Can democracy survive?

Hi. I’m Geoff Pynn, and I teach philosophy at Elgin community college. In this video, I’m going to ask, can democracy survive? The last time you had a troubling medical symptom, what did you do? Maybe you waited, hoping it would go away on its own. But eventually, I bet you asked a doctor and I bet you took their advice. You didn’t have to Instead, you could have invited a dozen people from your city to a town hall meeting, asked what they think you should do about the symptoms, and followed whatever suggestion was most popular. But of course, public opinion is no substitute for a competent doctor It would be foolish to trust a random group of people over a doctor when it comes to your health. But isn’t this exactly what a democracy does with the health of the state? If you think looking after your own health is complicated, imagine how complicated it is to ensure the health of an entire state or society. Democracies leave such complex decisions as how much to tax, whether to go to war, what freedoms to guarantee up to ordinary people. If it’s foolish to trust ordinary people with one person’s health, isn’t it much more foolish to trust them with the health of an entire society? Plato opposed democracy for this reason. The Greek word for democracy can be translated as “rule by the people,” but it can also mean “rule by the mob.” When you put the people in charge, you’re entrusting the health of your entire society to people who don’t know what they’re doing and who are inclined to act foolishly. For one thing, amateurs make a lot more mistakes than experts. But what’s more, Plato argued, democracy contains the seeds of its own destruction. Here’s why. Suppose your doctor told you that you had to eliminate salt from your diet. A big sacrifice! but one you’ll be willing to make to save your life. After leaving your doctor’s office, you run into someone who looks just like a doctor, and says, “If you take these Salty Heart Supplements with every meal you can eat all the salt you want!” Since taking a pill is easier than changing your diet, you’ll be sorely tempted to follow this easier advice at least if you don’t know that Salty Heart Supplements are a scam. In a democracy, bad actors can pose as experts in ruling, and gain political support through rhetoric, lies, and manipulation Since many people can’t distinguish real experts from fakes, a skillful fake could gain real power this way. Such a figure is called a demagogue. Demagogues appeal to people who don’t know enough to see through their lies. “In the early days of his reign, won’t he greet everyone he meets with a smile, deny he is a tyrant, promise all sorts of things in private and in public, free the people from debt and pretend to be gracious and gentle to all?” Unchecked, demagogues eventually become tyrants. Only once it’s too late to stop them is their true nature revealed. They hold on to power by any means necessary: stirring up war, raising taxes, and eliminating their enemies. Eventually, “if there are some free thinking people he suspects of rejecting his rule, he can find pretexts for putting them at the mercy of the enemy and destroying them…” So Plato’s argument is that democracies produce tyrants, and tyrants destroy societies. Democracy leads inevitably to its own collapse into something far, far worse. It's hard to deny that Plato was onto something Hitler came to power through democratic means, by skilfully manipulating the resentments of the German middle class. Nazism is far from the only example. Tyrannical movements always have a fighting chance in a democracy: they just need to convince enough people to join. So we need experts in charge. Plato thought, don’t laugh, that philosophers were best suited for this role: “There will be no end to the troubles of the state or indeed of humanity until philosophers become kings or until those we now call kings really and truly become philosophers.” He proposed radical reforms as part of his plan to put philosophers in charge Society’s “guardians” would live in military-style housing own no private property, never marry or have families, and mate when appropriate. Their early education would focus on music, math, and military science, before several years of philosophical study. Only then would they have sufficient knowledge and wisdom to rule well. Plato’s proposal is extremely unrealistic, even fantastical. It also seems even less stable than democracy: For one thing, doctors can be motivated by self-interest just as much as anyone else. And a manipulative doctor can even fool people who aren’t ignorant. A well-educated guardian could abuse the system just as well as a rabble-rousing demagogue. Plato thought that choosing candidates carefully and training them rigorously in virtue would protect society from self-serving guardians. Still, an even deeper question remains: What is an expert in ruling? It’s not just someone with expertise in how ruling works A good ruler does what’s best for society as a whole. And this is a moral question. So experts in ruling must also be experts in morality. In a pluralistic society like ours, there is deep disagreement about morality. Which vision of a good society is the correct one? Pluralistic societies produce many “experts in ruling” all of whom disagree. Maybe that means there is no such thing as an expert in ruling. At the very least, it means that it’s awfully hard to tell who the real experts are. Until recently, Western philosophers mostly agreed with Plato that democracy was a bad idea. But what is the alternative? Winston Churchill famously said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others that have been tried. Even though it’s never been tried, in our pluralist world it seems safe to assume that Plato’s would be no exception.