Legitimacy and popular
approval: Plato’s objection
Michael Lacewing
enquiries@alevelphilosophy.co.uk
© Michael Lacewing
Legitimacy and consent: the
democratic view
• Individuals are free and equal.
• It is wrong to force people to act in
ways they have not agreed to.
• The state (through the law) forces
people to act in particular ways.
• Therefore, the state is only legitimate
if people have consented to it.
Locke on social contract
• Men being…by nature all
free, equal and
independent, no one can be
put out of this estate and
subjected to the political
power of another without
his own consent, which is
done by agreeing with other
men, to join and unite into a
community for their
comfortable, safe and
peaceable living (Second
Treatise § 95)
Plato’s objection
• Legitimacy does not depend on consent
or popular approval, but ‘expertise’.
• The type of freedom democracy creates
is ‘licence’ – the freedom of getting
what you want.
• The real value of freedom – the value of
choice – lies in choosing what is truly
good.
• But what people want is often not good.
And to choose what is good, we need to
know what the true good is.
• Democracy is rule by ignorance, which
will be bad for everyone involved.
The simile of the beast
• [the ruler] has no real notion of what he
means by the principles or passions of which
he is speaking, but calls this honourable and
that dishonourable, or good or evil, or just or
unjust, all in accordance with the tastes and
tempers of the great brute. Good he
pronounces to be that in which the beast
delights and evil to be that which he dislikes.
(The Republic, Book VI)
The common good
• Plato assumes that politics is an attempt
to bring about the common good, and
• that there can be knowledge about what
this common good is and how to bring it
about.
• Therefore, special knowledge is needed
to do politics.
Democracy and irrationality
• We don’t get the best politicians through
elections: people in general are often
irrational and incompetent.
• The politicians we vote for are those willing to
give us what we want, not what is in the
common good.
• The more democratic society has become,
the more individualistic it is, to; until now,
people care most – perhaps only – about
getting the things they want for themselves.
The common good again
• Democracy, understood as the citizenry
voting on issues of policy (directly or
indirectly), is necessary to reveal what the
common good is.
– As long as each person is more likely to be right
than wrong, a majority decision has
mathematically the best chance of getting the
answer right.
– If there is a close connection between what people
want and what the common good is, then voting
helps to reveal that common good by revealing
what people want.
The common good again
• But if all that is needed is information, then
opinion polls would be better than voting
• We can’t be sure a vote tells us anything
about a person’s interests or desires
• People are bad judges of the common good
• We end up with a compromise no one wants
On legitimacy again
• Democracy offers protection against
tyranny
• ‘Free and equal’
– Equality
– Autonomy
– To what extent are these really promoted?
• Collective identity and responsibility