ausibility? The text becomes a mirror in which he sees only himself. Or, as Nietzsche put i t, the scholars dig up what they themselves buried (Bloom, 1968, p. x).
Plato's theory of the State is, however, derived in close connection with his views on ethics. One must remember that Greek life during Plato's time was essentially communal, lived out of loyalty to the polis (city-state) and the responsibilities it engendered. In Plato's view, then, a person could not be good and moral if he was not a part of the State. Since society is considered to be a rational institution, it is only through society and the State that any good can become possible. The State can never be tyrannical, nor can it be superfluous, since it is in the very nature of mankind that some sort of authority exist. Indeed, the morality of man being combined with the State is focused by Plato in the notion that the morality of life is the same for both humans and the entity of the State. One must thus be moral for the other to become a part of it, and the absolute moral code that binds man to the State naturally binds the state to the individual, thus to society at large as well (Coppleston, 1985, p. 223).
Nevertheless, Plato's work must stand in its contemporaneous light - there had not been a Renaissance nor an Enlightenment when Plato wrote the Republic, and any idea that Plato was a liberal democrat are surely inappropriate. So, too, are the ideas that Plato was advocating a communist system, at least in the sense of Marxism, or Fascism. Indeed, "Marxist communism and fascism are incompatible with the
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