"This person would establish his appetitive and money-making part on the throne, setting it up as a great king within himself. ... He makes the rational and spirited parts sit on the ground beneath appetite, one on either side, reducing them to slaves. He won't allow the first to reason about or examine anything except how a little money can be made into great wealth. And he won't allow the second to value or admire anything but wealth and wealthy people or to have any ambition other than the acquisition of wealth." ~ Plato
The facile reading of this quote (and Plato more generally) is that things never change and humans have always been greedy.
The deeper reading of this quote is that history moves in discernible patterns. There are commonalities in what happened to Athens and in our own trajectory. Plato watched as the Athenian democracy ate itself alive. The end result was the Macedonian subjection of Athens, leading to explicit imperialism in the form of Philip II and Alexander the Great.
The facile reading of this quote (and Plato more generally) is that things never change and humans have always been greedy.
The deeper reading of this quote is that history moves in discernible patterns. There are commonalities in what happened to Athens and in our own trajectory. Plato watched as the Athenian democracy ate itself alive. The end result was the Macedonian subjection of Athens, leading to explicit imperialism in the form of Philip II and Alexander the Great.