If you've read accounts of Socrates( Accounts because Socrates himself never wrote anything down) by Plato, Aristotle, or one of his other students...you would have come by Aristotle's thoughts on rulers. He often talked about rule as if it were a trade...like shoemaking. He also believed that only those fit to rule were meant to. He also never met anyone he believed was " fit to rule", Check out this passage of the book "The Trial of Socrates". by Isidor Feinstein Stone.
"The Socratic Formula giving rule to the man "Who knows" had in it the germ of plato's philosopher kings. But Socrates went further than Plato. socrates could find no one- even among the philosophers- who possessed "Episteme" or real knowledge in his narrow sense of the term. No one could provie the perfect and absolute qualifications he required. Neither could he, as Socrates cheerfully confessed. No one "knew" and no one was fit to rule.
In his own admission, no one was fit to rule. In my mind, that makes Socrates the original Anarchist. One of the guiding principles of Anarchism is horizontal cooperation. The root words of the word Anarchy literally translate to be An-without, and arkhos-leader. If the father of western philosophy believed in Anarchy...why doesn't the west? My answer, poor students. In his time, Socrates taught two men in their youth, who misinterpreted Socrates' thoughts on who was supposed to rule, became barbaric emperors who overthrew "the democracy of Athens twice. It is my theory that every so called "Leader" has either never read Socrates, or has completely misinterpreted his words.
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