A beautiful city?
Of all the contributions made by Plato to Western philosophical thought, probably the area that received most of his attention lay in the realm of political philosophy. As a descendant of Solon on his mother’s side, and the Athenian king, Codrus, on his father’s side, young Aristocles breathed politics as part of his everyday life.
Moreover, the defeat of Athens at the hands of the Peloponnesian League during his teens, the subsequent violence of the revolt of the democrats against the imposed Tyranny of the 30, during his early 20s, and the death of Socrates at the hands of the Athenian jury when he was about 25, riveted Plato’s attention on the problems of governance.
Plato primarily concerned himself with two questions: What is the nature of “justice,” and how best to create a truly just government?
His first attempt to answer the second question seems pretty bizarre, by modern standards, and has evoked storms of criticism from just about every political thinker from every part of what we consider the modern ideological spectrum.
However, while I have my own criticisms (which I’m about to discuss), the main thing to remember about Plato is that, while profoundly influenced the development of modern political ideological thought, he did not live in modern times. To judge or condemn Plato according to modern standards is not just a complete waste of time, it also qualifies as intellectually dishonest.
While Plato, in many ways, transcended the limitations of the thinking of his time, he was very much a product of those times and his experiences shaped his perceptions. To expect him to have provided a blueprint for political organization that qualifies as “just,” by modern standards, is wholly absurd. Instead, focus on why Plato came up with his model society, and remember that his reasons for doing so helped lay the foundations for modern Western political thought.
Plato made his first cut at a definition of an ideal society in The Republic. His model city, Kallipolis (Greek for “beautiful city,” and a name held by a number of towns and territories throughout the centuries, including the Gallipoli Peninsula, on the European coast of Turkey) drew heavily upon his analysis of the causes of Athenian defeat during the war against the Peloponnesian League led by Sparta.
In The Republic, Plato wrote that a community should properly reflect the nature of the people who comprised that community. As such, since human minds essentially had three divisions – appetite, will and reason – a properly just city would naturally divide itself into three classes – artisans, guardians and rulers.
Since most people primarily concerned themselves with their own wants and needs, with little thought to the greater good, Plato wrote, the artisan class would comprise the vast majority of the population of Kallipolis. The members of this class would conduct the day-to-day “business of business.” They’d craft the goods, build the buildings, grow the food and engage in trade, all in pursuit of wealth for themselves, so as to indulge in their own pleasures.
Plato doesn’t discuss slavery, much, in the Republic, since he likely took its existence for granted. After all, every society with which he’d ever had contact, or even heard about, in the Mediterranean Basin of the 4th Century BCE, held slaves as a matter of course. In subsistence economies that produced very limited surpluses, cheap labor made up most of the difference between prosperity and bare survival, and no one labors more cheaply than a slave its owner can work to death.
Additionally, since most of the members of the artisan class were effectively enslaved to their own appetites, anyway, Plato likely didn’t see that much difference between the slaves and their owners.
The enslavement of the artisan class to their own appetites also meant that, in Plato’s view, they had absolutely no place in governance, and should have no say in the administration of Kallipolis. In this we see a projection of Plato’s own experiences. After all, the populist democrats who took control of Athens after the revolt against the Thirty condemned Socrates to death for daring to question their religious beliefs and traditional values.
Socrates offended the tender sensibilities of the commoners (and had an unfortunate number of friends in the aristocracy), and they killed him for it. The willingness of the vast majority of the people to spurn justice in the name of indulging their bitter resentments meant that, to Plato, they should never have any ability to exercise any political power, whatsoever – and that included military service.
Instead, Plato said a different class should concern itself with the security of the city and the defeat of its enemies. This “guardian class” would consist of the strongest and bravest of the city, who had demonstrated the will to put themselves on the line, selflessly, to protect others.
Not surprisingly, Plato based the guardian class on what he considered an idealized version of Sparta’s agoge system. The guardians would train for war from childhood, live a simple barracks existence, and never have their own individual families. Rather, the guardian-class men and women would live together as a vast, extended family, each having sex freely with one another (remember, the prurient Jude0-Christian view of sexual morality in modern times did not exist, in Classical Greece) and holding all the children in common.
Those charged with ruling over the entire city were, of course, the most rational fraction of the general population – to wit, the philosophers modeled after Socrates and his students. As with Socrates, the philosopher rulers would accept no payment for their services. Rather, they would devote themselves to the betterment of Kallipolis, as a whole, would receive small stipends to meet their simple needs, but could own no property and have no families of their own. Instead, they would consider the entire community as family, and work on its behalf.
Plato’s command that Kallipolis should forbid guardians and rulers from having their own families forthrightly acknowledged that human beings almost inevitably give their own children precedence over others, in all things. As such, rulers and soldiers who had their own children would almost certainly work to promote the welfare and interests of their own kids to the detriment of other families, other children. To Plato, only by forbidding guardians and rulers from having their own families could Kallipolis avoid the inevitable creation of ruling dynasties that included members who, even though they might prove utterly incompetent and even tyrannical, would nonetheless have access to power and authority simply by virtue of birth.
