The Republic

With a discussion of sexual relations and warfare, Socrates has provisionally completed his account of the ideal state. He now turns to a fundamental question regarding it. Namely, how is this ideal “viable” (191)? Under what circumstances could this community, in concrete terms, come about? His answer, which has been much discussed since, is that it would require “philosopher kings.” That is, the assumption of political power not by warlords, merchants, or aristocrats but philosophers. Plato anticipated an incredulous response to this. Glaucon says, on hearing Socrates, that “you’d better expect hordes of people… to fling off their clothes (so to speak), pick up the nearest weapon, and rush naked at you with enough energy to achieve heroic feats” (193). Nevertheless, he has intellectual grounds for the suggestion. These stem from the logic of the ideal community he has been describing and from his broader project of developing a eudemonistic justification for morality (eudaimonism is the system of ethics that supposes that morality is a good because it produces happiness).

What are these grounds? To address this, it is important to clear up two potential misconceptions. First, the meaning of “kings” is to some extent figurative. Plato did not envisage philosophers simply taking over existing political systems. Nor did he imagine them ruling as would ordinary monarchs or political leaders. Rather, he says, “They must treat a community and people’s characters like a painting board” (224). In other words, they would be like artists who fundamentally create and build the community. They would forge the constitution, the myths, and the educational system by which a certain type of person and society would form and flourish. They would be “founding fathers”, in the most radical sense, and only secondarily concerned with the day-to-day business of ruling.

Second, and relatedly, Socrates has a specific idea of what is meant by “philosopher.” This is not to be equated with how we might now standardly use the word. It does not simply mean someone who researches or teaches philosophy for a living. Nor is it necessarily applicable to many of the historical figures, like Descartes or Wittgenstein, who are commonly referred to under this label. Instead, the philosopher is a person who “innately aspires to reality” (210). This means someone who looks to get beyond the variation and flux of appearances to “each thing as it really is in itself” (211). This is to find a fundamental form which is permanent and unchanging. Further, the search into essential reality does not end there. What the philosopher also strives to understand is an elemental unity between the forms themselves. As such, they aim to find how “beauty, morality, and so on are each a single entity” (201). In other words, they look to find awareness of the underlying unity of all things. For example, that ugliness is in fact part of beauty, and that evil is part of good.

This precise and metaphysical concept of the philosopher serves a specific function for Plato. It is specifically this type of philosopher who has the foresight to found and rule a community. This is because they uniquely possess knowledge. Knowledge here means “apprehending that which is permanent and unvarying” (203). It means a belief which, rooted in an understanding of unchangeable things in themselves, is infallible. This is in contrast to mere belief, or belief in general. Such belief is based on changeable appearances and is therefore fallible, potentially wrong. Since the Platonic philosopher, by his nature, enquires into the things in themselves, and into all things, he not only must have knowledge. He will also have knowledge of the good. That is, he must have infallible awareness of both the ends a society should pursue and the means by which to attain them. In short, he will be the perfect ruler.

Unsurprisingly, many remain unconvinced by this. While there is an appealing elegance and audacity to this vision of the philosopher king, there are also a myriad of problems. For one, it involves accepting Plato’s idiosyncratic metaphysics and epistemology. For even if there was a world of pure things “in themselves” distinct from appearances, it is not obvious that some specific group would have unique access to them. Nor is it clear that such access would be unrestricted or infallible. Moreover, what of integrity? Socrates takes for granted the problematic assumption that knowledge of the good entails doing good, but this is far from self-evident.

However, the deepest worry is one Socrates himself acknowledges in The Republic. He accepts it is the lack of understanding of the masses which prevents them valuing the philosopher or acknowledging his ability to govern. This ignorance in turn is due to a flawed educational system and culture. Therefore, it is due to a flawed society. As such, it seems that the condition for the people wanting philosophers to rule is a change in society which will improve these things. Yet this improvement of society is the very thing that the philosopher is supposed to bring about. Plato is stuck in a vicious circle. Whether he can get out of this conundrum remains to be seen.