PLATO

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PLATO

Born in Athens in 427 BC he witnessed the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta and
their allies; he saw bitter conflict often erupting into civil war within the polis itself. The Athenian
democracy was overthrown in 411 and was occupied by Spartan forces in 404 BC. Under the
pressure of historical events, the ideal of the polis as a moral, political, social and religious unit did
not translate itself into moral, political and social unity. The unit was not unified and this historical
outcome, allied to the Socratic revelation of the tension between politics and philosophy, led Plato
to re-examine the nature of Athenian democracy as the starting point for the careful reconstruction
of the polis. Athens's defeat and Socrates's execution indicated political and moral failure; there
was a sickness in public life and Plato's task was to describe its symptoms, analyse its cause, and
then go on to recommend the cure.

For Plato, the symptoms of the disease were very much mirror images of what the Athenians
took to be signs of health. It is the appearance of democracy. In Republic Plato attempts to reveal
the reality behind its superficial appeal. He admits that 'the diversity of its characters, like the
different colours in a patterned dress, make it look very attractive'. There is liberty and freedom of
speech; this freedom to do as one likes is not a principle but the absence of principle. So with the
democratic belief in equality, it is really an inability or refusal to discriminate between the
worthwhile and the harmful. In the absence of a good environment and good training, good
character cannot result. The truth behind democracy is class war. Freedom and equality which lay
behind the concept of citizenship are both attacked in favour of order and based on discrimination.

Both the democrats and Plato agree on the importance of freedom and equality as
characteristics of democracy; for the former these lead to participation and responsible rule, for
the latter to an inevitable lowering and compromising of standards, given that success is deter -
mined by the need to gain support by appeal to self-interest, by appeal to mass opinion. With the
democrats and Plato, the one sees toleration, the other permissiveness; the one accountability, the
other pandering. Plato questions whether a political system could arrive at morally-sound answers
when its basis is nothing more than the false belief that those who are born free are born equal
and that this gives them a right to rule.

In a democracy people want to hear only sentiments which correspond to their own character;
politicians must not only pander to the people, they must adopt their values and thus become like
them to achieve popular success. A retreat into private life was also ruled out; leaving politics to the
politicians would be to abandon the Socratic legacy of seeing philosophy as the supremely relevant
factor in men's lives. The only legitimate option was neither reform nor quietism but a
revolutionary reconstruction of society. Before this, however, Plato needed to diagnose more
accurately the disease which lay behind the liberty and equality which were only the symptoms of a
condition.

If the field were architecture or medicine we would expect understanding of the art, evidence of
capability, and successful experience. If the purpose of public life is securing the good of the

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citizens rather than the gratification of the desire for pleasure, then should we not apply the same
tests? And if we do, all Athenian statesmen fail. If goodness is the purpose, then they fail. Their
essential weakness is this ignorance of the true purpose. Only philosophy asks the proper questions
and places the good of the community on the political agenda. But as we see, philosophy even
though it is needed it is not wanted. While it alone can cure the disease of ignorance with which
politics is riddled, its curative role is not understood. Goodness can only be achieved in politics with
the philosophy and its quest for wisdom. But it is not possible for the good man, to enter the
political arena without corrupting his moral character. Politics necessarily involves the dirtying of
hands; where medicine is taken because we recognize our sickness, knowledge is resisted because
we fail to see our ignorance. Thus knowledge cannot be grafted on to the existing system; society
must be reorganized with knowledge as its basis. Power must be made subordinate to wisdom.

Democracy, can be defined as rule by the citizen-body, is in fact rule by the amateur, which
means rule by the ignorant. Socrates's mission was to convince the individual to convert his opinion
into knowledge through questioning, but Plato's eventual position is that the ultimate moral truths
are accessible only to the highly-trained philosopher. The Socratic ideal of self-knowledge and self-
mastery is transferred into the authority of the wise few over the unwise many. In a reconstructed
society the knowledge essential to its moral and political perfection will be provided by the few.
Where Socrates emphasized the perfectibility of individuals, Plato is concerned to create a social
order that will make the best of individuals as they are.

