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Political roots of democracy in the united states
The rise of liberal democracy
Political roots of democracy in the united states
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Liberal democracy is prevalent in the West. This political arrangement guarantees the rights of a people in relation to their government. Many Westerners, unfortunately, cannot give a philosophical explanation and/or justification for it. Ultimately, an examination of liberal democracy will demonstrate that it rests on notions of human dignity, equality and happiness, which are not recent developments in philosophy, but have their origins in classical and scholastic thought. It is in said examination that one can reasonably conclude that liberal democracy while not the best system of government is certainly better than the alternatives.
Democracy is not a contemporary phenomenon. It did not originate here in North America. Rather, its practice began---more than 2,000 years ago---in Athens, a city-state, in the Greek Mediterranean. The philosophers Aristotle and Plato attested to that fact in their writings. It is in Plato’s Republic that one finds the earliest definition of democracy, which is briefly, “the rule of the governed.” Plato compares democracy to monarchy, or rule of the one, oligarchy, or rule of the elite, and lastly, timocracy, or rule by property owners. Interestingly enough, the Republic’s author believed the rule of a philosopher-king was preferable to that of the masses. The Politics, written by Aristotle, provided a very robust explanation and justification of democracy, which will be detailed later in this paper. Nevertheless, democracy is synonymous with popular sovereignty or the notion that all within a human community have a say in the matters that affect them all.
If one accepts democracy as a practice, the question is then begged what kind of an institution sustains it? This discussion---though ...
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...onal being. He possesses a faculty which allows him to create, imagine, strategize and the like. Such qualities are not found in other creatures. In addition, man is a social being. He does not live alone, but lives in relation or community with others, beginning his family and extending outward to the larger society. Man, some philosophers have argued, acts towards a certain teolos, ends, or purpose. Aristotle believed that man sought happiness and achieved it through virtuous living. “For if what was said in the Ethics is true,” Aristotle wrote in his Politics, “that the happy life is the life according to virtue lived without impediment, and that virtue is a mean, then the life which is in a mean, and in a mean attainable by every one must be the best.” This happiness is not found on one’s own, but rather in the life of the community, in relation with others.
The political culture that defines American politics shows that despite this compromise, America is still very much a democratic society. The very history of the country, a major contributor to the evolution of its political culture, shows a legacy of democracy that reaches from the Declaration of Independence through over two hundred years to today’s society. The formation of the country as a reaction to the tyrannical rule of a monarchy marks the first unique feature of America’s democratic political culture. It was this reactionary mindset that greatly affected many of the decisions over how to set up the new governmental system. A fear of simply creating a new, but just as tyrannic... ...
Contemporary notions of democracy have undoubtedly evolved from their foundations in ancient Greece and Rome. However, despite noble intentions, democracy in Greece and Rome was neither fair, equal, nor representative. These civilizations practiced direct democracy, whereby all eligible citizens would actively engage in democratic processes and gather to debate state matters (Hirst 2012). Influential Greek historian Herodotus remarked that, under such a system, “there is, first, the most splendid of virtues, equality before the law” (Herodotus & Thucydides et.al 1955 p.223).
The term “democracy”, as a word and an institution, is derived from Ancient Greece. A democracy, by definition, is a form of government in which people choose leaders by voting. The earliest example of this governmental structure can be traced back to pre-common era Athens under the Athenian leader Cleisthenes. One of Ancient Greece’s most notable foundations was the polis, or city-state. The city-states were independent communities, with Athens being one of the most prominent.
In making this argument this essay seeks to five things. Firstly, to define democracy within the contemporary context offering the key characteristics of a modern re...
The term democracy is ambiguous, but Abraham Lincoln (1863) defines it as the “government of the people, by the people and for the people.” This modern take of democracy should guarantee basic personal and political rights to every individual person, everywhere, every day. Josiah Ober (2007, p.4) points out that “the Greek word dêmokratia conjoins kratos, a term for ‘power’, and dêmos, a term for ‘the people’.” It therefore means ‘power of the people’. But the Athenians did not call it democracy at the time, “they called it ‘isonomia’ or “equality in law”, writes Bernard Randall (2004, p.86). The earliest forms of democracy were formed by the ancient Greeks around 510 B.C in Athens.
Throughout this paper I plan to compare and contrast the ideas and philosophies of two of the greatest political thinkers of all time. Thucydides and Aristotle have separate opinions of the idea of democracy, originally created by Plato. However, these two have a positive assessment of this idea of majority rule of the people. My paper will provide each of their points of view. At the end I will determine, in my opinion, which of these two philosophers give a better case in favor of a democratic form of government, and give the reasons as to how I came to that conclusion.
