“The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.” – Alfred N Whitehead.
Blunt as it sounds, we can boldly assume that most of the philosophical text from the Western world has drawn numerous inspirations and political concepts from Plato’s Republic. Thomas Moore’s Utopia, George Orwell’s 1984, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (I’ve not read yet), and many others. But to treat this Republic as a Political Treatise would’ve been the end of the story. Also, it might oversimplify Plato’s ideas and the writing in the book. The author argues that it is more than we know and it invents a new understanding of knowledge; a new role for art and culture; and a new language for politics and psychology. This complex transformative vision of self, city, knowledge, world, and culture makes the Republic the fundamental text of Western philosophy. In that sense, the theme of the Republic is maturity. The very notion of self-governance, which is fundamental to enduring conceptions of law, religion, and psychiatry, finds its normative articulation and force most powerfully in the pages of Republic.
The notion of Self-governance (Self-discipline) is the central theme of the Republic or, the Greek says Eudaimonia. The crucial question in this book is, how to achieve it? The book is comprised of wisdom, courage, self-discipline, and justice. Justice in this sense, meant more than the administration of law or legal rights; it could mean broadly what is right, as well as more specifically what is justly owed or justly expected from the self. To do this, Plato has broadened the picture with the analogy of an imaginative founding society far away from the existing world to show that justice is a matter not only of actions but, more fundamentally, of the relationships underpinning those actions. The most important set of those relationships are the ones each person experiences among the elements of her mind or soul (psychologically). These are the “Reason”, “Indignation”or “Spirit” and “Desire”.
The community that Plato describes comprised of three classes, merchants (businessmen), auxiliaries (soldiers), and governors/ guardians (politicians); likewise the mind linked to it that has three elements: Desire, Spirit, and Reason. Here, Plato elaborates Reason as the faculty that calculates and decides. Desire in the sense of bare physical and instinctive craving. Another one Spirit which is a concern as motive, such characteristics as pugnacity, ambition, and indignation, which are often found in conflict with unthinking impulses. This is also often referred to as Plato’s doctrine of the ‘three parts of the soul’. And he goes on: “The simple and moderate desires, guided by reason and right judgment and reflection, are to be found in the minority who has the best natural gifts and best education… this feature too you can see in our state, where the desires of the less respectable majority are controlled by the desires and the wisdom of the superior minority.” The minority that Plato describes is the quality of “Guardians” that have mastered their desires, and emotions and are guided solely by reason that preceded without biased judgment for the benefit of the community that fit to be the ruler of the community.
“I believe justice is the requirement we laid down at the beginning as of universal application when we founded our state, or else some particular form of it. We laid down…and have often repeated, that in our state one man as to do one job, and the job he was naturally most suited for… perhaps justice is, in a certain sense, just this minding one’s own business.”
Here, Plato describes the Justice as the principle which has in fact been followed throughout, the principle of one man one job, of ‘minding one’s own business’, in the sense of doing the job for which one is naturally fitted and not interfering with other people.
The purpose in founding the state was not to promote the particular happiness of a single class, but, so far as possible, of the whole community. The idea was most likely to find justice in such a community, and similarly injustice in a really badly run community. Therefore, to construct a happy community is not to secure happiness in the minority class, but of the whole community. To achieve this, Plato started to lay down the fundamental classes between the founding states. Only the elite deserve the title of wisdom; the smallest class; the philosophic disposition, high spirits, speed and strength, and a love of learning. These are “Guardian”.
“So the state founded on natural principles is wise as a whole in virtue of the knowledge inherent in its smallest constituent part of the class, which exercises authority over the rest. And it appears further that the naturally smallest class is the one which is endowed with that form of knowledge which alone of all others deserves the title of wisdom.”
For Plato, the Guardian’s life is devoted to the learning of knowledge itself. They must be compelled to act accordingly and be persuaded, as indeed must everyone else, that it is their business to perfect themselves in their own particular job; then, the state will be built on the right basis, and, as it grows, it leaves each class to enjoy the share of happiness its nature permits:
Guardians were to be freed from all forms of manual work; their function was to be the expert provision of freedom for our state, and that and nothing else not relevant to it was to be their sole business. They must take part in dramatic or other representations, they must from their earliest years act the part only of characters suitable to them –men of courage, self-control, piety, freedom of spirit, and similar qualities.
