the gods of Athens, one of the aforementioned charges leveled against Socrates. Dissimilar Socrates, however, Aristotle did non stand up trial. He fled to a home in the countryside, saying, as the story goes, that he did not want Athens to "sin twice confronting philosophy" (its kickoff sin being the execution of Socrates). Aristotle died the following year in exile.

Aristotle'due south Politics

Similar Plato, Aristotle, wrote extensively on the subjects of tyranny and the rule of law. He hoped that his Politics, a collection of essays on regime, would provide direction for rulers, statesmen, and politicians.

In The Politics, Aristotle rejected Plato'southward ideal land. He said that it fails to address conflicts that will ascend among its citizens. He claimed Plato'southward ideal state will

contain two states in one, each hostile to the other . . . . [Plato] makes the guardians [the warriors] into a mere occupying garrison, while the husbandmen and artisans and the residue are the real citizens. Only if so, the suits and quarrels and all the evils which Socrates affirms to exist in other states, volition exist equally among them. He says indeed that, having and so good an education, the citizens will non demand many laws, . . . but so he confines his didactics to the guardians.

Unlike The Republic, The Politics does non depict an platonic system of government. Instead, Aristotle explored applied constitutions that city-states can realistically put into effect. His aim was to "consider, not only what form of government is best, just also what is possible and what is hands accessible."

He studied the different governments in Greece's many urban center-states. He identified half-dozen different kinds of constitutions, and he classified them as either "truthful" or "defective." He stated that

governments which have a regard to the common interest are constituted in accordance with strict principles of justice, and are therefore true forms; but those which regard only the interest of the rulers are all defective and perverted forms, for they are despotic . . . .

"True" constitutions served the common interests of all citizens. "Despotic" constitutions served simply the selfish interests of a sure person or group. The chart below shows the "despotic" and "true" constitutions. (Despotic is a synonym for "tyrannic.")

Tyranny perverts monarchy, because it "has in view the interest of the monarch only." To Aristotle, tyranny is the

capricious power of an individual . . . responsible to no one, [which] governs . . . with a view to its own reward, not to that of its subjects, and therefore against their will.

Aristotle wrote, "No freeman, if he can escape from it, volition endure such a government."

Aristotle believed that tyranny is the "very reverse of a constitution." He explained that

where the laws have no authority, at that place is no constitution. The law ought to be supreme over all.

Aristotle stressed that these laws must uphold just principles, such that "true forms of government will of necessity accept just laws, and perverted forms of government will have unjust laws."

Aristotle held views like to Plato's about the dangers of democracy and oligarchy. He feared that both pitted the rich against the poor. But he recognized that these types of governments took many forms. The worst were those without the rule of law. In democracies without law, demagogues (leaders appealing to emotions) took over.

For in democracies where the laws are non supreme, demagogues spring upwards. . . . [T]his sort of democracy . . . [is] what tyranny is to other forms of monarchy. The spirit of both is the same, and they alike exercise a despotic rule over the better citizens. The decrees of the [demagogues] correspond to the edicts of the tyrant . . . . Such a republic is fairly open to the objection that it is not a constitution at all; for where the laws have no authority, there is no constitution. The constabulary ought to exist supreme over all . . . .

Aristotle made the aforementioned statement most oligarchies.

When . . . the rulers have great wealth and numerous friends, this sort of family despotism approaches a monarchy; individuals rule and not the law. This is the fourth sort of oligarchy, and is analogous to the terminal sort of democracy.

Aristotle stated that "the rule of law . . . is preferable to that of any individual." This is because individuals possess flaws and could tailor authorities to their own individual interests, whereas the rule of police force is objective.

[H]due east who bids the law rule may exist deemed to bid God and Reason alone rule, just he who bids human rule adds an element of the beast; for desire is a wild beast, and passion perverts the minds of rulers, even when they are the all-time of men. The law is reason unaffected by desire.

Rulers must be "the servants of the laws," because "law is club, and good law is proficient order."

In addition to law, Aristotle believed a large middle class would protect against the excesses of oligarchy and democracy:

[T]he best political community is formed past citizens of the middle class, and that those states are likely to be well-administered in which the center class is big, and stronger if possible than both the other classes . . . ; for the addition of the middle class turns the scale, and prevents either of the extremes from existence dominant.

In fact, one of Aristotle's true forms of government is a polity, a combination of oligarchy and republic. This blazon of land arises when the heart class is strong.

The U.Southward. Constitution

Like Plato and Aristotle, our nation's founders worried about tyrannical authorities. Recognizing that tyranny could come from a single powerful ruler or from "mob rule," the founders wrote into the Constitution mechanisms to prevent tyranny and promote the rule of law. They separated the powers of government into three equal branches of regime: the executive (the president), the legislative (Congress), and the judicial (the Supreme Court). Each branch can check the other to preclude corruption or tyranny. Congress itself is divided into the House of Representatives and the Senate. The Business firm, elected for two-year terms, is more likely to be swayed by the passions of the people than the Senate, elected to six-yr terms. The Constitution farther limits the powers of the government by listing its powers: The regime may not practise any power beyond those listed. The first 10 amendments to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, protect people'south liberties and freedoms from government encroachment. In creating the judicial branch of authorities, the framers gave federal judges lifetime terms, thus ensuring that judges would base their decisions on the law and not on politics.

For Give-and-take

i.  What is the rule of police force? How can information technology help prevent tyranny?

2.  James Madison, the "father" of the U.Southward. Constitution, wrote in The Federalist Papers #55: "Had every Athenian denizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would even so have been a mob." What did he hateful by this? Do you hold? Explain.

iii.  Which ideas of Plato might be useful in today'due south social club? Why? Which ideas of Aristotle? Why?

4.  British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (1874–1965) once said that "commonwealth is the worst form of government except all those other forms . . . ." What did he mean? Do y'all agree? Explicate.

5.  At the stop of their lives, Socrates and Aristotle faced a similar situation. In your opinion, who made the correct decision? Why?

6.  What is a commonwealth? Is Plato's ideal state a republic? Explain.

A C T I V I T Y

Plato and Aristotle in Modern Times

In this action, students will examine and discuss political quotations from Plato and Aristotle. Dissever the class into pocket-size groups. Assign one of the quotations to each group. Each group should:

1.  Discuss and answer the post-obit questions:

a. What does the quotation mean?

b.  Practise you agree with it? Why or why not?

c.  How well does the American political arrangement accost or handle this issue?

ii.  Be prepared to report your answers and reasons for them to the class. If you have actress fourth dimension, discuss another quotation.

Quotations

1.  [T]he best political customs is formed by citizens of the middle class, and that those states are likely to be well-administered in which the middle course is big, and stronger if possible than both the other classes . . . . —Aristotle

two.  The all-time laws, though sanctioned past every citizen of the state, will exist of no avail unless the young are trained past habit and education in the spirit of the constitution . . . . —Aristotle

iii.  [I]f police force is the master of the regime and the regime is its slave, then the state of affairs is full of promise and men enjoy all the blessings that the gods shower on a country. —Plato

4.  If the poor . . . because they are more in number, dissever amongst themselves the property of the rich—is not this unjust? . . . But is it just and then that the few and the wealthy should be the rulers? And what if they, in like manner, rob and plunder the people—is this simply? —Aristotle

5.  The people have ever some champion whom they set over them and nurse into greatness. . . . This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he commencement appears above ground he is a protector. . . having a mob entirely at his disposal . . . . —Plato

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