This week something rather surprising happened. Donald Trump was inaugurated as President of the United States.

A year ago, most observers were still thinking of this as a very remote prospect, more a cause for amusement than realistic political expectation.

It's a sobering moment for me as an American citizen and for the half of my podcast audience

who live in the States, as well as for other listeners who will inevitably

be affected by this upheaval in world politics.

It seems like a good moment to ask whether the history of philosophy has anything to say about an event like this.

Is everything we've been discussing over these hundreds of episodes

of merely abstract and academic interest, or can ideas from long ago somehow help us to think about current events?

There are lots of ways to answer that question, but one of the most obvious would be to consider

the value of democracy itself.

Politically progressive people tend to see 2016 as a year that revealed deep flaws in Western

democratic political systems.

Not only was Donald Trump elected, but the British narrowly voted to leave

the EU in a referendum held earlier in the year. Progressives see these two decisions as not

just wrong, but deeply foolish. And Trump's supporters might have reason to worry too.

Their man has just become president, but he got beat in the popular vote.

Millions more Americans wanted him to lose than to win.

If not for the vagaries of the electoral college system, Hillary Clinton would have just

been inaugurated, whereas Trump supporters would have preferred to see her in jail, at least those who gleefully

chanted lock her up. So they hardly have reason to celebrate the wisdom of

the electorate either. Besides, even leaving aside this divisive event, we can easily think of other alarming election

results from around the world in recent years.

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