Barry, Brian. "Is Democracy Special?" in Philosophy, Politics, & Society, 5th Series, ed. Peter Laslett & James Fishkin. Hew Haven: Yale University Press, 1979.
The democracy has a literal essence as well as a deeply rooted understanding for the structure of governing the people in a satisfactory way. The term ‘Democracy’ originates from a Greek word, implying ‘rule of the people’. As its origins designate, it’s a form of government in which all eligible citizens have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives, either directly or through elected representatives which seems more rational since they are the ones who had to live through it. Daniel Hannan said in his article that Abraham Lincoln said “…government of the people, by the people, for the people…”. Providing the people with the rights to vot...
The word democracy derives from two Greek words; ‘demos’ which means ‘the people’ and ‘kratein’ which means to rule. Democracy is defined as a government, by and for the people because ‘power is not of a minority but of the whole people’ (Thucydides). Originally democracy meant rule by the common people. In the sense, and even before the beginning of modern class society, it was very much a social class affair. This meant that power should be in the hands of the largest class: the poorest, least educated and those without land or property. As a result, democracy was feared and rejected by the educated, cultured and wealthy. In classical Greece, democracy was seen by the liberal and the educated as one of the worst types of government and society imaginable and often thought of as a ‘bad word’. The rule of the people was regarded as a threat to all the cherished values of a civilized orderly society.
Human history is pock-marked with innumerable wars and revolutions. The cause for most of the revolutions has been the choice of freedom. The opportunity to live a life without physical, mental or emotional restrictions has been and still is of supreme importance to man. This has resulted in the most widely followed discipline of political governance: Democracy.
The city-state of Athens, 5th century Athens to be precise, is the inventor and first practitioner of democracy. So for 4,000 years men and women lived under forms of government other than democratic. For some 2,500 years now democracy has existed, with varying degrees of consistency of theory and practice. But it all began in the 5th century before Christ in Athens. The development of democracy can be attributed to the development of Athens as naval power. With the growing navel so grew the political voice of the lowest property classes who provided the crews for the ships (Demand 222). To some extent the Athenian reliance on sea power helped the course of democracy.
Despite it’s many flaws, the United States of America is typically heralded as an example of a “liberal democratic” society. This is a relatively modern classification since nowhere in the Declaration of Independence or the United States Constitution does the word “democracy” appear. In fact, the Founding Fathers of the United States of America argued that democracy was akin to a “mobocracy” (Kennedy 73). This rhetoric is shared with the warnings of Plato and Aristotle who described democracy as rule by the (usually poor) “masses.” Not only do these men believe that democracy is a poor form of government, they also advocate for only a certain kind of “natural elite” to keep the state running properly. Plato and Aristotle note that in order
Aristotle feels we have a rational capacity and the exercising of this capacity is the perfecting of our natures as human beings. For this reason, pleasure alone cannot establish human happiness, for pleasure is what animals seek and human beings have higher capacities than animals. The goal is to express our desires in ways that are appropriate to our natures as rational animals. Aristotle states that the most important factor in the effort to achieve happiness is to have a good moral character, what he calls complete virtue. In order to achieve the life of complete virtue, we need to make the right choices, and this involves keeping our eye on the future, on the ultimate result we want for our lives as a whole. We will not achieve happiness simply by enjoying the pleasures of the moment. We must live righteous and include behaviors in our life that help us do what is right and avoid what is wrong. It is not enough to think about doing the right thing, or even intend to do the right thing, we have to actually do it. Happiness can occupy the place of the chief good for which humanity should aim. To be an ultimate end, an act must be independent of any outside help in satisfying one’s needs and final, that which is always desirable in itself and never for the sake of something else and it must be
Happiness can be viewed as wealth, honour, pleasure, or virtue. Aristotle believes that wealth is not happiness, because wealth is just an economic value, but can be used to gain some happiness; wealth is a means to further ends. The good life, according to Aristotle, is an end in itself. Similar to wealth, honour is not happiness because honour emphases on the individuals who honour in comparison to the honouree. Honour is external, but happiness is not. It has to do with how people perceive one another; the good life is intrinsic to the...
Throughout history different types of instrumental regimes have been in tact so civilizations remained structured and cohesive. As humanity advanced, governments obligingly followed. Although there have been hiccups from the ancient times to modern day, one type of government, democracy, has proven to be the most effective and adaptive. As quoted by Winston Churchill, democracy is the best form of government that has existed. This is true because the heart of democracy is reliant, dependent, and thrives on the populaces desires; which gives them the ability for maintaining the right to choose, over time it adjusts and fixes itself to engulf the prominent troubling issues, and people have the right of electing the person they deem appropriate and can denounce them once they no longer appease them. In this paper, the benefits of democracy are outlined, compared to autocratic communism, and finally the flaws of democracy are illustrated.