Dr. V.K.Maheshwari, M.A. (Socio, Phil) B.Sc. M. Ed, Ph.D.
Former Principal, K.L.D.A.V.(P.G) College, Roorkee, India
Plato was born 427 B.C., the son of noble parents. According to report, he first studied music, poetry, painting, and philosophy with other masters and became a pupil of Socrates in 407, remaining with him until the latter’s death (399) when he accompanied the sorrowing Socratics to Megara. He is said to have travelled in Egypt and Asia Minor, to have visited Italy and the Pythagoreans (388), and to have lived for a time at the court of Dionysius I, the tyrant of Syracuse, who became his enemy and sold him into slavery as a prisoner of war; but all of these stories have been denied. He founded a school in the groves of Academus, the Academy, where he taught mathematics and the different branches of philosophy, by means of connected lectures and the dialogue, a method that has been compared to our modern seminars. The story goes that he interrupted his work, on two occasions (367 and 361), by further visits to Syracuse, presumably in the hope of assisting in the realization of his ideal State, and that he was disappointed in this hope. His death occurred in 347 B.C. Plato was a poet and mystic, as well as a philosopher and dialectician combining, in a rare degree, great powers of logical analysis and abstract thought with wonderful poetic imagination and deep mystical feeling. His character was noble ; he was an aristocrat by birth and by temperament, an uncompromising idealist, hostile to everything base and vulgar.
Although Plato did not explicitly divide philosophy into logic, metaphysics (physics), and ethics (practical philosophy, including politics), he makes use of such a division in his works.
Socrates had pointed out that in order to live a rational and good life we needs must have knowledge of the good, and that it is possible to attain such knowledge. He did not present a theory of the method of reaching it, but he practised the art of evolving truth in the form of the dialogue. This method Plato employs with wonderful artistic effect in his writings.
Epistemology
Many have interpreted Plato as stating—even having been the first to write—that knowledge is justified true belief, an influential view that informed future developments in epistemology. Plato argues that knowledge is distinguished from mere true belief by the knower having an “account” of the object of her or his true belief. Plato himself also identified problems with the justified true belief definition in the Theaetetus, concluding that justification (or an “account”) would require knowledge of differentness, meaning that the definition of knowledge is circular .
Later in the Meno, Socrates uses a geometrical example to expound Plato’s view that knowledge in this latter sense is acquired by recollection. Socrates elicits a fact concerning a geometrical construction from a slave boy, who could not have otherwise known the fact (due to the slave boy’s lack of education). The knowledge must be present, Socrates concludes, in an eternal, non-experiential form.
In several of Plato’s dialogues, Socrates floats the idea that knowledge is a matter of recollection, and not of learning, observation, or study. He maintains this view somewhat at his own expense, because in many dialogues, Socrates complains of his forgetfulness. Socrates is often found arguing that knowledge is not empirical, and that it comes from divine insight. In many middle period dialogues, such as the Phaedo, Republic and Phaedrus
Plato is not content, however, with telling how true concepts and judgments may be obtained ; his chief object is to obtain them, to know reality in all its phases, physical, mental, and moral, to comprehend it in its unity and completeness. Indeed, it is plain to him that the knowledge-problem itself cannot be solved without an understanding of the nature of the world. To this end he develops a universal system, in the spirit of the teachings of the great thinker who became his ideal.
We shall, therefore, follow this order, in a general way, in our exposition of his thought, and begin with logic, or dialectics. Plato clearly understood the great importance of the problem of knowledge in the philosophy of his day. A thinker’s conception of the nature and origin of knowledge largely Dialectics , determined his attitude toward the engrossing questions of the age. If our propositions are derived from sense-perception and opinion, Plato argued, then the Sophists are quite right in their contention that there can be no genuine knowledge. Sense-perception does not reveal the true reality of things, but gives us mere appearance. Opinion may be true or false; as mere opinion it has no value whatever ; it is not knowledge, but rests on persuasion or feeling ; it does not know whether it is true or false, it cannot justify itself. Genuine knowledge is knowledge based on reasons, knowledge that knows itself as knowledge, knowledge that can authenticate itself. The great majority of men think without knowing why they think as they do, without having any grounds for their views. Ordinary virtue is no better off: it, too, rests on sense-perception and opinion; it is not conscious of its principles. Men do not know why they act as they do; they act instinctively, according to custom or habit, like ants, bees, and wasps; they act selfishly, for pleasure and profit, hence the masses are a great unconscious Sophist. The Sophist is wrong because he confuses appearance and reality, the pleasant and the good.
