It is best to read Plato(idealist) along with Dante(apologist) and Macchiavelli(empiricist),with the understanding that as he is writing Greece has passed out of its high point, and he is trying to find a method for ‘manufacturing’ great leaders like Pericles. He wants to restore the past. Why? Because he doesn’t have a solution. So he’s kind of an analogy for 20th century conservatives.
Aristotle, like Machiavelli,doesn’t try to make excuses for anything, he just reads a lot of constitutions and tells us what he finds. Hayek the same.
Aristotle, Macchiavelli, Locke, Smith, Hume, Jefferson, Pareto, Weber, Durkheim, Burhnam, Hayek. All these authors practice Empiricism vs Idealism.
The reason I’m exasperated with Plato is its he who the church turned to in order to create the priesthood.
What they should have turned to was Roman Law for rule, Spartan Warriors for enforcement, Greek houses of government for commons, and Stoic Personal Philosophy, and Polytheistic Political Religion.
But the dependence upon german mercenaries, the plagues that decimated the population, the eventual loss of the grain fields of north africa made them poor, and the people ignorant, and the lies of the church were simply a cheaper method of governing, with a smaller number of people, than was the army, lawyers, judges, and senators, all of whom must be expensively educated and thoroughly indoctrinated.
MANAGEMENT CANNOT SUFFER INFINITE DILUTION
