Nietzsche and Plato compare and contrast and relate to government?
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I could tell you but you would learn more by doing your own homework
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Some very interesting and thought provoking stuff...\n\nThe Eternal Return is one of Nietzsche's most important thoughts. Nietzsche was not the first to write on the subject, but he did expand the idea of recurrence greatly:\n\nThe greatest weight. -- "What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your live will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence--even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!' Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.' If this thought gained possession of you, it would change, you as you are or perhaps crush you." \n\nNietzche believed that there is no final state of the universe; that the world is in a constant state of flux, always changing and becoming: "If the world had a goal it must have been reached".\n\nNietzsche holds that the world is a world of becoming. There is no being. A world of being is merely a world of appearances. All concepts of being, unity, finality, and endpoint are illusions. There is no truth in being. Belief in a world of being is just a consequence of religion and philosophy. The only reality is becoming. If there were being, it would necessitate a final state, which would have been reached. Also, if becoming could pass into being, then becoming would become devalued.\n\nTime is not "duration" with and "in vain", rather the moment is the prime "constituent" of time. Each moment arises and perishes. The perishing of a moment allows the next moment to arise. It is important to understand that for the moment "there is no end". The perishing of a moment is not a final state. Moments do not end in time because they allow other moments to arise.
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Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.\n\nGeorge Bernard Shaw
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In order to explain this, let me tell you my theory:\nThere are three kind of religions and each one reflects on the society structure and the governing of it!\nMONOTHEISTIC (example: Judaic religions: Judaism, Christianity, Islam) In this the ruler should be ONE. Who is not with us is against us. Who is not under us is an enemy and not wort of living.\nPOLYTHEISTIC: (Example: India, Native Americans, etc.) Since they are polytheistic, they accept a variety of leaders and are open to new ideas, but do not move away from their basic principle, of course. If they would, they would have changed their basis.\nONETHEISTIC: (example: the Greeks). Each city had her god/ goddess. Every person for every act/ feeling, etc., would have a certain god as protector. Thus, every one is important and equal to the rest. Here, the ruler is not the strongest or mysterious, but selected by the people. Democracy is the outcome of this group. The leaders are not only political but the people are willing and selecting the wiser, the philosophers to govern and rule, for some time. After their term, the rulers, kings, etc., are judged by public courts and they are either thanked for good work or punished for bad! \nAmericans are MONOTHEISTIC, but also, start thiniking and geting paedeia (education), wich lead to freedom and Greek open mind! \nTHus they are confused in the sense to select between the MONOTHEISTIC behavior ordered by their religion and the vision their cultivated mind leads them!
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Here's the thing....the characters are all allegories of types of government. So ask yourself how does Ralph govern and how does Jack govern? You could google or search on Wikipedia types of government and ask yourself which character fits into which mode. For example, I would say that Ralph represents socialism, versus Jack's mode which is more monarchy/heirarchy. \n\nGood luck.
