The interesting question is how you evaluate proposed big changes. Democracy has turned out to be a moderately good idea, but trying it out for the first few times was something of a leap in the dark.
There are reasons for thinking that democracy might work better than monarchy—generally speaking, a bad ruler can do more damage than not having a great ruler can do good, but is the theoretical reason good enough?
From what I heard, the person who established Athenian democracy did so after first overthrowing the previous ruler in a civil war, having concluded that becoming powerful was the best way to become a Great Man. He then reasoned that, since everyone should strive to be a Great Man, then everyone else would also be obliged to do the same thing he just did—which would mean endless civil wars. Which would be bad. So he came up with the clever solution of making everyone a ruler, so they could all be Great Men without having to kill each other first. Hence, democracy.
Or something like that, anyway. Wikipedia doesn’t say all that much, so I suspect that the story I remember is more story than actual history.
The interesting question is how you evaluate proposed big changes. Democracy has turned out to be a moderately good idea, but trying it out for the first few times was something of a leap in the dark.
There are reasons for thinking that democracy might work better than monarchy—generally speaking, a bad ruler can do more damage than not having a great ruler can do good, but is the theoretical reason good enough?
From what I heard, the person who established Athenian democracy did so after first overthrowing the previous ruler in a civil war, having concluded that becoming powerful was the best way to become a Great Man. He then reasoned that, since everyone should strive to be a Great Man, then everyone else would also be obliged to do the same thing he just did—which would mean endless civil wars. Which would be bad. So he came up with the clever solution of making everyone a ruler, so they could all be Great Men without having to kill each other first. Hence, democracy.
Or something like that, anyway. Wikipedia doesn’t say all that much, so I suspect that the story I remember is more story than actual history.