We must advance from sense-perception and opinion to genuine knowledge. This we cannot do unless we have a desire, or love of truth, the Eros, which is aroused by the contemplation of beautiful ideas: we pass from the contemplation of beauty to the contemplation of truth. The love of truth impels us to dialectics; it impels us to rise beyond sense-perception to the idea, to conceptual knowledge, from the particular to the universal. The dialectical method consists, first, in the compre- hension of scattered particulars in one idea, and second, in the division of the idea into species, that is, in the processes of generalization and classification. In this way alone can there be clear and consistent thinking; we pass from concept to concept, upward and downward, generalizing and particularizing, combining and dividing, synthesizing and analyzing, carving out concepts as a sculptor carves a beautiful figure out of a block of marble. Judgment expresses the relation of concepts to one another, articulates concept with concept, while the syllogism links judgment with judgment, in the process of reasoning. Dialectics is this art of thinking in concepts; concepts, and not sensations or images, constitute the essential object of thought. We cannot, for example, call a man just or unjust unless we have a notion, or concept, of justice, unless we know what justice is; when we know that, we can judge why a man is just or unjust.
But, Plato warns us, the notion or idea does not have its origin in experience; we do not derive it from particular cases by induction. These are merely the means of clearing up, or bringing to consciousness, or making explicit, the notion which already exists obscurely, or implicitly, in the soul. When the notion has been evolved, other notions may be deduced from it; we develop its implications or meanings, and so reach new and absolutely certain knowledge. Man is, therefore, indeed, the measure of all things, of all truth, because there lie imbedded in his soul certain universal principles, notions, concepts, or ideas, which form the starting-point of all his knowledge.
Experience, then, is not the source of our notions; there is nothing in experience, in the world of sense, exactly corresponding to them, to the notions of truth, beauty, goodness, for example; no particular object is absolutely beautiful or good. We approach the sense-world with ideals or standards of the true, the beautiful, and the good. In addition to these notions, Plato came to regard mathematical concepts and certain logical notions, or categories, such as being and non-being, identity and difference, unity and plurality, as inborn, or a priori.
Conceptual knowledge, then, is the only genuine knowledge: that was the teaching of Socrates. Knowledge is the correspondence of thought and reality, or being: it must have an object. Hence, if the idea or notion is to have any value as knowledge, something real must correspond to it, there must, for instance, be pure, absolute beauty as such, realities must exist corresponding to our universal ideas. In other words, such ideas cannot be mere passing thoughts in men’s heads; the truths of mathematics, the ideals of beauty, truth, and goodness, must be real, must have independent existence. If the objects of our ideas were not real, our knowledge would not be knowledge; hence they must be real.
The same result is reached in another way. Truth is the knowledge of reality, of being as such, of that which is. The world perceived by our senses is not the true world; it is a changing, fleeting world, one thing to-day, something else tomorrow (Heraclitus) ; it is mere appearance, illusion. True being is something permanent, unchangeable, eternal . Hence, in order to have genuine knowledge, we must know the permanent and unchangeable essence of things. Thought alone, conceptual thought, can grasp eternal and changeless being ; it knows that which is, that which persists, that which remains one and the same in all change and diversity, the essential forms of things.
Plato found it necessary, in short, to appeal to metaphysics, to his world-view, for the proof of the validity of knowledge. Sense-knowledge, the kind the Sophist believed in, presents to us the passing, changing, particular, and accidental; hence it cannot be genuine knowledge: it does not tell the truth or get at the heart of reality. Conceptual knowledge reveals the universal, changeless, and essential element in things and is, therefore, true knowledge. Philosophy has for its aim knowledge of the universal, unchangeable, and eternal.
Dialogues
Thirty-six dialogues and thirteen letters have traditionally been ascribed to Plato, though modern scholarship doubts the authenticity of at least some of these. No one knows the exact order Plato’s dialogues were written in, nor the extent to which some might have been later revised and rewritten.
Scholars have sought to augment this fairly scant evidence by employing different methods of ordering the remaining dialogues. One such method is that of stylometry, by which various aspects of Plato’s diction in each dialogue are measured against their uses and frequencies in other dialogues. Another, even more popular, way to sort and group the dialogues is what is called “content analysis,” which works by finding and enumerating apparent commonalities or differences in the philosophical style and content of the various dialogues. Neither of these general approaches has commanded unanimous assent among scholars.
