What Is Tyranny?

The terms “authoritarian” and “totalitarian dictatorship” are well suited to describe the most despotic and tyrannical forms of government. Although they speak of the same general concept of tyranny, authoritarian and totalitarian dictatorships, despotism and tyranny behave with slightly different connotations. It is not limited to constitutions and laws, but to all forms of government, whether authoritarian and totalitarian. During the Enlightenment, thinkers used the word tyranny to refer to systems of government that evolved from aristocracy and monarchy. Locke’s concept of tyranny influenced writers in subsequent generations, who developed it as a counterpoint to ideas of human rights and democracy.

Aware that tyranny could come from a single powerful ruler or mob rule, the founders wrote about mechanisms to prevent tyranny and promote the rule of law. In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson referred to the need to divide the power of government into two separate entities: the government of the people and the state, and the judiciary and courts. Republics tend to have an aristocracy, for example George, like the Tories in Rome, and allegedly corrupt senators. This example speaks, therefore, both of despotic aristocracy and of despotism in a republic.


In other words, all kinds of tyranny can be layered on top of each other and merge into each other. I would add royalty and degenerate tyranny, but tyranny is ambiguous and needs no explanation. In the everyday sense of the word, a tyrant is a king who rules by force and without regard for justice or law. In the strict sense, it is a person who appropriates royal authority without having a right to it. In his speeches on Livy, Niccolo Machiavelli mixes the rule of kings (whom he generally referred to as “princes”) with tyranny.

In Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar, he depicts Caesar’s rise to power following a popular coup against his father, Caesar Augustus. Roman Empire and has generally become the target of many people who want to carry out a coup d’état by the people. The biblical quotation does not use the word tyrant, but expresses an opinion very similar to that of the Greek philosophers, which cites the wickedness, cruelty and injustice of the rulers. Plato and Aristotle speak of kings as good monarchs and tyrants as bad. The definition in this chapter refers to Plato’s definition of a tyrant as “a tyrant with an evil and cruel heart.

It is said that a monarchy governed by a single man is in itself royal, for the good of its rulers, but if it serves only the interests of the ruler, that is a rule of welfare. Listing and ordering tyrants can acknowledge subjectivity and provide definitions, criteria and comparisons. In ancient Greece, tyrants were powerful opportunists who came to power by securing the support of various factions or demons. Old political commentators such as Plato and Aristotle lived in the late phase of many of them. History recalls the rise and rise of the rulers and the environment in which they ruled, not only in Greece but also in other parts of Europe.

It is not by chance that the word itself seems to be a foreign word, which has been taken from the Greek language. Greek, possibly pre-pelasgian (Eastern), and then without ethical censorship; it simply referred to anyone, good or bad, who gained executive power in an unconventional way. The original meaning of tyranny was bad or repressive rule, which means ruling over someone who is ruled outside the jurisdiction in which he rules, or by someone from another jurisdiction. Oedipus Tyrannos was given the nickname because he was evil, but he seems to have been largely considered a good ruler. He grew up in Thebes and is mentioned as a well-known example of a tyrant in ancient Greece.

So how did the word tyrant come to mean what it means now? The English tyrant first appeared in the 16th century BC in a translation of the Greek word for tyrant. The term was commonly applied to malicious autocrats who brutally ruled their subjects. The Oxford English Dictionary provides a list of tyrants from the 16th and 17th centuries BC to the 19th century and from the 18th century to England.

The Greek word tyrannos probably derives from lydian (turan) lord and means simply “autocrat” and can therefore be equated with the expression basileus (king). The word has no connection with wealth or power and is neutral, but the usurper held power contrary to the constitution of the city.

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