The Philosophy of Plato

Socrates’ death helped make his follower and Greece’s most famous philosopher, Plato (429–348 B.C.E.), hate democracy. Plato started out as a political consultant supporting philosopher-tyrants as the best form of government, but he gave up hope that political action could stop violence and greed. Instead, he turned to talking and writing about philosophy as the guide to life and established a school, the Academy, in Athens around 386 B.C.E. The Academy was an informal association of people who studied philosophy, mathematics, and theoretical astronomy under the leader’s guidance. It attracted intellectuals to Athens for the next nine hundred years, and Plato’s ideas about the nature of reality, ethics, and politics have remained central to philosophy and political science to this day.

Plato’s intellectual interests covered astronomy, mathematics, political philosophy, ethics, and metaphysics (ideas about the ultimate nature of reality beyond the reach of the human senses). Plato wrote dialogues, to provoke readers into thoughtful reflection, not to prescribe a set of beliefs. Nevertheless, he always maintained one essential idea based on his view of reality: ultimate moral qualities are universal, unchanging, and absolute, not relative.

Plato’s dialogues explore his theory that justice, goodness, beauty, and equality exist on their own in a higher realm beyond the daily world. He used the word Forms (or Ideas) to describe the abstract, invariable, and ultimate realities of such ethical qualities. According to Plato, the Forms are the only genuine reality. All things that humans perceive with their senses on earth are only dim and imperfect copies of these metaphysical, ultimate realities.

Plato believed that humans possess immortal souls distinct from their bodies; this idea established the concept of dualism, a separation between soul (or mind) and body. Plato further explained that the human soul possesses preexisting knowledge put there by a god. Humans’ present, impure existence is only a temporary stage in cosmic existence because, while the body does not last, the soul is immortal. Plato argued that people must seek perfect order and purity in their souls by using rational thought to control irrational and therefore harmful desires. People who yield to irrational desires fail to consider the future of their body and soul. The desire to drink too much alcohol, for example, is irrational because the binge drinker fails to consider the painful hangover that will follow.

Plato presented his most famous ideas on politics and justice in his dialogue The Republic. This work, whose Greek title means “system of government,” discusses the nature of justice and the reasons people should never commit injustice. Democracy, Plato wrote, does not produce justice because people cannot rise above their own self-interest to knowledge of the transcendent reality of universal truth. Justice can come only under the rule of an enlightened oligarchy or monarchy.

Plato’s Republic describes an ideal society with a hierarchy of three classes distinguished by their ability to grasp the truth of Forms. Plato did not think humans could actually create the model society described in The Republic, but he did believe that imagining it was an important way to help people learn to live justly. The highest class in his envisioned hierarchy consists of the rulers, or “guardians,” who must be educated in mathematics, astronomy, and metaphysics. Next come the “auxiliaries,” who defend the community. “Producers” make up the bottom class; they grow food and make objects for everyone. According to Plato’s Republic, women can be guardians because they possess the same virtues and abilities as men, except that the average woman has less physical strength than the average man. To minimize distraction, guardians have neither private property nor nuclear families. Male and female guardians live in houses shared in common, eat in the same dining halls, and exercise in the same gymnasia. They have sex with various partners so that the best women can mate with the best men to produce the best children. The children are raised together by special caretakers, not their parents. Guardians who achieve the highest level of knowledge can rule as philosopher-kings.