The Play of Conspiracy and Democratic Erosion in Plato'sRepublic

Abstract

Does the Republic depict a conspiracy? The ostensible impetus for discussing profound political change behind closed doors is a desire to discuss the meaning of justice, not to replace a political order with a new one. But the dialogue takes place during the Peloponnesian War, when fears of plots sporadically consumed an eroding Athenian democracy. Arguments about political instability and instances of plotting reverberate throughout dialogue that takes shape in this suspicious climate. Whether Socrates makes us privy to a conversation about a political world that does not exist or presents us with a strategy for talking about revolution undetected remains unresolved. I argue that Athenian fears of secret power and revolution express themselves in the style and arguments of the Republic and suggest that already at the origins of democratic practice, critics like Plato were concerned with theorizing the subtleties of democratic erosion.

Conspiracy thinking and place-based consciousness

“…From a historical perspective, such narratives are neither new nor necessarily more prevalently believed than in earlier times (Butter 2014). In fact, they have accompanied democracies from the very beginning (Kasimis 2021). Yet, waning trust in institutions, the accumulation of crises, and the emergence of digital media in recent decades have given conspiracy theories newfound momentum to pose a significant contemporary challenge to democracy (Moore 2018).…”