The philosophical positions can be found directly endorsed or at least suggested in the early or “Socratic” dialogues include several moral or ethical views. It includes, rejection of retaliation, or the return of harm for harm or evil for evil .The claim that doing injustice harms one’s soul, the thing that is most precious to one, and, hence, that it is better to suffer injustice than to do it.
Some form of what is called “eudaimonism,” that is, that goodness is to be understood in terms of conduciveness to human happiness, well-being, or flourishing, which may also be understood as “living well,” or “doing well” The view that only virtue is good just by itself; anything else that is good is good only insofar as it serves or is used for or by virtue.The view that there is some kind of unity among the virtues: In some sense, all of the virtues are the same .
Dialectic
This method was introduced probably either late in the middle period or in the transition to the late period, but was increasingly important in the late period. In the early period dialogues, as we have said, the mode of philosophizing was refutative question-and-answer (called the “Socratic method”). Although the middle period dialogues continue to show Socrates asking questions, the questioning in these dialogues becomes much more overtly leading and didactic. In this method, the philosopher collects all of the instances of some generic category that seem to have common characteristics, and then divides them into specific kinds until they cannot be further subdivided.
The role of dialectic in Plato’s thought is contested but there are two main interpretations; a type of reasoning and a method of intuition. Simon Blackburn adopts the first, saying that Plato’s dialectic is “the process of eliciting the truth by means of questions aimed at opening out what is already implicitly known, or at exposing the contradictions and muddles of an opponent’s position.” Karl Popper, claims that dialectic is the art of intuition for “visualising the divine originals, the Forms or Ideas, of unveiling the Great Mystery behind the common man’s everyday world of appearances.”
The Theory of Forms (Doctrine of Ideas)
The Theory of Forms (or Theory of Ideas) typically refers to the belief that the material world as it seems to us is not the real world, but only an “image” or “copy” of the real world. In some of Plato’s dialogues, this is expressed by Socrates, who spoke of forms in formulating a solution to the problem of universals. The forms, ,are archetypes or abstract representations of the many types of things, and properties we feel and see around us, that can only be perceived by reason .In other words, Socrates was able to recognize two worlds: the apparent world, which constantly changes, and an unchanging and unseen world of forms, which may be the cause of what is apparent.
There are, then, two principles; we should say, mind and matter, of which mind is the true reality, the thing of most worth, that to which everything owes its form and essence, the principle of law and order in the universe; while the other element, matter, is secondary, a dull, irrational, recalcitrant force, the unwilling slave of mind, which somehow, but imperfectly, takes on the impress of mind. Form is the active cause, matter is the cooperative cause. It is both friend and foe, an auxiliary and an obstruction, the ground of physical and moral evil, of change and imperfection.
According to Plato the ideas or forms are not mere thoughts in the minds of men or even in the mind of God ; he conceives them as existing in and for themselves, they have the character of substantiality, they are substances ,real or substantial forms: the original, eternal transcendent archetypes of things, existing prior to things and apart from them ,independent of them, uninfluenced by the changes to which they are subject. The particular objects which we perceive are imperfect copies or reflections of these eternal patterns; particulars may come and particulars may go, but the idea or form goes on forever. Men may come and men may go, but the man-type, the human race, goes on forever. There are many objects or copies, but there is always only one idea of a class of things. There are numberless such independent forms, or ideas, nothing being too lowly or insignificant to have its idea: ideas of things, relations, qualities, actions ; ideas of tables and beds and chairs, of colour and tone ; of health, rest, and motion; of smallness, greatness, likeness; of beauty, truth, and goodness.
These ideas or archetypes, though numberless, are not disordered, like chaos; they constitute a well-ordered world, or rational cosmos .The ideal order forms an interrelated, connected organic unity, the ideas being arranged in logical order, and subsumed under the highest idea, the idea of the Good, which is the source of all the rest. This idea is supreme; beyond it there is no other. The truly real and the truly good are identical; the idea of the Good is the logos, the cosmic purpose. Unity, therefore, includes plurality; in the intelligible or ideal world there is no unity without plurality, and no plurality without unity.. The universe is conceived by Plato as a logical system of ideas: it forms an organic spiritual unity, governed by a universal purpose, the idea of the Good, and is, therefore, a rational moral whole. Its meaning cannot be grasped by the senses, which perceive only its imperfect and fleeting reflections and never rise to a vision of the perfect and abiding whole. It is the business of philosophy to understand its inner order and connection, to conceive its essence by logical thought.
