Stirring the Great and Noble Horse of Athenian Democracy: The Elenchus as a Preserver of Athenian Law Jason Carney
I. Establishing the Autocrat of Democracy
aegis 2004 10 carney
In order to diagnose Socrates as either anti-democratic or pro-democratic, we must first localize the most basic attributes of a democratic government and a non-democratic government. To begin defining these basic attributes, let us consider two possible parties in every governmental relationship and a consequently created entity, which we’ll denote as the law. In any governmental relationship there seems to be a governed body and a governing body. It could be the case, as in direct democracy, that the governing body and the governed body occupy the same role at the same time. It could also be the case, as in autocracy, that the governed body and the governing body occupy completely different roles. One might be attracted to characterize the difference between democracy and autocracy on the basis of the presence or absence of a governing body separated from the governed body. To illustrate: in a given autocratic government there is a king, empress, oligarchic council, etc., who binds the people by his, her, or its commands. In autocracy, the governing body becomes the law as such. Compare this to theoretical democracy, wherein the governed people, through egalitarian collaborations, draft the very government to which they will ultimately subjugate themselves. In democracy, the law is an extension of the will of those who will be bound by it. Yet, in considering this distinction it does not seem correct to refrain from considering democracy an autocratic government. Even in democracy the individual is ultimately subjugated to the law of the will of the people as a whole, a law which seems autonomous. It seems that individual freedom is the primary good sought in democratic governments. Individual freedom is theoretically preserved in democracy by dispersing the reins of a subjugating law to the subjugates. If we consider the primary goal of a government to be the establishment of the best possible environment in which individuals have the highest potential for attaining happiness, then the presupposition inherent in the democratic ideological scene is that individuals know what is best for themselves. The reverence for personal freedom in democracy assures that individuals have this fundamental necessity for happiness. The paradox seems to be that, although democracies are established presupposing a requirement for individual autonomy (variously justified: for example, Paine’s natural rights of man, or Rousseau’s social contract theory), they must ultimately subjugate the individual to the law established by their collective decisions, that is, the general will.¹ Therefore, it seems incorrect to say that in a democracy the people are autonomous; it is rather the people’s law that is autonomous. What I would like to emphasize is that, even in a democracy, the relative power of an individual to influence the people’s law grows weaker as the governed population increases. Even in democracy, there is an autocrat running the show.
