Aristocracy, timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, and tyranny are known as Plato's five what?

The Classical Greek philosopher Plato discusses five types of regimes (Republic, Book VIII). They are Aristocracy, Timocracy, Oligarchy, Democracy, and Tyranny. Plato also assigns a man to each of these regimes to illustrate what they stand for. The tyrannical man would represent Tyranny, for example. These five regimes progressively degenerate starting with Aristocracy at the top and Tyranny at the bottom.

Aristocracy is the form of government (politeia) advocated in Plato's Republic. This regime is ruled by a philosopher king, and thus is grounded on wisdom and reason.

Aristocracy degenerates into timocracy when, due to miscalculation on the part of its governing class, the next generation of guardians and auxiliaries includes persons of an inferior nature (the persons with souls made of iron or bronze, as opposed to the ideal guardians and auxiliaries, who have souls made of gold and silver).

Plato defines oligarchy as a system of government which distinguishes between the rich and the poor, making out of the former its administrators.

Oligarchy then degenerates into democracy where freedom is the supreme good but freedom is also slavery.

Democracy then degenerates into tyranny where no one has discipline and society exists in chaos.

More Info: en.wikipedia.org

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7 Comments

earlepg

Linda Carr, I agree, and it seems to have deteriorated worldwide over the last two years.

earlepg

I thought that was pretty clear that Plato was talking about regimes. These governing regimes could all exist at any point in time, except possibly when tyranny takes hold and there is no real authority. I'm no authority on the subject, but the attitude concerning slavery has slowly eroded over time with most people, though not all people, adopting the prevalent attitude. It seems that slavery effectively started in the Mesopotamian and Sumerian civilations in the Iran/Irag area between 6000-2000 BC. Slavery definitely existed in the Greek, Egyptian, and Roman civilations. In these times slaves were primarily made of people defeated in fighting. In Europe, starting in the dark ages and continuing through the middle ages a system of serfdom slowly emerged. When the Vikings emerged as a power, they were usually (though not exclusively) the only ones that continued enslaving conquered people. With the advent of the Americans, slavery primarily continued with Africans being enslaved. During this time, the Arabian countries continued with the enslaving enemies. During the past two hundred years slavery has become less and less popular worldwide.