Ancient Democratic ideals survive?

Okay, we all know about Plato's republic. But what about the ancient greeks who defended democracy? Notable among htem were democritus and Protagoras.

Say their works survive in an ancient greek monastery, translated into italian and latin during the 1470's.

How does the world develop in this situation?
 
How long would it take for them to be taken sertiously? If they are discovered in the mid-1400s and printed a few decades later, they will be in time to enter the political discourse around the time of Machiavelli. At that time, most references to political theory were still Roman. Political reality, on the other hand, referred mostly to the practices of aristocratic or oligarchic rule. I doubt that writings endorsing radical democracy would become too popular before the unthinkable becomes thinkable in the 1600s. Then, of course, they would lend much greater credibility to contemporary democratic movements...

Parliament closes. All rise for the national anthem:

"We work, we eat together
We need no swords
we will not bow to the masters
or pay rent to the lords
we will not worship
the God they serve
the God of greed
that feeds the rich
while poor man starve!" :D
 
Faeelin said:
Okay, we all know about Plato's republic. But what about the ancient greeks who defended democracy? Notable among htem were democritus and Protagoras.

Say their works survive in an ancient greek monastery, translated into italian and latin during the 1470's.

How does the world develop in this situation?

I think the problem is that Greek notions of democracy fly in the face classical liberal theory, the basis of all modern democracies and democratic republics are based. Now other thinkers of the Renaissance and Enlightenment era might pick at them, but ideas often prove distabilzing to society.

In the Enlightenment Era, you can contrast two different groups: the Classical Liberals and the Enlightenment Rationalists. Classical Liberals (U.S. Founders, John Locke, Adam Smith, etc.) more or less viewed the populist and unrestrained notions of democracy advocated by the Greeks as dangerous. Enlightenment Rationalists embraced it. Ultimately the Ratioanlist vision didn't survive, and perhaps that was the best.

The French Revolution, inspired the America's new independence, but firmly Enlightenment Rationalist, tried to wipe away the entirety of the previous society, but only succeeded in putting in place a government more corrupt that what it replaced. In Russia, Czar (or Queen? what's the title for females?) Elizabeth (?) tried to implement some Enlightenment reforms, but eneded up with peasent revolts.

The Cliassical Liberal view believed in democracy based upon checks and balances in rule of law and saw unrestrained democracy as the prerequisite to mob rule. Ere go, if the Greek writings do survive, you might see increased experimentation with Enlightenment concpets, only to have it blow up in people's faces and set the Modern Era back by a few decades as people back away from such radical concepts.
 

NapoleonXIV

Banned
Unless they both were really, really powerful writers the world would not develop much differently. The Philosophers of the 17th and 18thc, like all philosophers, were adept at tracing their ideas back through many others to Antiquity so as to give themselves versimilitude, rather than just saying, "I thought this up myself." Their ideas were influenced by the past in their educations, yes, but were far more responses to the times they found themselves in then any real progression of ideas over centuries. If Locke didn't like Democritus he would simply hit the "ignore" button. :rolleyes:
 
Mmm. I don't think people will get carried away; you might see a desire for autonomy, or even lots of independent states. (If we get this earlier, it might effect Italy during the renaissance).

Greek democracy, unlike roman's republics, would favor smaller states. Do the swiss consider themselves the new athens under Calvin? Does Jeffersoncite democritus in his arguments against large centralized states?
 
They did anyway, in practice.

In contrast to what some have written here, democratic ideals which came rather close to those of Classical Antiquity were highly popular and widely practiced during the High and Late Middle Ages.

Just not on the level of state, kingdom or empire. The democratic polis of the European Middle Ages was the village of the Alpine space, Southern and Western German-speaking HRE, bits of France and Spain, Transylvania and Scandinavia.

The village ruled itself in general assemblies; it elected mayors for a limited period of time; it managed its own finances; it elected sheriffs; laymen juries dealt with criminals. The male heads of households were the citizens, much like in ancient poleis.

Much of this was achieved in the 13th century already. It became threatened and was undermined in most places by centralising states which followed a different logic. Against this de-democratisation, millions of peasants rose in dozens of rebellions.

If you want our Modern Age more democratic, at least in the sense of Antiquity and the Middle Ages (i.e. excluding servants, women etc.), you need these rebellions to succeed and establish stronger, larger confederacies.

Ancient Greek democratic theory would be a nice add-on, something some leaders might use in grand speeches and scholars might write their theses on in their ivory towers. But it wouldn`t make much of a difference because the Late Middle Ages had both their democratic praxis and a theory to base it on - the Christian theory that all humans are images of God.

A spontaneous idea as to how a Medieval-Modernity transition might have gone on in a more democratic fashion:
- Make the Swiss Coniuratio and models of Christian Republics like Calvinist Geneva more active in foreign policy, forging alliances with free towns, supporting peasant rebellions, so that Swiss-like confederacies are established e.g. in Bavaria, Tyrol. From there, you`d have to have the league of democratic confederacies struggle really hard against the forming proto-absolutist monarchies, though.
Actually, I´d be quite interesting to see how such a timeline would develop... Unfortunately, I don`t have time to write it myself.
 
Okay, we all know about Plato's republic. But what about the ancient greeks who defended democracy? Notable among htem were democritus and Protagoras.

Say their works survive in an ancient greek monastery, translated into italian and latin during the 1470's.

How does the world develop in this situation?

You have Cicero. Not a democrat, but a person advocating a mixed regime. And his work survived.
 
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