Political Philosophy: Plato

So you want to read Plato's Republic, eh?  Why would you do that?  

Before we start this, I have my routine terminology dump.  Ok.  The four virtues of the state are wisdom(of the leaders), courage(of the warriors), temperance(self control of the people), and justice.

Quick overview:  Socrates is drinking at a party with his pals, and some dude comes in, is happy, and dies.    In typical Socratic fashion, the philosophers begin debating what justice is.  

Socrates is the superior philosopher here, and also the main character.  He begins by deciding what a “just” person is.  Here begins the first and main point that he makes:

A person’s soul has three parts: reason, spirit, and appetite.  Socrates sees reasonable as being the most best with appetitive as the worst.  So he sets out to construct a political system that reflects the three parts of the soul.

A theoretical city, Kallipolis, is created that is supposedly the perfect system.  (Sorry, Clu fans, there is no glowing disk wars here)  In it, the populous is split into three groups, where the leaders of the city are philosophers.  The reasoning behind putting philosophers in charge is not because Socrates is a philosopher, but because they are driven primarily by the reasonable part of the soul.  The second class is that of the warriors.  These are driven by the spirited part of the soul.  The last group is the merchant-class.  They are appetitive.  

There is a lot of other stuff rolling around within these early chapters, like forced sterilization, a breeding-lottery, and gender equality.  But that isn’t political philosophy, that’s ethics, and we might talk about that with ethics later.

The next thing to talk about is Plato’s “decline of the regimes”.  This discusses what would eventually happen to a country if left to govern itself, and it’s shockingly accurate. o.o  Let’s start with the top and work our way down, shall we?

Aristocracy is the beginning, and if you don’t know what that is, I’ll rephrase it.  Monarchy.  Most European countries began with a monarchy, so let’s examine England.  It had one person take control, with a gentry, and it works alright for a little while.  Decline as people stop seeking knowledge.

Timocracy is similar to aristocracy, but the rulers are not driven by knowledge, they are driven by honor.  This is not a commonly used system, but it must be included.  The aristocratic man is one that is essentially a philosopher, while the timocratic man is essentially a warrior.  Decline as honor is not enough.

Oligarchy is a dangerous toy to play with, and it is related to timocracy, except that an oligarchical man is driven by greed and is basically a merchant.  Plato likes to repeat himself.  Throughout a whole book.  Uuuugghhh,  Decline as oligarchy ends in ruin.

Democracy is the system we know, and here things actually get tricky.  People do not want a country that is driven by people who want money, they want one driven by justice.  However, without the philosopher-king, people do not know what justice actually is.  They just want rights, man.  Decline as justice is abused and anarchy is born.

Tyranny is the absence of justice, temperance, courage, or wisdom.  There is so much anarchy that people beg for any amount of order to come around, so a person, a tyrannical person, steps into power and all sorts of disaster ensues.  

Of course, the decline of the regimes should be called the cycle of the regimes.  With a tyrant in power, people notice how dumb the leader is, and they seek a wise man to lead them.... hence.... returning to the aristocracy, where a philosopher-king exists.

Why did I go into so much detail there?  We’ll actually connect to The Prince when we move on to Machiavelli in... 3... 2.... 1...