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And I know not if you are serious, but assuming you are, and assuming you are an offspring somehow of Ludwig, then you probably know that for him, philosophy was best understood as therapy. He saw it as a crutch to lean on temporarily until clarity of wisdom and knowledge brought healing of the mind and soul that are injured by confused thinking, partly brought on by philosophy, itself.\n\nHe believed that philosphy was best used to get beyond philosophy, a sort of ladder to get to a higher plane of understanding at which point you throw the ladder away.\n\nI think that this is a narrow view of philosophy, suited to Wittgenstein's mystical temper, but in the long run not very useful for us today. Nevertheless, his view contains a profound insight that limits the pretense and arrogance of any philosphy that thinks it can figure it all out and hand over to the masses God, the Universe, and four-leaf clovers neatly bound in a box.\n\nIt might be best to ask not "What is philosophy," as if there is one thing that has always existed without change. We can't even say that about mountains (they rise and decline) why should we think there is such a thing as PHILOSOPHY that is an unchanging subject for all time?\n\nInstead you might ask, "What has philosophy been or done over the last 4000 years?" Then at least you'd be ready for lots of different answers. Most people who care about such things have a favorite thinkers who exemplifies the intellectual struggles and currents of the time and place in which they lived. Some people think of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle as the definers of philosophy (although each of those three looked at the subject differently from each other).\n\nFor those people philosophy is a speculative task which seeks to understand the nature of reality starting with certain beliefs that are drawn from mathematics and developed by the use of syllogistic logic and applied to whatever it was that they were talking about at the moment. Syllogistic logic has a form something like this: If this, then that. If A is true and B is true, then C must be true. For example, \n\n"If it is true that quadrapeds have four legs, and if it true that horses have four legs, then it MUST by true that horses are quadrapeds."\n\nDid I write that the fundamental ideas that these famous Greeks worked with came from mathematics? Well, so I did. That makes it seem like philosophy is very cut and dried, very abstract and since based on the ideas of mathematics, philosophical statements must be capable of proof. No more fruitless arguments! The reign of reason triumphs over the darkened minds of the religious, the superstitious, and those who argue from their emotions.\n\nWere it only so! In fact, beneath our great Greek philosophers (their greatness is indisputable--we still read them and draw from them to understand things today) were ideas, beliefs, and commitments that were not subject to the same tests that they would subject the arguments that their colleagues and others made. That is, their powerful tools of reasoning were built out of materials that themselves were not products of that powerful reasoning. For example, all three Greeks believed in the rationality and unity of the universe, a belief that they could not test except by saying (a little bit like Immanuel Kant would do 2000 years later) that the condition of rationality and thought itself was dependent on the universe being fundamentally rational and "unified." There could be no logic, for example, if things weren't "true" everywhere and for all time. For example, if the "laws of nature" varied by country or by period of history we couldn't make statements that say "a falling object will continue to fall in a straight line until it meets an object." If in France, for instance, falling objects suddenly reversed trajectory and went off at a ninety degree angle from the original line of
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You mean, the relationship between a state (government) and the society governed?\n\nPlease post your question again, but with purpose and clarity.
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Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm (frē'drĭkh vĭl'hĕlm nē'chə) , 1844–1900, German philosopher, b. Röcken, Prussia. The son of a clergyman, Nietzsche studied Greek and Latin at Bonn and Leipzig and was appointed to the chair of classical philology at Basel in 1869. In his early years he was friendly with the composer Richard Wagner, although later he was to turn against him. Nervous disturbances and eye trouble forced Nietzsche to leave Basel in 1879; he moved from place to place in a vain effort to improve his health until 1889, when he became hopelessly insane. Nietzsche was not a systematic philosopher but rather a moralist who passionately rejected Western bourgeois civilization. He regarded Christian civilization as decadent, and in place of its “slave morality” he looked to the superman, the creator of a new heroic morality that would consciously affirm life and the life values. That superman would represent the highest passion and creativity and would live at a level of experience beyond the conventional standards of good and evil. His creative “will to power” would set him off from “the herd” of inferior humanity. Nietzsche's thought had widespread influence but was of particular importance in Germany. Apologists for Nazism seized on much of his writing as a philosophical justification for their doctrines, but most scholars regard this as a perversion of Nietzsche's thought. Among his most famous works are The Birth of Tragedy (1872, tr. 1910); Thus Spake Zarathustra (1883–91, tr. 1909, 1930), and Beyond Good and Evil (1886, tr. 1907).
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Read Plato's Republic, Edmund Burcke, Machevelli's The Prince, John Locke's Two Treaties on Government,  histories on all the great societies of the world's history, and The rise and fall of Rome.\n\nThis gives you a good idea of what works and what doesn't
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I don't think I can easily sum up the argument except to point out that Plato believed each individual owed a duty not just to himself but to the State (the community he lives in), and therefore a just life is more appropriate to this duty.\n\nBut again, the reasoning here is complicated and deserves some thought.
