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Plato was the first theoretician to make a system out of the distinctions between what he regarded as the main forms of the city-state. According to the number of the rulers, he distinguished between: (1) monarchy, the rule of one good man, and tyranny, the distorted form of monarchy; (2) aristocracy, the rule of a few good men, and oligarchy, its distorted form; (3) democracy, the rule of the many, of all the people. Democracy did not have two forms. For the many always formed a rabble, and so democracy was distorted in itself.
If one looks more closely at this classification, and if one asks oneself what problem was at the back of Plato’s mind, then one finds that the following underlay not only Plato’s classification and theory, but also those of everybody else. From Plato to Karl Marx and beyond, the fundamental problem has always been: who should rule the state?
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democ...pper-democracy
Very interesting article written some years ago by a philosopher in defense of the two party system.
t he (in my opinion, vicious) principle of legitimacy plays a great part in European history. While the Roman legions were strong, the Caesars based their power upon the principle: the army legitimises the ruler (by acclamation). But with the decline of the Empire, the problem of legitimacy became urgent; and this was strongly felt by Diocletian, who tried to support the new structure of the Imperium of the God-Caesars ideologically with traditional and religious distinctions and the corresponding attribution of different titles: Caesar, Augustus, Herculius, and Jovius (i.e., related to Jupiter).
Yet it seems that there was a need for a more authoritative, deeper religious legitimation. In the next generation, monotheism in the form of Christianity (which, of the available monotheisms, has spread most widely) offered itself to Constantine as the solution to the problem. From then on, the ruler ruled by the Grace of God—of the one and the only universal God. The complete success of this new ideology of legitimacy explains both the ties and the tensions between the spiritual and the worldly powers which thus became mutual dependants, and therefore rivals, throughout the Middle Ages.
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Originally Posted by JKDS
