Plato’s Philosophy in “The Republic” Essay

Introduction

Among the great Philosophers in Greek was Plato who wrote a book by the title Republic where he explained most of his philosophy concerning education and the government (Fahey, 2008, p.1). Plato took after his teacher Socrates who was also a philosopher. In the Republic, Plato focuses on justice and its application in the societal institutions. He further goes to describe his ideal society with justice being the main theme of the book.

In his description of the ideal society, Plato explains that people in the society are not advised to act without knowledge such that before a city is erected, full understanding of justice should be known (Fahey, 2008, p.1). According to Plato, an ideal society included the people fulfilling their assigned roles thus making up a harmonious functioning society.

Plato focused on the needs of the people rather than their happiness as the essentials of building up an idea society. This paper is therefore a critical analysis of Plato’s philosophical thoughts, arguments and ideological description with regard to his book entitled the Republic.

Discussion

In his definition of justice, Plato borrowed from Socrates who defined justice to entail righteousness or worthiness. It is because of this that Plato held that a just state would be run by philosopher guardians. In this, Plato argued that a state had to hold the four great virtues which are; wisdom, justice, temperance and courage (Martin, 2009, p. 2). This would therefore make it to be ‘ruled by the best’ which in Greek is termed as aristocracy. Plato goes further to divide the ideal state into three sections, upper, middle and lower.

The lowest end is composed of the producers who form the majority of the state’s population. The middle section entails the auxiliaries who are the army and the police force. The upper section forms the smallest percentage of the population and it is composed of the brightest people hence the rulers hence Plato refers to them as the Guardians. It is from this that Plato therefore recommends that Philosopher kings are the rulers, or Guardians, of Plato’s Utopian Kallipolis.

If his ideal city-state is to ever come into being, “philosophers [must] become kings…or those now called kings [must]…genuinely and adequately philosophize” (Blankenship, 1996, p. 72). In my opinion I think Plato was right on this argument despite the fact that an idea; state would be very hard to achieve. Personally, I feel that a government that is ruled by philosophers would be a “perfect” one as achievement of enlightenment would be among the important aspects of life in that state.

The fact that the philosopher Kings or rulers would be enlightened, this means that they would be incorruptible, wise, just and selfless. The main shortcoming of this ideology would be that of determining who genuine philosophers are and if they would be able to work in this changing environment made up of many corrupt people.

Even the philosophers are prone to vices such as corruption and therefore completely being dependent on them for good leadership would not be a right decision. In his book, the Republic, Plato does not forget to quote that the ‘guardians’ are very hard to find since they are few and of special knowledge. However, on the issue of Plato’s’ division of the society, it is fair and ethical as all people are deemed to be equal.

On the other part, Plato goes ahead to explain that given their education, talents, virtues and the way their lives would be controlled in his Republic, such people are the best possible rulers. On this, Plato argues that the rulers or guardians should not come from the common people and that they should display outstanding professional skills (Okpala, 2009, p.1).

This is agreeable due to the fact that an ideal state requires to be manned by people with talents or rather born leaders. This is because such people have proper control, of their lives and would therefore in the same way control the republic in a good way.

Conclusion

From the above discussion, it can be clearly concluded that to some extent Plato’s arguments and ideologies were on the right. For one, he emphasized on his theme of Justice in his book, the Republic whereby he defined the term and explained what justice entailed in the society (Spielvogel, 2010, p. 59). Therefore when Plato commented that the rulers of an ideal state had to be philosophers or rather practice philosophy, he was right and justified since those were the more enlightened people in the society. That is together with the educated, talented and virtuous people who had control of their lives.

Reference List

Blankenship, J. D. (1996). Education and the arts in Plato’s Republic. Journal of Education, 178(3), 67-98.

Fahey, T. (2008). An Introduction to Plato’s Republic. Web.

Martin, G. (2009). Meanings and origins of phrases and sayings. The Phrase Finder. Web.

Okpala, O. (2009). Plato’s Republic vs. Democracy. Web.

Spielvogel, J. (2010). Western Civilization: A Brief History. Cengage Learning.