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One of the most major differences (speaking more officially/ideologically, and leaving out de facto differences which are obvious enough today) is with respect to what the role of the state, and in particular the relationship of the state to individual liberty, should be. In general, republicans want as little government 'interference' as possible, and tend to be anti-taxation (to take one obvious example), on the grounds that 'It's my money and I should be free to do what I want with it; I know how to spend it better than the government does.' Democrats, on the other hand, tend to be more open to a system in which we all pay in, in the form of taxes, to fund social services like health care, education, and welfare.\n\nIf it clarifies things for you (or perhaps simply as a suggestion for further reading), I'd say that Robert Nozick, a libertarian, is a very good example of republican-style thought, whereas John Rawls would be much more of a democratic-style thinker -- major contrast between the two of them.
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I really liked how Steven Colbert defined the differences between Republican movement for small government and Democrat movement for big government, in terms of Christian values.\n\nsmall government (Republican) -- use the name of Jesus alot in speeches, seek to control private life while avoiding control over community services\n\nbig government (Democrat) -- heal the sick (Medicaid/Medicare), care for the poor (Social Security, vocational training, and welfare programs), sit with and seek to guide sinners (e.g. prison programs, etc.), suffer the children to come unto you (child welfare and education), seek to control community services while avoiding control of private life\n\nHmmm... so who's acting more Christian?
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Machiavelli, author of The Prince, was a philosopher. He believed that giving all the power to a single person would have beneficial outcomes on the society the person controlled. Hope I helped.
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Human, All Too Human -Nietzsche
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Plato, but he was a philosopher.
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Great questions.  He wasn't alone in seeing that democracy isn't perfect; Plato laid out some of the best arguments for and against the various forms of government in his book, Republic.  But I don't read Churchill's quote as being negative about democracy at all, but rather stating that democracy is the best one out there   His actual quote was “Many forms of government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”  It sounds like Churchill didn't see a better form, even if Plato did offer a few.  Bog, Ante
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I spent a lot of time on this answer, so I do hope you'll read it.\n\nDisclaimer: I come down firmly in the liberal camp.\n\nThe major differences, in my mind, are in 1) how government should give economic assistance, 2) where the focus ought to be in terms of social issues, and 3) whether ideology or reality ought to ruel.\n\n1) Economics\nConservatives believe that the government is a necessary evil, and that any enforcement of the "social contract" through taxes, "entitlement programs," and business regulation ought to be minimal. They believe a freer market is a better market.\nLiberals believe that the government is the mechanism by which the people of a country achieve their vision of a fair playing field. They believe that government should regulate business and help the less fortunate get a foothold, and they believe that taxes are necessary to allow public works to go forward. They believe a fairer market is a better market.\n\n2) Social issues\nConservatives look to the past and to tradition to determine what is moral. They balk at change and feel that the country has a duty to prevent the degeneration of morals. They want to spend time on issues such as abortion, same-sex marriage, euthanasia, and decency in the media. Many of them interpret the words of the Founding Fathers to mean the Founders were staunch Christians who believed the country should have  Christian values.\nLiberals look at the world through a prism of social justice. They feel that the relevant question is "Who is helped or hurt by this?" and bristle at "It's always been this way" as an excuse for an unsustainable argument. Many of them interpret the words of the Founding Fathers to mean the Founders were deists who believed the country should base itself on nondenominational, social-justice values. They want to spend time on issues such as equal rights, poverty, and peace.\n\n3) Ideology\nThis distinction is a tad fuzzier than others, but it's worth mentioning.\nFor the most part, conservatives lean on morality to make distinctions about policy. Certain concepts are morally right and therefore policies based on those concepts are untouchable. Thus, opposing policies must necessarily be not just wrong, but evil. (This is how you come to the conclusion that having liberals in power would lead to chaos in destruction - not because you have judged the policy proposals by liberals ineffective, but because they are not in line with the conservatives' proposals and must therefore have the opposite effect.)\nLiberals draw from the social-justice template and are interested in what has been proven to be effective or ineffective. They are interested in empirical proof rather than statements of ideology, and believe that opposing policy proposals are not necessarily evil. However, liberals do see as evil the compromising of those basic social-justice principals, and thus the rescinding of habeas corpus, the use of so-called alternative interrogation techniques, and the launching of military action without a UN resolution are highly offensive.\n\nI hope this helped you understand our side. Please feel free to correct me if  you feel I've misrepresented you.