Who died and made Plato the king of Athenian democratic ideation?

Plato’s warnings against mass enfranchisement too often overshadow his pupil’s iterations

The title of this post is a riff on a particularly funny joke from The Good Place, one of the better shows to air over the last decade. one character, Eleanor, asks “Who died and made Aristotle king of ethics?” to which Chidi, a dead ethics professor, says “Plato!” Ba dum tiss.

That’s not really important, I just wanted you to know so you didn’t think I actually had a good sense of humor.

The purpose of the post is to draw a contrast between Plato’s and Aristotle’s philosophies on democracy and equal suffrage. Now, I am not an expert in either ethics or philosophy, but (a) I touch on this subject in my forthcoming book and found a passage from Aristotle that got me thinking, and (b) I got a lot of feedback on yesterday’s post essentially saying “Joe Biden shouldn’t do stuff just because it’s popular, he should do stuff cause it’s right” or “Oh, sure, because we can really trust the people to make good decisions about the government.”

These are common retorts to my reporting on the polls…