PHIL 2 Chapter Notes - Chapter 8: Direct Democracy
9 Aug 2019
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Democracy, the word democracy, comes from the union of two greek words: "demos" and. So democracy is the power of the people. However, when we do philosophy it is not enough that we stay in the etymological analysis of expressions. We have, in this sense, to go deeper. Democracy, as a political system, was born in the athens of the 5th century bc. C. , because the athenian citizens had fought against the persians in the medical wars, so pericles, who seems not to be a bad guy at least not too much, decided that the athenian citizens would govern themselves. Of course, at that time each citizen (the citizens were the men of legal age who were not foreigners) had power and represented himself. Instead, he faced sparta in the peloponnesian war, lost athens and sparta razed the athenian democratic system, putting in place an aristocratic system consisting of thirty tyrants, one of them plato.
