Concept

Tyrant

Overview

A tyrant (from Ancient Greek τύραννος (túrannos) 'absolute ruler') is an absolute ruler who is unrestrained by law, or one who has usurped a legitimate ruler's sovereignty. Often portrayed as cruel, tyrants may defend their positions by resorting to repressive means. The original Greek term meant an absolute sovereign who came to power without constitutional right, and the word had a neutral connotation during the Archaic and early Classical periods. A government run by a tyrant is usually called a tyranny.

Ancient philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle saw tyrannos as a negative form of government, and on account of the decisive influence of philosophy on politics, deemed tyranny the "fourth and worst disorder of a state." They defined a tyrant as a person who rules without law, using extreme and cruel methods against both his own people and others. Plato in particular stated that:

Tyrants lack "the very faculty that is the instrument of judgment"—reason. The tyrannical man is enslaved because the best part of him (reason) is enslaved, and likewise, the tyrannical state is enslaved, because it too lacks reason and order.

The Encyclopédie defined the term as a usurper of sovereign power who makes "his subjects the victims of his passions and unjust desires, which he substitutes for laws".

In the late fifth and fourth centuries BC, a new kind of tyrant, one who had the support of the military, arose – specifically in Sicily.

One can apply accusations of tyranny to a variety of types of government:

to government by one individual (in an autocracy)

to government by a minority (in an oligarchy, tyranny of the minority)

to government by a majority (in a democracy, tyranny of the majority)

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

In the original texts

Passages from public-domain books where Tyrant is discussed.

said he. The tyrant is somehow in the third degree remote from the oligarchic character; for the democratic was halfway between them. Yes. Will he not then dwell in the third picture of pleasure, distant from him as regards truth, if our former reasonings be true? Just so.
Plato, The works of Plato
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A tyrant also should endeavour to engage his subjects in a war, that they may have employment and continually depend upon their general. A king is preserved by his friends, but a tyrant is of all persons the man who can place no confidence in friends, as every one has it in his desire and these chiefly in their power to destroy him.
Aristotle, Politics
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I assume, I said, that the tyrant is in the third place from the oligarch; the democrat was in the middle? Yes. And if there is truth in what has preceded, he will be wedded to an image of pleasure which is thrice removed as to truth from the pleasure of the oligarch?
Plato, The Republic
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Under neither; but if I had to choose, I should detest the tyranny of one man less than that of many. A despot always has his good moments; an assembly of despots never. If a tyrant does me an injustice, I can disarm him through his mistress, his confessor or his page; but a company of grave tyrants is inaccessible to all seductions. When it is not unjust, it is at the least hard, and never does it bestow favours.
Voltaire, Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary
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this manner--There is a law, "That he who has slain a tyrant shall receive the regard of men who conquer at Olympia, and shall also ask whatever he pleases of the magistrate, and the magistrate shall grant it to him." There is also another law--"When a tyrant is slain, the magistrate shall also put to death his five nearest relations." Alexander, who was the tyrant of Pherse, a city in Thessaly, was slain by his own…
Marcus Tullius Cicero, The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4
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Tyrant

Overview

In the original texts

Philosophers who discussed Tyrant

Related ideas

Place in the tradition