one man instead of many, will he be ready to go about . . . affairs of state (Plato, 141-2).
The aim of a state governed by temperate and virtuous rulers is to project justice from the realm of psychological concept into real-world praxis. Significantly, the harmony and temperateness of the political tone is set at the top, which is why the education of the ruler in justice and virtue is so important, which is why personal virtue, or justice as a habit of mind, requires training.
This conception of rulership legitimacy implies the famous Platonic suspicion of poets, who in their idiosyncrasy are just as likely to represent what is foul as what is fair. Because what they produce will be absorbed by the future guardians of the commonwealth as a part of their education, and because these future guardians are meant to function out of a harmonious and not distracted habit of mind, poets of the republic must be compelled "on pain of expulsion, to make their poetry the express image of noble character . . . We would not have our Guardians grow up among representa
...