Timocratie

The timocratie or timarchie is a Political regime evoked by Plato, in his book the Republic (L. VIII). It is the government by those which seek what has price, value. About which value is it?

The ambiguity of the term “value” in French is also present in the Greek language: " Timô" , it is to fix the price of a thing, but also to judge worthy, reward, honor, respect.

" Timokratia" , it is the State in which the research of the honors is the prime motive.

For memory, “kratô” means to dominate, reign.

In the Republic , with book VIII, Plato names timocratie the first stage of the degeneration of the government of the ideal City, Cité in which the best leads the political life, i.e. where a Aristocratie is installation.

Young people (girls and boys) are educated in community, and one chooses among them those which show of courage, abnegation, detachment with regard to the sensitive world, to make the “guards of the City of them”. And among the latter one retains those which have at the same time taste for the gymnastics and the art of these girls of Mnémosyne and Zeus (or of the Earth and of the Sky according to other traditions) which govern the Thought in all its forms, the Muses. Plato uses the term of “Music” in this direction. These young people, showing a taste for the intellectual studies, will be the philosophers, which one will make controlling.

But the City, born in the History, is girl of the History, and thus led to change. However what is perfect cannot, while changing, that to degrade itself. Then, even those which have the “naturalness philosophizes” are perverted by the spectacle of the injustices and the coarse pleasures, - but also by the sophists, these Masters to be thought only in terms of conquest of the capacity, and not in research topics of the good and the Juste, otherwise Masters who divert their pupil of the authentic exercise of the thought.

These young people, promised to become guards of the City, take taste with this capacity that one presents to them like an end in itself. They do not agree any more to obey the philosophers, they practice the gymnastics more than the “music”, they cultivate the physical force, they are set on honors which their confer privileges. Finally, this ceaseless search of the honors can only be transformed quickly into a search of richnesses. Making at the same time watch of gloriole and cupidity, these young people believe that the possession is at the origin of the value. Arrogant, haughty, wild with regard to those which they hold for inferiors and which they scorn, flexible and even servile with regard to their chiefs, the men of the timocratie take for Vertu their love of hunting and the war.

The timocratie will degenerate into Oligarchie when the taste for gold and the expenditure seizes more still of those which hold the capacity. In their spirit, the richness will replace the Vertu definitively. The government will be then with the hands of a small number of opulent people.

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