The principle, of the Platonic ” matter,” forms the basis of the phenomenal world; as such it is the raw material upon which the forms are somehow impressed. It is perishable and unreal, imperfect, non-being whatever reality, form, or beauty the perceived world has, it owes to ideas. Some interpreters of Plato conceive this Platonic ‘ ‘ matter ‘ ‘ as space ; others as a formless, space-filling mass. Plato needs something besides the idea to account for our world of sense, or nature, which is not a mere illusion of the senses, but an order of lower rank than the changeless ideal realm. This substratum, untouched by the ideal principle, must be conceived as devoid of all qualities, formless, indefinable, and imperceptible. Nature owes its existence to the influence of the ideal world on non-being or matter: as a ray of light, passed through a prism, is broken into many rays, so the idea is broken into many objects by matter. The form- less something is non-being, not in the sense of being non-existent, but in the sense of having a lower order of existence: the term non-being expresses a judgment of value. The sensible world partakes of a measure of reality or being, in so far as it takes on form. Plato does not define more precisely the nature of the relation between the two realms ; but it is plain that the ideas are somehow responsible for all the reality things possess: they owe their being to the presence of ideas, to the participation of the latter in them. At the same time, non-being, the sub- stratum, is responsible for the diversity and imperfection of the many different objects bearing the same name.
Since the world of ideas is identical with the Good, the non-ideal must be evil. If we
had to label this part of the system, we should call it dualism. It is idealistic, or spiritualistic, in so far as it makes mind the paramount principle of things and matter a secondary principle. In any case, it is thoroughly anti-materialistic and anti- mechanistic.
In the Timaeus, Plato locates the parts of the soul within the human body: Reason is located in the head, spirit in the top third of the torso, and the appetite in the middle third of the torso, down to the navel.
Plato advocates a belief in the immortality of the soul, In the early transitional dialogue, the Meno, Plato has Socrates introduce the Orphic and Pythagorean idea that souls are immortal and existed before our births. All knowledge, he explains, is actually recollected from this prior existence. In perhaps the most famous passage in this dialogue, Socrates elicits recollection about geometry from one of Meno’s slaves .Socrates’ apparent interest in, and fairly sophisticated knowledge of, mathematics appears wholly new in this dialogue.
The theory of knowledge has shown us that there are three kinds of knowledge, sense-perception, opinion, and genuine knowledge or Science. This division influences Plato’s psychology. In sensation and opinion the soul is dependent on the body; in so far as it beholds the pure world of ideas, it is pure reason. The bodily part is, therefore, an impediment to knowledge, from which the soul must free itself in order to behold truth in its purity. The copies of the pure ideas, as they exist in the phenomenal world, merely incite the rational soul to think; sensation provokes ideas, it does not produce them. Hence, the soul must somehow possess ideas prior to its contact with the world of experience. Plato teaches that the soul has viewed such ideas before, but has forgotten them ; the imperfect copies of ideas in the world of sense bring back its past, remind it, as it were, of what it has seen before: all knowledge is reminiscence and all learning a reawakening. Hence, the soul must have existed before its union with a body.
In the early dialogues, Plato’s Socrates is an intellectualist—that is, he claims that people always act in the way they believe is best for them .Hence, all wrongdoing reflects some cognitive error. But in the middle period, Plato conceives of the soul as having three parts:
1. a rational part (the part that loves truth, which should rule over the other parts of the soul through the use of reason),
2. a spirited part (which loves honour and victory), and
3. an appetitive part (which desires food, drink, and sex),
Justice will be that condition of the soul in which each of these three parts “does its own work,” and does not interfere in the workings of the other parts . When these three inward principles are in tune, each doing its proper work, the man is just. The just and honorable course is that which a man pursues in this frame of mind ; he has the ethical attitude when he is wise and brave and temperate, when he has harmonized his soul. Such a man would not repudiate a deposit, commit sacrilege or theft, be false to friends, be a traitor to his country, or commit similar misdeeds.
It seems clear from the way Plato describes what can go wrong in a soul, however, that in this new picture of moral psychology, the appetitive part of the soul can simply overrule reason’s judgments. One may suffer, in this account of psychology, from what is called akrasia or “moral weakness”—in which one finds oneself doing something that one actually believes is not the right thing to do .
