In Plato’s Republic, the ideal state is achieved by the purposeful training of guardians (i.e., philosophers) of the state who have been trained to know the good. When leaders know the good they will necessarily act for the good for the state. Within Plato’s idea of the ideal state there are three classes: philosophers; warriors; commoners. Plato’s idea of the soul embodies three parts or interests also: reason; spirit; desire. Each individual has one of these parts of the soul that is dominant, thus a philosopher is interested in knowledge, a warrior in honor, and a commoner in pleasure. To be virtuous, the philosopher must possess wisdom, the warrior, courage, and the commoner, temperance. The philosophers are the only ones capable of ruling with justice which is a combination of wisdom, courage, and temperance. Also, only the philosophers or guardians, after a long period of training, are fit to rule the ideal state because only they will know the good and, thus, act in accordance with the good. There is no room for happiness or individual liberty in Plato’s ideal state, concepts common to democracy. Instead, Plato views democracy as basically anarchy where the masses who are interested in desire and pleasure are free to do what they want individually, slave and owner and male and female alike, without regard for the good. Democracy is an extreme, one where individual liberty runs rampant:
‘Then in democracy,’ I went on, ‘there’s no compulsion either to exercise authenticity if you are capable of it, or to submit to authority if you don’t want to; you needn’t fight if there’s a war, or you can wage a private war in peacetime if you don’t like peace; and if there’s any law that debars you from political or judicial office, you will none the less take either if they come your way. It’s a wonderfully pleasant way of carrying on in the short run, isn’t it?’
The philosophy of Plato that ...