A general law of political change: excess produces reaction into the opposite; thus excess liberty in democracy culminates in the worst slavery—tyranny—just as oligarchy’s excess wealth led to its ruin.

By Plato, from The Republic

Key Arguments

  • The same ‘disease’ that ruined oligarchy (insatiable desire of its defining good) ruins democracy (insatiable desire for freedom).
  • Excessive increase causes opposite reactions in nature and, above all, in regimes.
  • Therefore ‘the excess of liberty’ in states and souls passes into ‘excess of slavery’.
  • When democracy drunkenly demands ever more freedom and punishes moderate rulers as oligarchs, it triggers the conditions for tyranny.

Source Quotes

But what is the next step? The ruin of oligarchy is the ruin of democracy; the same disease magnified and intensified by liberty overmasters democracy—the truth being that the excessive increase of anything often causes a reaction in the opposite direction; and this is the case not only in the seasons and in vegetable and animal life, but above all in forms of government. True.
True. The excess of liberty, whether in States or individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery. Yes, the natural order.
Yes, the natural order. And so tyranny naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme form of liberty? As we might expect.
Yes; the saying is in every body's mouth. I was going to observe, that the insatiable desire of this and the neglect of other things introduces the change in democracy, which occasions a demand for tyranny. How so?

Key Concepts

  • the excessive increase of anything often causes a reaction in the opposite direction;
  • The excess of liberty, whether in States or individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery.
  • tyranny naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme form of liberty?
  • the insatiable desire of this and the neglect of other things introduces the change in democracy, which occasions a demand for tyranny.

Context

Book VIII’s causal principle linking regime goods to their degenerations; sets up the transition from democracy to tyranny.

Perspectives

Plato
Endorses the principle of measure: akrasia at the regime level turns the regime’s defining good into a destructive excess, generating its contrary.
Socrates
Uses the analogy across regimes and nature to ground a predictive account: unmeasured freedom intoxicates the city into demanding a tyrant.