Plato Democracy & Good

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:

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Good therefore may be said to be the source not only of the intelligibility of the objects of knowledge, but also of their existence and reality; yet it is not itself identical with reality, but is beyond reality, and superior to it in dignity and power. (Plato's 9) The ideal state will emerge when there is order, social hierarchy, social type, and social training as discussed in the introductory paragraph. However, even when this ideal state exists it is difficult for the guardians to achieve an ideal state because it is difficult for human beings, even guardians, to achieve the good. There are five political states possible to Plato: aristocracy; timocracy; oligarchy; democracy; tyranny. However, Plato takes a dim view of democracy over this ideal state he called an aristocracy. In an aristocracy the best rule, and the only danger is that some of the Guardians who are parents will not want to relinquish their children who are not fit to be philosophers. When this occurs, the warriors and commoners lose respect for them and the warriors take over by force. A timocracy will lead in time to an oligarchy, or rule by the wealthy, when younger generations of the warriors who took over use their force to acquire wealth.

Category: Philosophy - P