Plato believes the life of the Guardian is solely devoted to learning knowledge but nothing else. To achieve this, they need to go through a selection by the elderly to assess their capability into the class of “Guardian”. Ultimately, here comes the crucial question, what is knowledge? What is the “Good”, what is “Justice”? How to define what is justice that is beneficial to the community. Also, the “Guardian” must be reason enough to discern and distinguish the power to reflect good and evil from unreasoning passion. The reason ought to rule, having wisdom and foresight to act for the whole, and the spirit ought to obey and support it. He says:
Knowledge unqualified is knowledge simply of something learned; knowledge of a particular kind of object. For instance, when men discovered how to make houses, this was a form of knowledge differing from others and was called building…What I mean is that when the object of knowledge is of a particular kind, for example, health or disease, then knowledge itself must also be of a particular kind, and is in consequence no longer called knowledge simply, but medical knowledge.
Here, Plato introduces the “Theory of Forms” of Knowledge. The idea of many forms in the physical world where the objects cannot be fully seen until the study of the good state and the good man, now complete, is supplemented by a study of the different forms of bad state and corresponding bad character. He believes that to achieve this ultimate form of “Good”, the Guardians of the state must be the ones who insatiably inquire about the “Ultimate” of the knowledge which knowledge that concerned with the unchanging objects: “a law is an unseen intelligible principle, a unit underlying an unlimited multiplicity of similar phenomena, and supposed to be unalterable.”
Philosophy, for Plato, is a kind of vision, the ‘vision of truth’. It is not purely intellectual; it is not merely wisdom, but the love of wisdom. Therefore, the position of the ‘Good’ in Plato’s philosophy is rather peculiar; science and truth he says, are like the good, but the good has a higher place. The ‘Good’ which Plato emphatically asserts is that; a philosopher is a man who loves the ‘vision of truth’. These studies are not to be pursued in any utilitarian spirit but to prepare his mind for the vision of eternal things.
“The society we have described can never grow into reality or see the light of the day, and there will be no end to the troubles of states, or indeed, my dear Glaucon, of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hand……for it is not easy to see that there is no other road to real happiness either society or the individual.”
For Plato, a philosopher is a man who loves wisdom in the widest sense, including learning, knowledge, and truth. To explain this, Plato has to bring in his own philosophical belief, particularly his theory of ‘Forms’. He is concerned with the knowledge of unchanging objects, in this respect, the Forms resemble the laws of nature sought by modern natural science:“A law is an unseen intelligible principle, a unit underlying an unlimited multiplicity of similar phenomena, and supposed to be unalterable. The Forms, however, are not laws of the sequence or co-existence of phenomena, but ideals or patterns, which have a real existence independent of our minds and of which the many individual things called by their names in the world of appearances are like images or reflections.” The philosophers who serve as guardians must be doubly qualified to do so. They must rule reluctantly, but they must also rule knowledgeably, in order to establish their surrogate reason in the souls of those who are ruled, who are unable to do so for themselves. As we previously mentioned, knowledge is portrayed as having an entirely different set of objects from mere opinion. Opinion or belief deals with what is changeable, either in time or depending on context; knowledge deals with what is unchanging in the double sense of being eternal and being independent of context, and Plato names it “Forms”. And the “Form of the Good” is the highest form of ultimate knowledge that philosopher ought to inquire; not the “Form of Justice”. This is because, for Plato, goodness defines the aim and purpose of all action and of all existence insofar as it is intelligible. All people naturally desire the Good, and pursue what they believe to be the good, even though they are normally mistaken about what is actually good.
Plato believes only Philosophers are capable of loving and, through education, ultimately achieving knowledge of what is authentically and fully Good. Thus only they are capable of governing action according to its true end; without such knowledge, political and ethical decisions are doomed to be mistaken, perhaps catastrophically so, thus, with a greater view in Good than the ordinary “good” sought by the greedy and ambitious, philosophers are able to bring unity, harmony and order to the city and those within the community.
For Plato, a true Philosopher is not only aim for higher form of knowledge but also has not time meddling with the earthy matters of human affairs. For this, he also elaborates that a Philosophers will have his own detractors which people always think philosophy has nothing to do with daily activities and no applicable properties where knowledge of Philosopher cannot be use in the spectrum of politic and ruling a society.
