Question

Plato’s ideal state proposed in the Republic was far from democratic, yet it was an inclusive government where women were given equal rights and responsibilities as men.

* Aristotle’s state was closer to our modern idea of democracy, yet it was an exclusive arrangement, with most people being denied citizenship – in particular, women and slaves. Does government need to have absolute power in order to achieve equality?

* Does democracy and the primacy of liberty necessarily result in inequality?

Answer 1

Answer of the 1st part:-

Human rights are norms that aspire to protect all people everywhere from severe political, legal, and social abuses. Examples of human rights are the right to freedom of religion, the right to a fair trial when charged with a crime, the right not to be tortured, and the right to education.

The philosophy of human rights addresses questions about the existence, content, nature, universality, justification, and legal status of human rights. The strong claims often made on behalf of human rights (for example, that they are universal, inalienable, or exist independently of legal enactment as justified moral norms) have frequently provoked skeptical doubts and countering philosophical defenses (on these critiques see Lacrois and Pranchere 2016, Mutua 2008, and Waldron 1988). Reflection on these doubts and the responses that can be made to them has become a sub-field of political and legal philosophy with a very substantial literature.

Republic V contains two revolutionary proposals for the social organisation of the ideal state, the first that the function of guardianship is to be performed by men and women alike (451c-457b), the second that for the guardians the private household and therefore the institution of marriage is to be abolished (457b-466d), since the guardians do not own property and the care of children is to be a communal responsibility. These proposals are the consequences of two fundamental moral and political principles: a) persons of each of the primary psychological types are to confine themselves to the primary social roles for which they are best fitted by temperament and education; b) institutions which constitute a threat to social cohesion, and hence to the existence of the state, are to be eliminated. In consequence of these principles the guardians, male and female alike, are deprived of any private life, since the concerns of such a life would tend to distract them from that total dedication to the affairs of the community which their social role requires. Since the function of a wife in Athenian society was confined to the private sphere, female guardians are not in the conventional sense wives of their male counterparts Rather they are comrades whose shared social role includes temporary sexual liaisons, the function of which is the perpetuation of the guardian class, itself required for the continued existence of the ideal state. Plato’s attitude to the emancipation of women has to be understood in the context of the complex moral and political theory in which it is embedded. His proposals on equality of political status and of educational opportunity are congenial to classical liberal opinion, while the abolition of the family aligns him with more radical feminist thought. But his reasons are hostile to much that is central to feminism. He does not argue for equality of status on grounds of fairness or of self-fulfilment for women, but rather on the grounds of the abstract political principles stated above. Nevertheless those abstract principles lead indirectly to the self-fulfilment of the female guardians, since the aim of the ideal state which is founded on those principles is to create and preserve the conditions for the maximal eudaimonia, i.e. self-development, of all. The modern feminists’ quarrel with Plato is not that their ideals are totally alien to him, but that he is wrong to think that those ideals are attainable within his preferred form of political organisation, and even more radically wrong to think that they require that organisation. In that objection they find many allies outside their own ranks.

Answer of part 2nd:-

Aristotle conceives all things, including governments, in terms of telos; an end, a purpose, the way a thing is supposed to be. For Aristotle, if something achieves its telos then it is virtuous. Aristotle believes that the telos of a government, a constitution, should be the good life – it should lead to the happy and good life of its citizens. The city-state - which is the government structure that Aristotle knows, is observing, and makes his theory from – comes into being for the sake of life, but exists for the sake of the good life. The city-state’s telos is the good life of its citizens.

When Aristotle is defining different types of governments that could govern citizens, he divides them two ways: by virtuous or non-virtuous leaders and by economic class. For Aristotle, a democracy is the rule of the poor and the rule of the majority. When making his decision on virtuous or non-virtuous, Aristotle says that a rule of the majority must be non-virtuous in practice because it is too difficult to find a majority who can be virtuous. This means that the rule of the majority, the rule of the poor under a democracy does not help the city-state achieve its telos the good life for its citizens. Therefore, Aristotle believes that a democracy is not a good form of rule because a rule of the majority, the rule of the poor does not achieve the telos of the city-state.​​​​​​

Answer of part 3rd:-

Determining whether democracy influences income inequality is difficult because inequality may affect the level of democracy; disentangling these opposite effects may prove to be complex. The way in which inequality can influence democratic institutions is through the control of elites on the franchise. Liberty and equality have usually in England been considered antithetic; and, since fraternity has rarely been considered at all, the famous trilogy has been easily dismissed as a hybrid abortion. Equality implies the deliberate acceptance of social restraints upon individual expansion. It involves the prevention of sensational extremes of wealth and power by public action for the public good. If liberty means, therefore, that every individual shall be free, according to his opportunities, to indulge without limit his appetite for either, it is clearly incompatible, not only with economic and social, but with civil and political, equality, which also prevent the strong exploiting to the full the advantages of their strength, and, indeed, with any habit of life save that of the Cyclops. But freedom for the pike is death for the minnows. It is possible that equality is to be contrasted, not with liberty, but only with a particular interpretation of it.