Plato, Aristotle, and Machiavelli

While Socrates never comes right out and says so, which is typical of the Socratic dialectic method, it is true that his model of citizenship relies more on moral and intellectual integrity than it does on patriotism, participation or piety. This comes about most clearly in the way that Socrates distinguishes civic and philosophic virtue in his discussion of the perfect state or society.

In several places in The Republic (401e; 430c5-6; 497a, 500d), Socrates shows how the so-called civic virtue, as important as it may be for molding a citizen, does not compare to philosophic virtue (518d-519a; 520c; 619c-d). The question then becomes: what makes the virtue of the philosopher more noble, valuable and true than that of the non-philosopher?

In section 429 of The Republic, Socrates describes the difference between courage as defined by the state and courage for individual citizens: "Why, I said, every one who calls any State courageous or cowardly, will be thinking of the part which fights and goes out to war on the State's behalf à The rest of the ci

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a structure that is controlled and run by some type of wise philosopher king who, by virtue of his ability to reason out the meaning of justice and other virtues, can now instruct others to achieve the same. While there is an inherent appeal to some with respect to the superiority of achieving virtue and citizenship through philosophic means over the somewhat ritualistic giving of law (as shown in Books VI and VII of The Republic), Plato does indicate that this achievement is only reserved for the very few. Not everyone can make the leap from civic citizenship to philosophic one. Aristotle does break down the Platonic communitarian ideal that lumps citizens together as similar and seeking similar goals without really looking at the underlying individuals, insisting instead that "a state is not make up only of so many men, but of different kinds of men; for similars do not constitute a state" (Politics 1261a22-24). Again, Aristotle says of Plato's communism that it will not work in any practical way because humans will always have the tendency to care for what is theirs with much more attention than for what is "common": "Of the two qualities which chiefly inspire regard and affectionùthat a thing is your own and that it is your
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