Waller R. Newell,Tyrants: A History of Power,Injustice, and Terror

Waller Newell's historical typology of tyrants looks even more interesting from the philosophical perspective of Plato's Gorgias. Socrates pinpoints a blind spot typical of the reformer tyrant in Gorgias, whose success depends on his personal, not his principled, influence. Polus, the garden-variety tyrant, wants to acquire more and more with impunity, an old story with the usual bad ending. Callicles pushes furthest of all: it's only the exceptional individual like himself who steels himself to follow ideology to the bitter end. The Socratic rejoinders do not persuade the interlocutors, but they might serve to educate liberal democrats: some tyrants are just incurable.