This, of course, raised the question of why would philosophers, whom Plato noted preferred lives of quiet contemplation and rational inquiry, ever want to trouble themselves with the pestiferous cacophony of governance?
In The Republic, Plato wrote that philosophers would agree to take on the onerous burden of rulership, not because they relished the exercise of power (which he called just another appetite, and a particularly harmful and unhealthy one), but because they had no desire to live in a city ruled by those less competent.
Essentially, the philosophers would do the job because they wanted it done right, and since nobody could do it better, it would have to be them.
This, of course, raised some interesting questions, including one that asked, “Since the philosopher-rulers couldn’t have families of their own, how did they sustain their numbers?”
Plato responded with advocacy for social mobility. Since the philosophers devoted most of their attention to the welfare of the city, they’d have the ability to identify the best and brightest children, of any class. Those children in the artisan class who demonstrated a strength of character that caused them to protect others, selflessly, could move into the guardian class.
The children of the guardian class who demonstrated bright and inquisitive minds would enter an academy and receive years of education as philosophers. The course of instruction would include art, stories, poetry, songs and myths all deliberately and carefully designed to reinforce in the minds of the students the exceptional nature of Kallipolis, and emotionally commit them to the health and well-being of its citizenry. Those who succeeded in the rigorous courses of instruction (which Plato described in some detail) would eventually take the reins of leadership as wholly dedicated and indoctrinated rulers.
In such a society, where human differences were forthrightly acknowledged, and the best and brightest ruled in the interest of providing protection and service for the good of all, Plato thought justice and virtue would likely prevail. A just and virtuous city, in Plato’s mind, acted with unity in the name of the community interest, and avoided the factionalism based on selfish interests that he considered a lethal disease of the body politic.
This factionalism, Plato wrote, resulted in the disintegration of the entire community, and explained the defeat of the Athenian Empire at the hands of Sparta, where the agoge system created far greater social cohesion.
As noted, by modern standards this seems utterly bizarre and many critics have written reams that condemn some or all of these ideas. Leftist communitarians laud the prohibition of private property ownership in the guardian and ruling classes, but condemn the hierarchical nature of the system and Plato’s tacit acceptance of slavery.
Rightist authoritarians, of course, welcome the notion of “rule of the best,” but condemn Plato’s disdain for personal wealth and family ties, as well as his contempt for the unthinking acceptance of traditional norms and religious values he mostly considered harmfully irrational.
Meanwhile, those (including me) who consider individualism a fundamental aspect of human nature find utterly appalling Plato’s advocacy of overt, comprehensive indoctrination in the name of social cohesion and avoidance of internal strife.
In point of fact, while Plato likely considered Kallipolis the best possible community, he forthrightly acknowledged that, given the realities of human nature (at least as he understood them), no one could ever create a real city based on his model. In later works (Laws and Statesman), Plato discussed laws and policies that might slowly transform existing societies so as to make them more just (or, at least, less unjust).
So, what’s the point, then? If human nature meant Kallipolis could never actually appear, why bother to study The Republic, at all?
The answer is that, in The Republic, Plato presented ideas that continue to profoundly influence our understanding of what government should do, and what public officials ought to be.
Firstly, Plato and his students (most likely based on the ideas of Socrates, before them) argued that proper governance required mastery of a set of skills unlike those used in any other endeavor. Those who governed competently did so because they understood that government operations required a talent for the professional skill of “statecraft.”
The art of Statecraft, to them, was just as much its own professional skill as pottery or merchant trade. It resembled medicine more than any other profession, since it focused entirely on the well-being of others, with all other considerations such as personal wealth held as subordinate in importance.
This meant that, secondly, those who governed must ideally do so for selfless, unselfish motives. To exercise statecraft meant to govern for the good of all, and not on behalf of one or two particular factions. Moreover, to exercise government power simply to increase one’s own wealth and indulge one’s own pleasures counted as a grotesquely immoral betrayal of the trust of the entire community.
Thirdly, of course, was the notion that people should subject government to rational analysis, at all – as much as any natural phenomenon. The key difference between Socrates and his students, and the pre-Socratic philosophers, is that Socrates said philosophy should not only focus on the natural world, but also subject to rational analysis all aspects of human behavior. That included not just governance, but also religious beliefs, traditional cultural attitudes, economic activity, and even sexual behavior and family structure.
To Socrates and his students, every aspect of the human experience, without exception, must be subject to the rules of reason and the discipline of logic. Only by doing so could one discover the underlying irrational inconsistencies that resulted in the cruel and unjust behavior that lay at the root of human misery, and caused people and societies to act self-destructively.
Links:
http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.html
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-ethics-politics/
http://etc.usf.edu/maps/pages/4200/4245/4245.htm