Chapter 10 Plato, Pleonexia and Environmental Documentaries
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This essay explores Plato’s critique of pleonexia in the downfall of the Athenian democracy within the context of 21st Century consumer practices that are predicted to lead to global catastrophes from climate change. Plato’s stricter notions regarding both sustainable lifestyles and purified artworks are applied to climate change issues in two recent environmental documentaries, Franny Armstrong’s The Age of Stupid and Robert Kenner’s Merchants of Doubt. The paper suggests, along with Plato, that without strict limits on consumption, civilization is endemically over-consumptive and fated to destroy itself.