Plato’s contributions are unparalleled. No other thinker got the admiration and criticism that he did. His most important works include The republic (380-370 BC), the Statesman (360 BC) and the Laws (350 BC). He laid down the foundations of Greek political theory and explored a wide range of philosophical perspectives and issues. While his admirers have been numerous, he had his share of critics too, including Aristotle. Most of his recent critics have been in the 20th century within the liberal tradition. He has been criticised for his hostility towards progressive, humanitarian, and democratic ideals and regarded him as the forerunner of modern-day totalitarianism.
Born in 427 BCE, Athens (Greece). He belonged to an aristocratic family. He was a disciple of Socrates. He took an active part in politics, from which he withdrew after the execution of Socrates. He left Athens and went to Egypt to study. He returned in 388 BCE and started his own Academy, the first European university. The Republic is the greatest and most well-known work of Plato. It is written in the form of a dialogue, a method of great importance in clarifying questions and establishing truth.
The central and fundamental ethical and political concepts is justice. It is a complex and ambiguous concept. An ideal state for Plato had 4 basic virtues of wisdom, courage, temperance or self-control and most important “Justice”. It would have wisdom because of its rulers were persons of knowledge, courage because its warriors were brave, self-control because of the harmony and finally, justice of doing one’s job for which one was naturally fitted without interfering with other people. For Plato, Justice was the reality of the Ideal state. Justice was the principle on which the state had to be founded and a contribution made towards the excellence of the city.
The central question of the Republic was the meaning of justice or right conduct or morality. It did not refer to legality. Plato critically examined contemporary views on justice and then defined the concept.
Justice in the individual meant that every individual was assigned a place in society according to one’s natural aptitudes and skills. In other words, justice meant departmental excellence. Furthermore, justice was psychic harmony, balancing and ordering the three elements in accordance with the dominant one. For Plato, restraint was the key to proper development and societal harmony. It also represented a bond that cemented ties between the individual and society. In this sense, justice was social. A just individual was also a good person. His purpose was to show ‘how ought we to live’ and tried to establish the relationship between virtue and happiness. Plato developed the answer to how ought to live ‘based on unusually rich account of our nature and the nature of reality’. Plato gave three arguments in favour of why a just life was a happy one. First, a just individual limited his desires, for non-satisfaction of desires led to unhappiness. Second, only a philosopher could differentiate between the pleasures derived from the pursuit of reason, and those obtained from appetite and sensuality. Third, pleasures derived from the intellect were more genuine and comforting than those derived from the senses.
Justice in the state meant that the three social classes (rulers, warriors and producers) performed the deliberative and governing, defence, and production, without interfering with the functions of the others. Justice was “one class, one duty; one man, one work”. Plato drew a parallel between the three social classes and the three elements of the human soul. Each soul had a corresponding social class. A just society recognised and educated every individual talent according to the dominant element in one’s soul, and ordered these elements into coherent classes. The rulers and soldiers constituted the guardian class.
Plato understood injustice to mean interference and meddlesomeness. Any interchange in jobs between the three social classes would bring harm to the state and was the worst evil. On the contrary, if the rulers, auxiliaries and artisans performed their respective tasks, then such a state would be just. Plato’s conception of justice was distributive, giving what was due to an individual, namely good training and skills, in return for proper discharge of one’s responsibilities.
He proposed “Myth of Metals” as a noble lie to justify the rule of philosopher king. The Myth of Metals and of the Earth-born rationalised the fact that all human beings were born of earth, and their bodies were mixed with different metals; the philosophic-rational ones were made of gold, the spirited-courageous ones of silver, and the appetitive ones of bronze. The myth explained and justified individual and class distinctions in a manner that was comprehensible to a lay person. The myth was necessary to sustain the Ideal State, by convincing every one of their rightful place in society, and the obligations their stations in life entailed. It also suggested that in spite of their differences, all individuals were born of the earth.
Criticism : Nietzsche criticised Plato for founding a just and a rightly ordered society with the help of a necessary lie. In Plato’s arguments, the usefulness of the social ordering never became clear. The myth, according to Nietzsche, was fabricated by Plato not merely to protect philosophy from political persecution, but also to give philosophy its political influence.