Okay first of all. Aristotle spoke Greek (fluently in fact) and was well educated he would not have used the word oligarchy, which means in Greek "the few rule", if he was talking about the rich being in control. In fact there's a perfectly good Greek word for rule by the wealthy, plutocracy.
No he says "the free". In a democracy the free people have power, they "are sovereign". Then he says in an oligarchy that only the rich have power. The rich are a subset of the free from the first part of the sentence. Aristotle uses the end of the sentence to remove ambiguity about the rest of it as he notes that the free are many and the rich are few and that difference (in number not wealth) is what separates democracy and oligarchy.
What?
"Supposing that offices of government were distributed on basis of height or handsome appearance..."
Becomes:
"If we give power to the tall or handsome..."
"...there would be an oligarchy because the numbers of the tall or handsome is small."
Becomes:
"...it would be an oligarchy because there aren't very many of them."
So by my reading:
If we give power to the tall or handsome it would be an oligarchy because there aren't very many of them.
As for the end, he again makes the note that the rich are also inherently the few.
Out of curiosity, what does the passage leading into that one say. He beings the quote you provided with "therefore".
__________________
Graffiti outside Latin class.
Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
A juvenal prank.
I really don't understand what "the pure athenian democracy" has to do, at all, with the transmission of philosophy that underlies modern social and democratic values.
its such an obvious red herring, and such academic splitting of hairs
I know your wrong, because I have actually been taught this passage and others and am very well aware that Aristotle defined an oligarchy as rule of the rich and a democracy as rule of the few- he sums it up in the last sentence! However, your ignoring it...and thats fine.
Because they invented it...if you get a board game of cludeo and change all the rules...it ceases to be cludeo.
...I apologize if you want only want to discuss the topic of "Church vs. State" in this thread, it didn't really matter to me what people were discussing as long as it was not purely flaming etc. However, OK we can stop "nitpicking" and go back to discussing whatever you choose.
Do you have to hide in other posters shadows?
Why is it petty?
There are tons of books and essays and articles which debate this very topic- the nature of democracy. I don't see it as petty...I think your just shooting from the peanut gallery.
If you want to do it that way, there are plenty of definitions of democracy. You are just picking what suits your needs right now.
To sum it up, you can't consider a government a democracy, in practice, unless the masses are allowed to vote for elected officials. After that, you can toss the rest of the shit up in the air because then they turn into sub-groups (not saying all government where people vote for officials are democracies, but without that element, one can not even consider the discussion).
__________________ "Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise." - Thomas Gray
Oh, I've just looked, the debate Queeq raised was well and truly over by the time this round of the Democracy Debate came up...Chithappens is the one who quoted me and brought it up!
Actually, how can it possibly suit my purposes right now?
lol, no apologies necessary. I don't suppose talking about the topic of the comments is any more on topic than what you were saying, so I'm not a pot trying to call the kettle black.
I keep out of the flaming and that stuff, I hope, and if I really had anything else to say, I'd pipe up.
lol, my apologies then. I saw you and sym going over aristotle and my eyes glazed over, I'm probably making lots of assumptions.
Gender: Unspecified Location: With Cinderella and the 9 Dwarves
They invented it yes, but the term has been used since to describe more things that are similar to the original definition. It's very odd to argue about only using terms as they were in a sepcific period of time. Languages change and so do definitions of certain words. Besides, Aristotle just gave his opinion on the difference between the two in practice, what you quoted was not meant as a definition of either.
To make it more clear, he said "Democracy is like this therefore it can be compared to rule of the poor" not "The poor rule therefore it is a Democracy".
KMC Community Forums
Aug 26th, 2008 03:34 AM
*tries to think of obnoxious smartass comment to say to GMG*
