Democracy
Oligarchy then degenerates into democracy where freedom is the supreme good but freedom is also slavery. In democracy, the lower class grows bigger and bigger. The poor become the winners. Diversity is supreme. People are free to do what they want and live how they want. People can even break the law if they so chose. This appears to be very similar to anarchy.
Plato uses the "democratic man" to represent democracy. The democratic man is the son of the oligarchic man. Unlike his father, the democratic man is consumed with unnecessary desires. Plato describes necessary desires as desires that we have out of instinct or desires that we have in order to survive. Unnecessary desires are desires we can teach ourselves to resist such as the desire for riches. The democratic man takes great interest in all the things he can buy with his money. He does whatever he wants whenever he wants to do it. His life has no order or priority.
Read more about this topic: Plato's Five Regimes
Famous quotes containing the word democracy:
“In a democracy everybody has a right to be represented, including the jerks.”
—Chris Patten (b. 1944)
“In Italy, for thirty years, under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed. But they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, and they had five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”
—Graham Greene (1904–1991)
“We need not fear any isms if our democracy is achieving the ends for which it was established ...”
—Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962)