Plato accepts human deficiencies, our inability or unwillingness to follow the voice of reason,
but rather than throw us on the moral scrap-heap of history, desires to create an environment
where we can still lead morally good lives. And this is possible only if the ruling element is in the
hands of wisdom not of wealth or glory. If politics is dominated by the wealthy, the military or the
many, it will be used to serve their purposes. The world of struggle, competition, change, conflict,
disagreement, a world where freedom and equality seem to reign, which we may recognize as the
world of politics, is replaced by a world where philosophy rules and light replaces darkness. The
politician, responsive to the diverse and conflicting interests of the community, is replaced by the
ruler responsive only to the demands of truth and goodness.

Virtue is still knowledge, but the knowledge of the few. And this knowledge is there to be
discovered, making the participation, discussion and debate of the democratic polis unnecessary
and irrelevant. This revolutionary change will put public life above political contests; in a sense the
sickness of politics will be cured. The world of philosophy and the world of politics will be united,
enabling the good man for the first time to enter public life and establish the reign of virtue. Thus
we have a clear model for interpreting political life, the model of disease. Its symptoms are variety,
versatility, conflict and disagreement; where its causing ignorance; and its cure is knowledge.

The road to knowledge takes us first through the area of opinion before we can emerge into the
light of truth. The subject under discussion is justice or doing right and Plato, speaking through the
character of Socrates, must first disprove a number of false views before embarking on his own

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search for justice, a search which aims to answer both the question of how people ought to live
their moral lives and of how a community ought to be organized.

In examining the views of others the aim is to reveal the status of those views as opinion, that
something which cannot be knowledge. This approach clearly owes much to the Socratic method,
but early on in the Republic Plato hints at the departure. Where Socrates aims at moral
improvement through rational discussion, Plato, aware that most will refuse or unable to engage in
this process. 'You can't persuade people who won't listen.' In that case they must be told. People
who put their passions and appetites first cannot be expected to appreciate the importance of
reason, and so reason must be made to dominate appetite rather than engage in a hopeless
dialogue with it. ……………. ……………….. …………………. ……………….

The first attempt to define justice or doing right comes from Cephalous whose definition is
reformulated by Socrates. Cephalous seeks to live rightly by conforming to customary rules, but he
lacks understanding. The point of the argument is that justice must be understood in a much
deeper way in order to see when and where exceptions are justified. Rules are not regulations, and
to apply them needs a sensitivity which can only come from an understanding.

The view that certain behaviour, unacceptable within a group, is acceptable to those outside it,
has always had a powerful appeal, but for it to be a moral principle it has to discriminate on more
important grounds than those of friendship or enmity. Friends may be bad and enemies good. For,
Polemarchus's understanding of what is due to a person is limited to helping or harming, and for
Socrates it is never right to harm a person. The just man will wish to harm no one. Polemarchus like
Cephalus has opinion.

Plato's criticism of morality is based on its lack of a rational basis. He does not mean to reject
morality. The doubt which Plato reveals is shared by, but distinguished from, the Sophists. Plato's
aim is to replace opinion by a fuller understanding, not by an acceptance that everything is opinion
and that therefore power determines the dominant opinion which in turn attains the status of
truth. Plato's use of doubt is aimed at enlightenment. The challenge represented by Thrasymachus
is crucial. The debate seems to be about justice, in the end it is about how to study society. Up to
now philosophy has performed a critical and clarifying role; Plato has to establish it now as the key
to understanding human activity.

