Plato’s Republic, Book 9: How the Tyrant Is Made (and Why Justice Wins)
We are back with Book 9 of Plato’s Republic, which deals with the genesis of the tyrant!
This book returns to the core question from Book 2: why the just person is happier than the unjust and whether the tyrant is wretched or blessed.
We will explain Plato’s account of how a tyrant develops from democratic permissiveness, losing the ability to distinguish necessary from unnecessary desires and becoming ruled by insatiable appetites, like someone living out the lawless impulses revealed in dreams.
The tyrant’s rise is enabled by a chaotic city, but his inner disorder makes him miserable…
The skinny
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