“Because the true Philosopher, as you know, Adeimantus, whose mind is on higher realities, has no time to look at the affairs of men, or to take part in their quarrels with all the jealousy and bitterness they involve. His eyes are turned to contemplate fixed and immutable realities, a realm where there is no justice done or suffered, but all is reason and order, and which is the model he imitates and to which he assimilates himself as far as he can….So the Philosopher whose dealings are with the divine order himself acquires the characteristics of order and divinity so far as man may; though as always he will have his detractors.”
What is commonly called the good things of life all contribute to ruin and distract the philosopher. Good looks, wealth, physical strength, powerful social and family connections, and all the rest of earthy matters. If not nourish properly in early stage, the philosopher be easily swamped by the flood of popular praise and blame, and carried away with the stream till he fins himself agreeing with popular ideas of what is admirable or disgraceful, behaving like the crowd and becoming one of them. If he keeps such company, he is going out of his way to make the public his master and to subject himself to the fatal necessity of producing what it approves. For this I genuinely agree with Plato that it applies the same analogy to Art, Music, Films and any creativity works.
“So philosophy is impossible among the common people.”
Philosophy for common people seems impossible to attain. It is another antithesis in the book that we find as a dissenting voice from the Scorates’ Dialogue with Glaucon. Hence, Plato thinks philosophy should starts young, children should only tackle the amount of philosophic training their age can stand; while they are growing to maturity they should devote a good deal of attention to their bodies. When they are older and their mind begins to mature, their mental training can be intensified. Finally when their strength begins to fail, and they are no longer fit for political or military service, they can be given their head, and devote all their main energies to philosophy – that is if their life is to be a happy one and their final destiny after death to match their life on earth. Just as Plato says: “Any seed or growth, plant or animal, depends on the right nourishment and climate and soil; and the more robust it is the more the lack of them will hinder its proper growth, as a bad environment is more inimical to the good than to the indifferent…The philosophic nature we have postulated, therefore, if it is properly taught, must in the course of its growth develop every excellence, but if it is sown and grows in unsuitable soil, the very opposite will happen, unless providence intervenes.”
Having to study the “Ultimate Forms of the Good”,“Justice” which Plato concludes that a philosopher understands what is just for the society, and justice is produced by establishing in the mind a similar natural relation of control and subordination among its constituents, and injustice by establishing an unnatural one. Justice, therefore, we may say, is a principle of this kind; its real concern is not with external actions, but with a man’s inward self, his true concern and interest. The just man will not allow the three elements which make up his inward self to trespass on each other’s functions or interfere with each other, but by keeping all three in tune….attain self-mastery and order, and live on good terms with himself. When he has bound these elements into a disciplined and harmonious whole, and so become a fully one instead of many, he will be ready for action of any kind, whether it concerns his personal or financial welfare, whether it is political or private; and he will reckon and call any of these actions just and honourable if it contributes to and helps to maintain this disposition of mind, and will call the knowledge which controls such action wisdom.
“The society we have described can never grow into a reality or see the light of the day, and there will be no end to the troubles of states, or indeed, my dear Glaucon, of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands….knowing what a paradox it would sound; for it is not easy to see that there is no other road to real happiness either for society or the individual.”
Plato’s Republic remains as one of the most read book and controversial one. Classified the book as a political treatise would be too narrowly defined. It has broad coverage in vast aspect of subject more than that. It is a psychological one, society unity and harmony – the highest political goals of “Republic” – cannot be achieved without psychological unity and harmony in each citizen. My review here would also seems inadequate to articulate Plato’s Republic which he discussed the immortality of the Soul, and also the critique in the theory of arts and poetry. Reader must have to dwell into the book and immerse himself in the position of dialogues with Socrates and his fellows orator in the books. Post a comments, critique, and also pause and ponder in between of the pages. To fully assimilate the writing and theory before judging. It is a book that needed time to read, and read again after a few more years. A book that needs to sit in shelves and re-visit again once our hair grown grey, and share the knowledge with the next generation to let them ponder about their well-being and the place in society. Just as Plato says:
“Books are immortal sons defying their sires.”
Lone Wong | Things to remind in the journey of life 