Thrasymachus's argument rests on the view that any activity can be understood by examining
the actions of its practitioners, whereas Socrates believes that what needs understanding are the
standards involved in the activity, which give the activity its characteristic quality and enable us to
judge those who practise it. Thrasymachus, believes that behaviour is the key to arriving at a
definition, and the observation of such behaviour tells him that morality is simply a reflection of the
interest of the dominant class in society. Justice or right is 'what is ın the interest of the stronger
party'. Thus the content of morality will change depending on the kind of political rule in existence,
and to be good it needs to conform to the dictates of the ruling power. Power is the determinant of
morality; there is no true morality apart from this. Socrates, as we have seen, seeks for a goodness

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which transcends changing power relationships and so he must establish the superiority of his
method over that of the Sophists and their acceptance of the relative nature of moral standards. If
the content of justice changes with the political balance of power, then the study of justice will
simply produce a list not a true definition.

This series of discussions which take place in the Republic can be said to represent Plato's
tribute to the Socratic method but also his recognition of its limits. Justice is not the product of
human decision; that it can be transgressed does not mean that it can be changed, that it can be
ignored does not mean that it can be destroyed. To discover justice we must picture a just
community; as none has so far existed, this must be a city.

The founding of the good city takes place in stages and the first key to its origins and structure is
that 'the individual is not self-sufficient but has many needs which he can't supply himself'. Plato's
second key to understanding society, which is that we all 'have different aptitudes, which fit us for
different jobs'. A simple society can satisfy all its need effectively if it recognizes these basic natural
principles. Division of labour reflects nature and maximizes production and ensures its quality. All
benefit from the harmony and co-operation that naturally exists.

Such a city is healthy, sociable and happy but eventually found wanting. Innocence and harmony
are threatened by its very success; as the luxuries of civilization develop and the polis is enlarged
and complicated, war and antagonism result. A new need arises - the need to fight for the city's
interests and defend its citizens - and given the previous principle of matching needs to aptitudes
then this need too is met by those competent and skilled in it. The most able must be chosen to
meet this military need, as they were to meet society's material needs.

In developing this picture of a society in which all human needs are most efficiently met, there is
a vital need so far unmentioned and that is the political need. The question of who should rule is
crucial, and it is on this question of qualification for ruling that Plato condemns all existing
constitutions. What are the proper criteria for choosing rulers? Should it be their wealth, birth,
colour, eloquence, religion? With the other needs - material and military - Plato believes that the
skills necessary have been fairly uncontroversially outlined. In each case the best fitted have been
chosen, and ruling too must follow this principle.

Nature has created differences amongst us - we are born with gold, silver, or iron and bronze
within us, determining respectively our potential to be rulers, auxiliaries, or farmers, tradesmen,
craftsmen - and out of these differences comes social unity. However, although the unity is natural
it is not inevitable; society must be carefully structured and obstacles removed so that each class
performs its proper function. The greatest danger to the delicate balance so far created lies in the
rulers and auxiliaries; in order to ensure that their priority is always the city as a whole, they will
have no private property nor family life; such institutions amongst them would be divisive and
corrupting, leading to a harsh tyranny rather than a genuine partnership. The city is only safe if the
different kinds of power which arise in society - economic, military and political - are carefully and
separated.

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In brief outline we now have Plato's description of a well-run polis, one that is happy, efficient
and unified. Justice will be located within it, and reflecting as it will the natural quality of the
society, justice too will be natural and not the product of convention or opinion. If the polis is
indeed perfect, then Plato believes it will have within it the qualities of wisdom, courage, discipline
and justice, and Plato proceeds to account for the first three of these in the belief that this will
isolate justice, the object of his search, more easily.

Wisdom exists in the city because of the good judgement of the rulers; there are many skills in
the city but the form of skill exercised on behalf of the city as a whole is possessed only by the
Guardians, and it is this smallest group by virtue of its knowledge and its position of authority that
enables us to call the city wise. There can be wise men in a city but unless they can stamp their
character on the city by reason of their ruling position the city will not be wise as a whole. Similarly
with courage - the auxiliaries are brave and they contribute this quality to the city because of their
role as soldiers. Discipline, on the other hand, is not present in a particular part of the city but is a
harmony that runs throughout it; it is the agreement by both government and subjects about who
ought to rule. The spirit of co-operation and mutual benefit which Plato portrayed is transformed
into a spirit of partnership and a consent to the city which then developed to meet men's needs.

