Aristoteles om demokrati

For tiden holder jeg på å lese meg gjennom Aristoteles’ Politikken. Det er ikke akkurat lett lesing, men likevel interessant. Det hersker ingen tvil om at han med rette kan kalles vitenskapens far; man merker det godt i hvordan poengene hans legges fram, argumenteres for og imot og til slutt får konklusjonene sine. Her og der i margen har jeg skrevet inn en del kommentarer som jeg skal huske på å ta opp under neste forelesning (som for meg blir om halvannen uke, siden vi skal til Loen førstkommende helg), men inntil da: her er noen av Aristoteles’ tanker om demokrati:

(…) we have next to consider how many forms of government there are, and what they are; and in the first place what are the true forms, for when they are determined the perversions of them will at once be apparent. (…) The true forms of government (…) are those in which the one, the few, or the many, govern with a view to the common interest; but governments which rule with a view to the private interest, whether of the one, or of the few, or of the many, are perversions. (…)

Of the above-mentioned forms, the perversions are as follows: of royalty, tyrrany; of aristocracy, oligarchy; of constitutional government, democracy. For tyrrany is a kind of monarchy which has in view the interest of the monarch only; oligarchy has in view the interest of the wealthy; democracy, of the needy: none of them the common good of all.

In our original discussion about governments we divided them into three true forms: kingly rule, aristocracy, and constitutional government, and three corresponding perversions – tyranny, oligarchy, and democracy.(…)

It is obvious which of the three perversions is the worst, and which is the next in badness. That which is the perversion of the first and most divine is necessarily the worst. And just as royal rule, if not a mere name, must exist by virtue of some great personal superiority in the king, so tyranny, which is the worst of governments, is necessarily the farthest removed from a well-constituted form; oligarchy is little better, for it is a long way from aristocracy, and democracy is the most tolerable of the three.

A writer who preceded me has already made these distinctions, but his point of view is not the same as mine. For he lays down the principle that when all the constitutions are good (the oligarchy and the rest being virtuous), democracy is the worst, but the best when all are bad. Whereas we maintain that they are in any case defective, and that one oligarchy is not to be accounted better than another, but only less bad.

Selv om grekerne av historien har fått æren for å stå bak demokratiet, var det over hodet ikke alle som var like begeistret for det. Det virker som dess mer intellektuelt begavet de var, dess mindre begeistret var de for det; Sokrates var et eksempel på det. Slike meninger gjelder kanskje i dag også, eller?