Plato Excerpt from the Republic by Plato Plato
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INTRODUCTION TO THE POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY THAT INFLUENCED THE FOUNDING FATHERS: PLATO EXCERPT FROM THE REPUBLIC BY PLATO PLATO- (c. 427-347 B.C.) developed several distinct areas of philosophy. His deep influence on Western philosophy is asserted in the famous remark of Alfred North Whitehead: “the safest characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.” He was also the prototypical political philosopher whose ideas had a profound impact on subsequent political theory. His greatest impact was Aristotle, but he influenced Western political thought in many ways. The Academy, the school he founded in 385 B.C.E., became the model for other schools of higher learning and later for European universities. Plato believed that the conflicting interests of different parts of society can be harmonized. The best, rational and righteous, political order, which he proposes, leads to a harmonious unity of society and allows each of its parts to flourish, but not at the expense of others. The theoretical design and practical implementation of such order, he argues, are impossible without virtue. Although The Republic, The Statesman, The Laws and a few shorter dialogues are considered to be the only strictly political dialogues of Plato, it can be argued that political philosophy was the area of his greatest concern. For Plato, making decisions about the right political order are, along with the choice between peace and war, the most important choices one can make in politics. Such decisions cannot be left solely to public opinion, he believes, which in many cases does not have enough foresight and gets its lessons only post factum from disasters recorded in history. This, then, becomes a critique of the democracy with which Athens, the political state in which he was governed, operates under. In this system, all free male citizens are expected to participate in the everyday decision making of the state, through voting on issues and serving on juries. Plato believed that the polis (a Greek word for city-state, and from where we get the words politics and policy) was the natural form of government, arising from the need of producers (i.e. farmers) for protection from crime and war, warriors from the need for a regular food source and justification for their actions, and thinking people (philosophers) from the need for both protection and food. In his magnum opus, The Republic, Plato puts forth the idea of the tripartite society governed by Philosopher Kings. The philosopher-rulers enjoy respect and contemplative leisure, but not wealth or honors; the guardian class, the second class in the city, military honors, but not leisure or wealth; and the producer class, family life, wealth, and freedom of enterprise, but not honors or rule. Then, the producers supply the city with goods; the guardians, defend it; and the philosophers, attuned to virtue and illuminated by goodness, rule it impartially for the common benefit of all citizens. The three different social classes engage in mutually beneficial enterprise, by which the interests of all are best served. Social and economic differences, i.e. departures from equality, bring about benefits to people in all social positions, and therefore, are justified. In the Platonic vision of the Republic, all social classes get to perform what they are best fit to do and are unified into a single community by mutual interests. In this sense, although each is different, they are all friends. In The Republic, Plato depicts his mentor Socrates as having a conversation about justice with a young friend named Glaucon, among others. Glaucon points out that most people view justice as a necessary evil, which we allow ourselves to suffer in order to avoid the greater evil that would befall us if we did away with it. Justice stems from human weakness and vulnerability. Since we can all suffer from each other’s injustices, we make a social contract agreeing to be just to one another. We only suffer under the burden of justice because we know we would suffer worse without it. Justice is not something practiced for its own sake but something one engages in out of fear and weakness. To emphasize his point, Glaucon appeals to a thought experiment. Invoking the legend of the ring of Gyges, he asks us to imagine that a just man is given a ring which makes him invisible. Once in possession of this ring, the man can act unjustly with no fear of reprisal. No one can deny, Glaucon claims that even the most just man would behave unjustly if he had this ring. He would indulge all of his materialistic, power-hungry, and erotically lustful urges. This tale proves that people are only just because they are afraid of punishment for injustice. No one is just because justice is desirable in itself. Glaucon ends his speech with an attempt to demonstrate that not only do people prefer to be unjust rather than just, but that it is rational for them to do so. The perfectly unjust life, he argues, is more pleasant than the perfectly just life. In making this claim, he draws two detailed portraits of the just and unjust man. The completely unjust man, who indulges all his urges, is honored and rewarded with wealth. The completely just man, on the other hand, is scorned and wretched. Socrates’ response, according to Plato, was as follows; “I will tell you, I replied; justice, which is the subject of our enquiry, is, as you know, sometimes spoken of as the virtue of an individual, and sometimes as the virtue of a State. True, he replied. And is not a State larger than an individual? Then in the larger the quantity of justice is likely to be larger and more easily discernible. I propose therefore that we enquire into the nature of justice and injustice, first as they appear in the State, and secondly in the individual, proceeding from the greater to the lesser and comparing them. And if we imagine the State in process of creation, we shall see the justice and injustice of the State in process of creation also. A State, I said, arises, as I conceive, out of the needs of mankind; no one is self-sufficing, but all of us have many wants. Can any other origin of a State be imagined? Then, as we have many wants, and many persons are needed to supply them, one takes a helper for one purpose and another for another; and when these partners and helpers are gathered together in one habitation the body of inhabitants is termed a State. And they exchange with one another, and one gives, and another receives, under the idea that the exchange will be for their good. Then, I said, let us begin and create in idea a State; and yet the true creator is necessity, who is the mother of our invention. Now the first and greatest of necessities is food, which is the condition of life and existence. The second is a dwelling, and the third clothing and the like. And now let us see how our city will be able to supply this great demand: We may suppose that one man is a husbandman, another a builder, someone else a weaver --shall we add to them a shoemaker, or perhaps some other purveyor to our bodily wants? The barest notion of a State must include four or five men. And how will they proceed? Will each bring the result of his labors into a common stock? --the individual husbandman, for example, producing for four, and laboring four times as long and as much as he need in the provision of food with which he supplies others as well as himself; or will he have nothing to do with others and not be at the trouble of producing for them, but provide for himself alone a fourth of the food in a fourth of the time, and in the remaining three-fourths of his time be employed in making a house or a coat or a pair of shoes, having no partnership with others, but supplying himself all his own wants? Adeimantus thought that he should aim at producing food only and not at producing everything. Probably, I replied, that would be the better way; and when I hear you say this, I am myself reminded that we are not all alike; there are diversities of natures among us which are adapted to different occupations. And will you have a work better done when the workman has many occupations, or when he has only one? When he has only one. Further, there can be no doubt that a work is spoilt when not done at the right time? For business is not disposed to wait until the doer of the business is at leisure; but the doer must follow up what he is doing, and make the business his first object. And if so, we must infer that all things are produced more plentifully and easily and of a better quality when one man does one thing which is natural to him and does it at the right time, and leaves other things. Then more than four citizens will be required; for the husbandman will not make his own plough or mattock, or other implements of agriculture, if they are to be good for anything. Neither will the builder make his tools –and he too needs many; and in like manner the weaver and shoemaker. Then carpenters, and smiths, and many other artisans, will be sharers in our little State, which is already beginning to grow? Yet even if we add cowherds, shepherds, and other herdsmen, in order that our husbandmen may have oxen to plough with, and builders as well as husbandmen may have draught cattle, and curriers and weavers fleeces and hides, -- still our State will not be very large.