Justice too is a quality that has been present throughout Plato's picture of the growth of a good
city. We are all naturally suited to one task. It is a variant of 'minding your own business and not
interfering with other people'. It is the crucial virtue without which none of the others can survive,
for if the members of the city fail to realize their own unique roles as laid down by nature, then all
roles will be exercised ineffectively, because done by the wrong people, and thus the city will be
robbed of its wisdom and courage, and discipline will break down. if we realize our natures by
developing our inherent potentials, then we fulfil ourselves and do so in a way that contributes to
the life of the city by satisfying its basic needs. Thus justice is the interest of all; there are classes
but no class conflict, there is differentiation but no disunity, there is hierarchy but no oppression. In
discovering the reality of social life Plato has uncovered its true morality.

In order to highlight the perfection of this city, Plato shows how what we take to be the real
world is in fact a degeneration from the reality and thus the morality which he has so far described.
Power has in fact been held not by a selfless ruling group dedicated to the good of the city but by a
military elite, a wealthy few, the many poor, or worst of all the brutal tyrant. This power in turn has
served the interests of military glory, greed, freedom or criminality, thus emphasizing the point
that injustice is always the result of a deviation from the principle laid down in his perfect city that
unless men perform their natural roles, the city becomes diseased and power is utilized for the self-
interest of particular groups. Thus soldiers are ruling where they should stick to soldiering, wealthy
are ruling where they should keep to making money, poor rule when they should be producing, or
the unfittest takes power where he should be restrained. These are practical examples of injustice,
of what happens when we deviate from our roles. Justice demands the separation of different
kinds of power, reflecting the differentiation of different kinds of people and the roles appropriate
to those born of gold, silver, or iron and bronze.

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So much for the 'pattern in heaven' that Plato claims to have discovered. Two key claims have to
be discussed before this largely political picture can be fully appreciated. First, the psychological
basis that men are born naturally different, which lead us to Plato's treatment of justice in the
individual soul. Second, the epistemological basis - that the attainment of knowledge is possible,
which will lead us to look more carefully at the Guardians and their qualification for ruling.

Justice in the state is a matter of each of the three elements performing its proper function,
Plato goes on to describe the individual soul in a similar way. Human character is made up of
reason (philosophic), spirit and appetite. We are wise if our reason rules our nature, brave if our
spirit acts as reason's natural ally, and disciplined if these elements control the appetites in a spirit
of harmonious agreement. As with the city and its 3 classes, so justice in the soul is only possible if
each element performs its proper function. An unjust soul is one at war with itself.

However, as we have seen from Plato's perfect city, it is not a city of perfect people but one
made up of people with different ruling elements in their soul. Perfection is possible because of the
right ordering of these elements. In the good city we are all just by our membership of it but the
outline of justice in the individual soul suggests that in in terms of inward justice only those whose
own reason rules can be spiritually or Platonically just. If true virtue is knowledge then it seems
that only the rulers possess it; the rest have at best true opinion and attain political justice thanks
to the correct ordering of the society. Thus Plato's recognition of the irrational element in the
human psyche leads to his insistence that only its control by the rational element will allow people
to lead good lives, but also that this rational control must for most people be provided by others. It
is few who can attain psychic harmony or Platonic justice without the ordered structure provided
by the good city. For most of us our only chance to live a good life depends on our membership of a
good society. For those whose reason is weak, happiness can only come through the restraint
provided by a correct social order. Freedom on the other hand leads to social disunity,
psychological distress, and injustice. The few, whose souls are independently and rationally
ordered, must provide the framework whereby the many achieve dependent goodness. Thus the
institutions of social order are important because nature demands them and makes them
necessary. If we were all primarily rational then the Socratic aim of individual improvement
through discussion might be possible; we are not, and therefore the solution to moral
improvement lies in social reconstruction. The form of the city and the discovery of justice in it
depends on the view that by nature we are born different and this difference makes us natural
rulers or natural subjects.