The human soul, then, is, in part, pure reason , and this rational part is its characteristic phase. It enters a body, and there is added to it a mortal and irrational part, which fits it for existence in the sense-world.The union with the body is a hindrance to the intellectual aspirations of the soul, to knowledge ; the presence of impulses and desires is a hindrance to the ethical supremacy of reason, which reason itself must seek to overcome, as Plato shows in his ethics. A soul that has contemplated the pure eternal ideas must, in part at least, be like these ideas, pure and eternal; for only like can know like. The doctrine of reminiscence proves the pre-existence and continued existence of the soul. Other proofs of immortality are: the simplicity of the soul: whatever is simple cannot be decomposed ; and its life or spontaneity : such a principle of activity cannot be destroyed; life cannot become death .
The pure rational soul, which was created by the Demiurge, once inhabited a star. But it became possessed with a desire for the world of sense and was in closed in a material body as in a prison. In case it succeeds in overcoming the lower side of its nature, it will return to its star, otherwise it will sink lower and lower, passing through the bodies of different animals (transmigration of souls). If the soul had resisted desire in its celestial life, it would have continued to occupy itself, in a transcendent existence, with the contemplation of ideas. As it is, it is condemned to pass through a stage of purification.
An important phase of Plato’s psychology is the doctrine of the “Eros. Just as sense-perception arouses in the soul the remembrance of pure ideas, or Truth, so the perception of sensuous beauty, which arouses sense-love, also arouses in the soul the memory of ideal Beauty contemplated in its former existence. This recollection arouses yearning for the higher life, the world of pure ideas. Sensuous love and the yearning for the beautiful and the good are one and the same impulse ; in yearning for eternal values, the soul yearns for immortality. The sensuous impulse seeks the continued existence of the species; the higher forms of the impulse are the craving for fame, the impulse to create science, art, and human institutions. These impulses are another evidence of the immortality of the soul, for what the soul desires must be attainable.
The universe is, at bottom, a rational universe: a spiritual system. Objects of sense, the material phenomena around us, are mere fleeting shadows of eternal and never-changing ideas; they cannot endure and have no worth. Only that which endures is real and has value: reason alone has absolute worth and is the highest good. Hence, the rational part of man is the true part, and his ideal must be to cultivate reason, the immortal side of his soul. The body and the senses are not the true part; indeed, the body is the prison-house of the soul, a fetter, deliverance from which is the final goal of the spirit. ” There- fore we ought to fly away from earth as quickly as we can, and to fly away is to become like God.” The release of the soul from the body and the contemplation of the beautiful world of ideas, that is the ultimate end of life.
In the meanwhile the soul, with its reason, its spirited part, and its appetites, is inclosed in its dungeon and has its problems to solve. The rational part is wise and has to exercise fore- thought on behalf of the entire soul : hence, its essential function is to command. The Individual is wise in whom reason rules over the other inipulses of the soul, knowing what is advantageous for the wjiole inner economy and for each member of it.
The ideal, therefore, is a well-ordered soul, one in which the higher functions rule the lower, one which exercises the virtues of wisdom ,courage . self-control ,and justice . A life of reason, which means a life of virtue, is the highest good. Happiness attends such a life ; the just man is after all the happy man. Pleasure, however, is not an end in itself, it is not the highest factor in the life of the soul, but the lowest.
The God/ Demiurge
Plato attempts to explain the origin of nature in his Timaus, a work that reminds one of the early Pre-Socratic philosophies. Like a human artist or workman, the Demiurge or Creator fashions the world after the pattern of the ideal world; guided by the idea of the Good, he forms as perfect a universe as it is possible for him to form, hampered, as he is, by the principle of matter.
The Demiurge is not really a creator, but an architect ; the two principles, mind and matter, are already in existence: a being is needed who will bring them together. In order to realize his purpose, he endows the world, which is composed of the four material elements, earth, air, fire, water, with soul and life. This world-soul he compounds of the indivisible and divisible, of identity and change, of mind and matter (the four elements), in order that it may know the ideal and perceive the corporeal. It has its own original motion, which is the cause of all motion; in moving itself it also moves bodies; it is diffused throughout the world and is the cause of the beauty, order, and harmony in the world: this is the image of God, a visible God. The world-soul is the intermediary between the world of ideas and the world of phenomena. It is the cause of all law, mathematical relations, harmony, order, uniformity, life, mind, and knowledge: it moves according to fixed laws of its nature, causing the distribution of matter in the heavenly spheres, as well as their motion. Besides the world-soul, the Creator created souls or gods for the planets (which he arranged according to the Pythagorean system of harmony) and rational human souls, leaving it to the lower gods to create animals and the irrational part of the human soul. Everything has been made for man, plants to nourish him, and animal-bodies to serve as habitations for fallen souls.
