The very nature of current political philosophy is often inexorably tied with the name and philosophies of the fifth century Greek known as Plato. Although Plato had prodigious interests, and his life ended in the middle of the fourth century, the rich nature of Greek culture at the time is not particularly forthcoming regarding his biography. One of the reasons for this is that the code of the time warned against making explicit mention of living contemporaries. The famous orator Isocrates, who was Plato's contemporary, does not mention him at all. Aristotle, who was in his late 30s when Plato died, only alludes vaguely to the philosopher "Plato." In some places, he even refers to Plato as Socrates, and Socrates, Plato's teacher, as the author of such works as the Republic (Edwards, 1967, p. 314).
It is, however, that same work, Plato's Republic, upon which this paper will concentrate. That seminal work, so tied up with the basis for modern political philosophy, contains Plato's basic ideas of the state and society in general. The paper will begin by an overview of the work itself, including some of the most basic premises it makes, and scholarly commentary on the same. It will then turn to Plato's actual theories of the state, including the theory of justice, ruling as an art, social organizations and education, the virtues of the state, the famous statement on philosophers as kings, and will conclude with Plato's vision of the possibility of democracy.
In broad terms, Plato's basic premise in the Republic is that values and virtues are facts - discoverable and full of truth. However,
. . . every school child knows that values are relative, and thus that the Plato who seems to derive them from facts, or treat them as facts themselves, is unsophisticated. When the case is prejudged for him in this way, how could the student ever find out that there was once another way of looking at these things that had some pl...