UNIVERSITY OF CAGAYAN VALLEY

Tuguegarao City, Cagayan

Intro. To Political Theories

Module No.01
Title/Topic/Reading The Greeks:
1. Plato: The Republic
Overview/Introduction This is perhaps the most famous passage in all of Plato. Some readers may think
that further analysis of why Plato thinks that philosophers should rule is
unnecessary, because they already sufficiently understand why Plato believes that
this claim is true, and thus already adequately understand Plato's political
philosophy, at any rate in this respect (at least around the time of the Republic).
Similarly, some may think that they already adequately understand Aristotle's
reactions to such claims and, more generally, his views on the relation between
philosophic understanding and good or just political rule.
Learning Objectives:  To familiarize the learner about Plato’s Theory: The Republic.
 To provide the learner an understanding on who should rule the state.
Discussion/Analysis: Plato’s Republic
Plato has, at least three related but distinct sorts of reasons for the claims about
the political importance of philosophic understanding in the Republic. First, there
is a motivational claim. If those who are to govern are "lovers of ruling" (Rep.
VII.521b4-5), they will not seek the good of the whole city, but will pursue political
office simply for their own benefit, and will thus engender civic strife. Only
philosophers have a life that they prefer so strongly to the political life that they
"look down on" that life (Rep. VII.521b1-2, 520e521b). Thus only philosophers,
Plato thinks, will seek the good of the whole city when they rule. Second, the
question of who should rule notoriously leads to bitter, intractable, and
destabilizing conflicts between social and economic 3 elites and the masses. Rule
by philosophers, Plato at least sometimes suggests, can forestall such controversy.
All citizens can be brought to accept that the rule of philosophers is in their own
interest (Rep. VI.499d-501e).
Neither of the claims is unproblematic, but to Plato's best known justification for
the rule of philosophers, and this is epistemic. Philosophers alone have knowledge
(epistêmê) of what really is, e.g., just, good, and fine and this makes them better at
ruling.
If he [the philosopher] should come to be compelled to put what he sees there [in
the realm of the Platonic Forms] into people's characters, whether into a single
person or into a populace, instead of shaping only his own, do you think he will be
a poor craftsman of moderation and justice and all forms of ordinary popular
virtue . . . no city will ever find happiness until its outline is sketched by painters
who use the divine model . . . [after they wiped clean the city and the characters of
men] they would sketch the outline of the constitution . . . And as they work, they
would look often in each direction, towards the natures of justice, the fine,
moderation, and the like, on the one hand, and towards those they are trying to
put into human beings, on the other. And in this way, they would mix and blend
the various ways of life in the city until they produced a human image based on
what Homer too called 'the divine form and image' . . . And they would erase one
thing, and draw in another until they had made characters for 4 human beings that
the gods would love as much as possible. (Rep. VI.500d5-501c3)
 Then whom will you compel to become guardians of the city, if not those
who have the best understanding of these things through which a city is
best governed (Rep. 521b7-9)?
 The requirement for philosophic knowledge might be justified
synchronically or diachronically; it might be justified by its overall effects
or, more narrowly, purely for its epistemic features. True belief, for
example, might do as well as philosophic knowledge as long as it remains,
but true belief is more precarious and may be undermined over time.
Knowledge might do better than true belief in inhibiting bad non-rational
motivations, but this might only be an indirect effect of the features that
make knowledge.
 In the Republic, Plato requires that a virtuous person possess philosophic
knowledge and that virtuous actions be based on such knowledge.
 Plato holds that only you are virtuous and act virtuously and he can defend
this judgment by appealing to the greater value or goodness of the state
that you are in: only you really appreciate the values at stake in, and
expressed by, your choice. This is important, since Plato need not (and
probably does not) think that ordinary, decent non-philosophers
(especially those who have received the nonphilosophic, "musical"
education designed for the auxiliaries in the just city) and philosophers
differ much in the overwhelming majority of actions typically open to
assessment as virtuous or vicious: both, for example, avoid theft, the 7
neglect of parents and the betrayal of friends (see, e.g., Rep. IV.442d-
443a).
 This line of thought is not totally absent from Plato: in the Republic, in
order for the city to possess the virtue of wisdom, its rulers must possess
knowledge (Rep. IV.428b-429a). Since only someone who knows at least
some Forms can possess knowledge (Rep. V.475d-480a), the rulers must
know at least some Forms and thus must be philosophers. This is not,
however, the primary thrust of Plato's remarks in the Republic.
 Indeed, it is such ordering of individual characters that is the main way by
which the city itself is to be ordered. The philosopher alone has a grasp of
the "single target" at which all their actions, including their political
actions, are to aim (Rep. VII.519c). This goal, at its most general, is to make
the city as happy as possible, and since virtue is vastly the most important
factor in happiness, this will involve making the citizens virtuous.
 Plato is not claiming that getting right these sorts of laws is easy merely for
philosophers who have knowledge of the Forms; the above passage occurs
before the introduction of genuine philosophers and what Plato is
confident about here is rather the capacities of those who have been
raised in the entirely non-philosophical, musical education prescribed for
 those who will be auxiliaries. People who receive such an education will be
able, without recourse to philosophers or philosophic knowledge, to make
correct judgments about these sorts of laws and institutions. Philosophic
knowledge, even philosophic knowledge about value, is not needed for
correctness about these matters.

Quiz • List down at least five (5) strengths and five (5) weaknesses of the Republic
by Plato.
Assignment Plato’s Republic
Complete the KWL Chart about Plato’s Republic: Who should rule?
What I Already Know What I Want to Know What I Learned

Prepared by:

MARLOWE T. PEREZ, MPA