Thus the key to Plato's analysis of justice lies in the character of the city and the character of the
individual. If they are ordered correctly then he assumes that good behaviour will follow. Morality
is now fundamentally about the quality of people. For justice to be present, an ordered life under
the rule of reason must exist. If we seek justice we must accept order, both the hierarchical
ordering of the city and of the soul. To do otherwise is to reject the superiority of reason, and
because morality is founded on knowledge this amounts to a rejection of morality itself.

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At the heart of both the Socratic and the Platonic view of the world lies the distinction between
opinion and knowledge the one linked to the world of appearance and the other to the world of
reality. Plato's task is now to indicate more fully the nature of this reality and the knowledge of it
which is open to those few whose reason dominates their souls. Plato's difficulty is that the reality
in which he believes cannot be communicated in the language of appearance to which we are
accustomed. His view of the real involves a rejection of our 'real' world.

Given the impossibility of direct description of this world to those who inhabit the unreliable
world of the senses, Plato makes use of a number of metaphors to illuminate his position and to
answer three distinct but related questions: Does knowledge exist? Is it attainable? Is it useful? In
exploring the first of these questions Plato is looking more closely at the world of philosophy, the
world of those naturally fitted for political leadership; in the second, the training they must
undergo to reach such wisdom; in the third, the role they must then play in the life of the city.

The philosophers alone have a state of mind which is one of knowledge not belief; their hearts
are fixed on a reality unaffected by change and decay; their pleasures are entirely in the things of
the mind. They seek for knowledge of absolute reality and of the most fundamental form, that of
the Good itself. Just as the eye with the power of sight is dependent for seeing on the existence of
the sun as the source of light, so the mind for understanding is dependent on the existence of the
Good as the source of truth. Visibility depends on the sun, intelligibility depends on the truth.
Whatever understanding we claim assumes the possibility of a full understanding, the existence of
a truth about reality. To disagree about the beauty of an object presupposes that beauty exists;
arguments about justice are possible because its perfect form exists in a world above the world of
opinion in which such arguments take place. And so for all particular things seen imperfectly or
comprehended dimly in our world of appearance, there exist the true forms in the world of reality,
the source of whatever knowledge we manage to attain.

Even if this be true in principle, even if logically ideas do exist independently then how is such
knowledge to be attained? If there is a world of forms, of perfect ideas, above the physical world,
how is this to be grasped? Most of us are limited by our existence in the visible world but the
philosopher must ascend to ultimate truth. The divided line is Plato's indication of such a progres -
sion. The line is like a ladder with only the philosopher capable of climbing it. The more the mind is
able to deal with pure ideas and thus moves from the sensible world, the deeper its understanding.
Thus, as well as a natural aptitude, the potential philosopher needs a long and rigorously controlled
education in the mathematical disciplines and pure philosophy. Only then will mastery of the
knowledge appropriate to a philosopher be gained.

Even then, for this knowledge to be useful, the potential guardians must gain some practical
experience in the life. They may have escaped from the cave but they must practise their skill with
the rest which still in the cave. We are like prisoners mistaking the shadows in the gloomy cave for
reality, and the philosopher liberated from such illusions must then readjust his sight in order to
perform well in the sensible world of politics.

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Even if Plato's knowledge exists, and even if it is attainable by the few philosophers, will this
knowledge of another, perfect world be relevant in a world which subject as it is to change and
decay cannot itself be known? For Plato this 'pattern in heaven', even if permanently unattainable,
is a necessary vision for effective political action. The North Star is unreachable yet its light is the
guide for any safe navigation. Plato's Republic offers a similar guide to overcome the injustices and
turmoil of a world of politics which usually overwhelms the search for goodness. Only in this way
can the tension, brought out so clearly by Socrates, between politics and truth, be resolved.

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