We have, therefore, in Plato’s cosmology many gods, to none of whom he definitely ascribes personality, perhaps because he took this for granted, conceiving them in analogy with the human soul: the Idea of the Good, the total world of ideas, the Demiurge, the world-soul, the planetary souls, and the gods of the popular religion.
This cosmology is a teleological world-view in mythical garb, an attempt to explain reality as a purposeful, well-ordered cosmos, the work of an intelligence, guided by reason and an ethical purpose. Purposes or final causes are the real causes of the world, the physical causes are merely cooperating causes : whatever is good and rational and purposeful in the universe is due to reason ; whatever is evil, irrational, and purposeless is due to mechanical causes.
In these dialogues, we also find Socrates represented as holding certain religious beliefs, such as:
The gods are completely wise and good .Ever since his childhood Socrates has experienced a certain “divine something” which consists in a “voice” ,or “sign” that opposes him when he is about to do something wrong
Various forms of divination can allow human beings to come to recognize the will of the gods .Poets and rhapsodies are able to write and do the wonderful things they write and do, not from knowledge or expertise, but from some kind of divine inspiration. The same can be said of diviners and seers, although they do seem to have some kind of expertise—perhaps only some technique by which to put them in a state of appropriate receptivity to the divine
No one really knows what happens after death, but it is reasonable to think that death is not an evil; there may be an afterlife, in which the souls of the good are rewarded, and the souls of the wicked are punished
The question of greatest moment to Socrates was the question of the good. He did not offer a complete philosophy of life in systematic form, but laid the foundations for such a structure. Plato takes up the problem and seeks to solve it in the light of his comprehensive world-view. As we said before, the question of the meaning and worth of life and human institutions he regards as involved in the larger question of the nature and meaning of the world and of man. His ethics, like his theory of knowledge, is based on his meta- physics.
Theory of the State
Plato’s Republic is an ideal of a perfect state, the dream of a kingdom of God on earth. It is frequently spoken of as Utopian.
Plato’s theory of the State, which is given in the Republic, is based on his ethics. Since virtue is the highest good, and’ the individual cannot attain the good in isolation, Politics but only in society, the mission of the State is to realize virtue and happiness ; the purpose of its constitution and its laws is to bring about conditions which will enable as many men as possible to become good; that is, to secure the general welfare. Social life is a means to the perfection of individuals, not an end in itself. It is true, the individual must subordinate his private interests to the public welfare, but that is only because his own true good is bound up with the social weal. If all men were rational and virtuous, there would be no need of laws and a State: a completely virtuous man is governed by reason, and not by external law. Few, however, are perfect; and laws are necessary to the realization of our true good. The State owes its origin to necessity.
Plato’s philosophical views had many societal implications, especially on the idea of an ideal state or government. Plato, through the words of Socrates, asserts that societies have a tripartite class structure corresponding to the appetite/spirit/reason structure of the individual soul. The appetite/spirit/reason are analogous to the castes of society.[49]
• Productive (Workers) — the labourers, carpenters, plumbers, masons, merchants, farmers, ranchers, etc. These correspond to the “appetite” part of the soul.
• Protective (Warriors or Guardians) — those who are adventurous, strong and brave; in the armed forces. These correspond to the “spirit” part of the soul.
• Governing (Rulers or Philosopher Kings) — those who are intelligent, rational, self-controlled, in love with wisdom, well suited to make decisions for the community. These correspond to the “reason” part of the soul and are very few.
The allegory of the cave (often said by scholars to represent Plato’s own epistemology and metaphysics) is intimately connected to his political ideology (often said to also be Plato’s own), that only people who have climbed out of the cave and cast their eyes on a vision of goodness are fit to rule. Socrates claims that the enlightened men of society must be forced from their divine contemplations and be compelled to run the city according to their lofty insights. Thus is born the idea of the “philosopher-king”, the wise person who accepts the power thrust upon him by the people who are wise enough to choose a good master. This is the main thesis of Socrates in the Republic, that the most wisdom the masses can muster is the wise choice of a ruler.
