Dan Mayer

Ethics

Plato’s Republic book 8

Plato’s Republic discusses the decay of each city from one to another in book 8. Plato begins with how his own “perfect” city slowly turns in to a Timocracy. This is described by Plato, his opinion what would happen is as follows. The Guardian’s would eventually mess up the birth timing of children since this uses sense perception. The children in turn would have less consideration for music and poetry and a greater love of physical training. Eventually this would lead to a civil war in Plato’s opinion, which would make the constitution more towards money making. The people in this city would be ruled by the spirited part of there soul as they would regard honor as the most important aspect of life.

Plato thinks this would quickly fall into an oligarchy, because as the children of this Timocracy will be raised with a love of honor in mind but will see the secret gathering of money and backstabbing to gain power. As they grow old they themselves will not be as secretive as their parents in the competition for money. They will change laws and make everything controlled only by those who have enough property to be considered of worth. The poor will have no power and be lead by those with all the money. The oligarchic man will be controlled by the appetite but he will be controlled by the more necessary appetites as he doesn’t ever want to spend his own money and only wants to horde it away.

Plato believes that the oligarchy will eventually decay to the point of a revolution that will lead the city to a democratic rule. As the children of the oligarchy are raised by parents that are not willing to spend any more than necessary as to horde more money, the children raised in a rich life will become bored with only the necessary. The poor will become more and more against the rich taking their money and land only to become richer and richer with no reason, until the society eventually revolts and expels many of the rich and sets up a government that will defend each citizens freedom. Anyone can rule, each person will choose there own profession. The democratic person in Plato’s opinion will always be for freedom. They will not have unity in the city due to being raised with their family’s values over the city’s values. Rulers will only be making laws for there own benefit and eventually the powerful will separate themselves from the poor. Democracy will also have the most people just living off of family’s fortunes and contributing nothing to society in Plato’s opinion. This is because with an oligarchy the rich are hated by the poor and have to make laws to defend themselves. In a democracy it is considered respectable to just live a life making laws for the city, even if they are just to keep your riches in place. The democratic person in Plato’s eyes is controlled by the unnecessary appetites of his soul. This kind of person will do a little of each thing his appetite pleases, which is in strict contrast to Plato’s view that each person should only have one function in society. So a person with freedom moving around from thing to thing is not productive or good for the society.

Of course the democracy will eventually fall into the worst form of government, a Tyranny. This happens because the laws will more and more exile the common laborer. Eventually the laboring class which is by the far the largest will bring up a champion, who promises to fix all of the problems, to force the rich to redistribute land, balance the society with equal money, and other ideas. Eventually the groups in power will have to try to kill the new leader, but the poor will get him a body guard. This person will start being cared for by the people. He will slowly defeat all those in power that oppose him. Then he will start a war to tax the people so they still feel a need for a leader. When the people finally realize that they have a leader that is making the people all his slaves it will be to late. The Tyrant will be in power and have too much control to be easily removed. The tyrant will rule with his appetite and do as he wishes, which will surely be for his own good and not for the city.

Plato believed all of this and believes his form of government to bring the best city and each city to get worse in this order Timocracy, Oligarchy, Democracy, and lastly Tyranny. I basically disagree with almost all of this. First Plato creates the perfect city which is based on his city’s education which will always place the best to guard at the top. He himself then says that the children going through this system will still not be as good as his first philosopher kings. If children raised from birth can’t match the random philosophers gather to begin the city obviously there is a problem. I don’t believe Plato’s city could ever be created nor do I believe it to be the best. It basically sets up a system that Plato believes to be the happiest for the total involved. To maintain this happiness, the people are lied to, kept subservient to the kings, and all forms of change that could ever occur are censored from the city. This doesn’t bring about a glorious city it brings out stagnation and a fear of change, yes it may be a decent city with out crime or large fears but without any chance for true growth and experimentation it can never become any better than it is originally created and in the end will stunt the evolution of man and his ideas. I have many other issues with the Republic but they will be discussed separately in other essays that I will write for the final.