The Philosopher King - Key concept of the philosophy of Plato
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| Plato's ethics an overview of Life, Philosophy and works |
In practical terms, only the wisest of the philosophers shall rule. At the same time, the most courageous should become soldiers and fighters, the rest taking to other pursuits like farming, commerce, etc., depending upon their talents and tastes.
The philosopher's claim to power rests, therefore on, his wisdom or capacity for giving knowledge, for he alone is capable of knowing what justice is and how it is to be realized. Justice, therefore, is the supreme virtue of the state, because it is justice that regulates the other three virtues o wisdom, Courage, and Temperance in men as well as in the State.
It is the bond that unites the true polis in a harmonious way of life free from evils of faction, incompetence, and corruption, which plague ordinary States. Justice, therefore, cannot be the product of mere contact based on either fear or individual will. It is, perhaps, as Burke was to say much later about the constitution, a partnership in all virtue and in all Science. The state is the individual writ large. It is 'tripartite mean'.
Every reader of the Republic is told that Plato's intention in discussing the just state is to illuminate the nature of the just soul, for he argues that they are analogous. The state is the soul writ large, so to speak. For example, the division of the state corresponds to divisions f the soul. But since the soul is difficult to analyze, in the dialogue Socrates says that he will first speculate on the state, and then rely on his speculations to illuminate the nature of justice in the individual.
Superficially, it appears that the lengthy discussion of the state is therefore primarily an interpretative device. Clearly, though, it is more than that. Plato may not have believed that his utopia would work in practice, or even that it would be desirable to institute some of his more radical suggestions, but he certainly attributed some value to his discussion independent of its illustrative function. Judging by Socrates' language, it's reasonable to suppose that Plato would have liked to have seen some of his ideas actually implemented in a city-state. He was dissatisfied with the city-states of his day and was proposing an alternative. So let's cook at its details.
Indeed, then, life in Plato's ideal state has affinities with life under a totalitarian government. The laws which Socrates suggests are repressive. People are allowed to have only one occupation - namely that for which they are best suited by nature. Evidently, there is encouragement. Neither wealth nor poverty is permitted, as each leads to vice.
Plato's thoughts on women and children may be even more horrifying to the average liberal. He argues via Socrates that the traditional form of the family should be done away with. Men should have women and children in common, such that no man knows who his children are or has excessive love for one woman in particular. Even mothers are not allowed to know who their children are. Their children are taken from them after birth, and they are given other children to suckle as long as they have milk.
More congenial to modern sentiment is Plato's suggestion that women in the guardian class should receive the same education as men so that the best of them can assist in war and governance. There is no private property or money except insofar. There is no private property or money except insofar as it is necessary, among the lower classes; therefore there will be no disputes about what belongs to whom - just as there will be no disputes about which women belong to whom, and who one's children are. In general, the goal Plato is aiming at is that everyone thinks of everyone else as a measure of their family, such that it is little or no strife between people and they all desire the same thing - which is harmony, temperance, gentleness toward fellow-citizens and harshness toward people from other states - a unified front on all issues, as it were. The health of the community is the overriding principle in all spheres of life. All of Plato's radical prescriptions follow that one principle.