Plato describes these “philosopher kings” as “those who love the sight of truth” (Republic 475c) and supports the idea with the analogy of a captain and his ship or a doctor and his medicine. According to him, sailing and health are not things that everyone is qualified to practice by nature. A large part of the Republic then addresses how the educational system should be set up to produce these philosopher kings.
The State should be organized like the universe at large and the individual virtuous soul; that is, reason should rule in it. There are as many classes in society as there are functions of the soul, and the relations of these classes to each other should correspond to those obtaining in a healthy soul. Those who have received philosophical training represent reason and ought to be the ruling class; the warrior class represent the spirited element or will : their task is defense ; the agriculturists, and merchants represent the lower appetites, and have as function the production of material goods. Justice is reality in a State in which each class, the industrial, military, guardian, does its own work and sticks to its own business. State is temperate and brave and wise in consequence of certain affections and conditions of these same classes.
The ideal society forms a complete unity, one large family; hence, Plato opposes private property and monogamous marriage, and recommends, for the two upper castes (who are to be supported by the workers), communism and the common possession of wives and children. Among his other recommendations are supervision of marriages and births (eugenics), exposure of weak children, compulsory state education, education of women for war and government, censorship of works of art and literature.
The State is an educational institution, the instrument of civilization, and as such it must have its foundation in the highest kind of knowledge attainable, that is, philosophy. ” Unless it happen either that philosophers acquire the kingly power in states, or that those who are now called kings and potentates be imbued with a sufficient measure of genuine philosophy, that is to say, unless political power and philosophy be united in the same person . . . there will be no deliverance for cities nor for the human race.” The State shall undertake the education of the children (of the higher classes), following a definite plan of instruction, which shall be the same for the first twenty years of life and apply to both sexes, and shall include: bodily exercises (in infancy) ; the narration of myths with a view to ethical culture; gymnastics, which develops not only the body but the will; reading and writing; poetry and music, which arouse the sense of beauty, harmony, and proportion and encourage philosophical thought; mathematics, which tends to draw the mind from the sensuous to the real; and military exercises. A selection of the choice characters shall be made from the ranks of the young men at twenty, and these shall study the different subjects of their childhood in their interrelations and learn to survey them as a whole. Those who, at the age of thirty, show the greatest ability in these fields, in military affairs, and other branches of discipline will study dialectics for five years, after which they will be put to the test in holding military commands and secondary civic offices. At the age of fifty those who have shown themselves worthy will devote them- selves to the study of philosophy until their turn comes to administer the higher offices for their country’s sake.
In his later work, the Laws, Plato greatly modifies his political theory. A good State should have, besides reason or insight, freedom and friendship. All citizens should be free and have a share in the government ; they are to be landowners, while all trade and commerce should be given over to serfs and foreigners. The family is restored to its natural position. Knowledge is not everything : there are other motives of virtuous conduct, e.g., pleasure and friendship, pain and hate. Virtue, however, remains the ideal, and the education of the moral will the goal.
Wherein it concerns states and rulers, Plato has made interesting arguments. For instance he asks which is better—a bad democracy or a country reigned by a tyrant. He argues that it is better to be ruled by a bad tyrant, than be a bad democracy (since here all the people are now responsible for such actions, rather than one individual committing many bad deeds.) This is emphasised within the Republic as Plato describes the event of mutiny on board a ship. Plato suggests the ships crew to be in line with the democratic rule of many and the captain, although inhibited through ailments, the tyrant. Plato’s description of this event is parallel to that of democracy within the state and the inherent problems that arise.
According to Plato, a state made up of different kinds of souls will, overall, decline from an aristocracy (rule by the best) to a timocracy (rule by the honorable), then to an oligarchy (rule by the few), then to a democracy(rule by the people), and finally to tyranny (rule by one person, rule by a tyrant). Aristocracy is the form of government (politeia) advocated in Plato’s Republic. This regime is ruled by a philosopher king, and thus is grounded on wisdom and reason. The aristocratic state, and the man whose nature corresponds to it, are the objects of Plato’s analyses throughout much of the Republic, as opposed to the other four types of states/men, who are discussed later in his work.
There will be no end to the troubles of states, or of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands.
Plato