5: Plato on Political Expertise and Legislation I: Philosopher Rulers in the Republic

The Gorgias raised a problem about the philosopher’s relationship to the polis. In the
Republic Plato turns again to the charge that philosophers are useless (6: 489b) and considers
how the philosopher fares in adverse social conditions.

T1: “Those who have become members of this small group have tasted how sweet and
blessed a possession is philosophy. They can also, by contrast, see quite clearly the madness
of the many. They can see that virtually nothing that anyone does in politics is in any way
healthy and that they have virtually no ally with whom they could go to the rescue of justice
and live to tell the tale. The philosopher would be like a man falling into a den of wild
animals, refusing to join in their vicious activities, but too weak to resist their combined
ferocity single-handed. He wouldn’t get the chance to help his city or his friends. He would
be killed before he could be of any use either to himself or to anyone else. Taking all this into
his calculations, he will keep quiet and mind his own business, like someone taking shelter
behind a wall when he is caught by a storm of driving dust and rain. He sees everyone else
brimful of lawlessness, and counts himself lucky if he himself can somehow live his life here,
pure, free from injustice and unholy actions, and depart with high hopes, in a spirit of
kindness and goodwill, on his release from it” (6: 496d-e).

Ober: Plato’s answer to the problem of the philosopher and the polis, is to move the
philosopher “out of the democratic polis-as-it-is and into the polis-as-it-should-be” (1998:
212).

Doing one’s own and ruling and being ruled

Recap from last time: in this ideal polis, each person must perform the task for which he/she
is best suited. This is justice. So with the soul: whoever is such that each of the three psychic
elements in him does its own is a just man (441e12). What we also learn is that there is a
hierarchy to the notion of “doing one’s own”; one of the things we have as one’s own, for a
certain class of people in the polis, is ruling over others. We have a different understanding of
how to divide the tasks of the city, where it is not just that each does a different craft, or job;
rather, jobs are divided in terms of ruling and being ruled. There is an analogue for the soul
(444d).

There is a class of “true guardians”, who possess political authority and authoritative
knowledge (412a-414b); the other two classes will be auxiliaries and helpers. This is a small
class – because political knowledge is found among very few people (428c-429a). Compare
the Protagoras. What is new here is that only a few people have these skills, and this fits
them for ruling over others. Our focus for today is on the claims of this class to rule over
others in the city. What entitles them to rule? What is the nature of the knowledge they
possess? And how is it relevant to politics?

This interest in ruling and being ruled comes an interest not just in the character of the ruler,
and the legitimacy of his claim to rule, but also an interest in the characteristics of the ruled.
What must the ruled by like, such that they accept the supposed benefits of being ruled? So,
here Plato is also interested in the virtue of being a citizen, and how that is cultivated. We do
not want a repeat of the Socrates situation where, as Plato puts it here, the philosopher returns
to the cave to rule, and risks being laughed at and even killed (517a).

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The Claim

T2: Unless . . . philosophers become kings in the cities or those whom we now call kings and
rulers philosophize truly and adequately and there is a conjunction of political power and
philosophy . . . there can be no cessation of evils . . . for cities nor, I think, for the human race
(Rep. V.473c11-d6)

The Philosophical Character

The true lover of wisdom defined; the objects of wisdom (476ff.). He or she must they have
the ‘vision’ of ‘what is always the same’ (484b) of ‘what is’ and ‘what is most true’ (484c),
as opposed to those who think only of things that change are-and-are-not and are not true.
Why? Understanding cannot be grounded in such items. Knowledge is unerring, and these
things change over time, in relation to different perceivers and so on.

This is not just an intellectual picture. Philosophers are motivated – not just to recognize the
truth, but to love the truth. The philosopher loves any study that contributes to revealing ‘the
reality which always is’ (485d). The philosopher is ‘the one who readily and willingly tries
all kinds of learning, who turns gladly to learning, and is insatiable for it’ (475c6-7). ‘We
must accept as agreed’, says Socrates, ‘this trait of the philosophical nature’:

T3: “..that he is always in love with any learning which helps to reveal that reality which
always is, and which is not driven this way and that by becoming and ceasing to be” (aei
erosin, 485b; cf. 501d2: philosophers are aletheias erastai).

The so-called “hydraulic image” (485d). This love of truth directs the soul and affects it in
such a way that it is fit for learning proper (485d). Why is this claim important? If the
philosopher is motivated solely by the pursuit of truth then we will feel more confident about
him ruling the city.

A Puzzle: why do philosophers seem wicked or useless?

T4: The Ship of State (488a7-489a6, trans. Griffith).

“Imagine some ships or one ship, and a state of affairs on board something like this. There’s
the ship-owner, larger and stronger than everyone on the ship but deaf and rather short-
sighted, with a knowledge of sailing to match his eyesight. The sailors are quarrelling
amongst themselves over captaincy of the ship, each one thinking that he ought to be captain,
though he has never learnt that skill, nor can he point to the person who taught him, or a time
when he was learning it. On top of which he says that it can’t be taught. In fact they are
prepared to cut to pieces anyone who says that it can. The ship-owner himself is always
surrounded by them. They beg him and do everything they can to make him hand over the
tiller to them. Sometimes if other people persuade him and they can’t, they kill those others
or throw them overboard. Then they immobilize the worthy ship-owner with drugs or drink
or some other means, and take control of the ship, helping themselves to what it is carrying.
Drinking and feasting they sail in the way that you would expect people like that to sail.
More than that, if someone is good at finding them ways of persuading or compelling the
ship-owner to let them take control, they call him a real seaman, a real captain, and say he
really knows about ships. Anyone who can’t do this they treat with contempt, calling him
useless. They don’t even begin to understand that if he is to be truly fit to take command of a
ship a real ship’s captain must of necessity be thoroughly familiar with the seasons of the

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year, the stars in the sky, the winds, and everything to do with his art. As for how he is going
to steer the ship – regardless of whether anyone wants him to or not- they do not regard this
as an additional skill or study, which can be acquired over and above the art of being a ship’s
captain. If this is the situation on board do you not think that the person who is genuinely
equipped to be captain will be called a stargazer, a chatterer, of no use to them, by those who
sail in ships with this kind of crew?”

T5: “We must examine the ways in which this nature gets corrupted and in most cases
destroyed…though a small number escape, the ones we call useless rather than wicked”
(490eff.)

A new diagnosis of the problem: environmental factors. We need not only to find the right
people but also to arrange their education properly to ward off potential corrupting
influences. For,

T6: “When many gathered together sit down in assemblies, courts, theatres, army camps, or
any other common meeting of the multitude and with a great deal of uproar excessively
blame some of the things said or done and just as excessively praise others, shouting and
clapping; and besides, the rocks and the very place that surrounds them echo and redouble the
uproar of blame and praise. Now in such circumstances, what do you suppose is the state of
the young man’s heart? Or what kind of private education will hold out for him and will not
be swept away by such praise and blame and go, borne by the flood, wherever it’s headed so
that he’ll say the same things are noble and shameful as they do, practice what they practice
and be such as they are?” (492b-d).

Those who remain uncorrupted as those who lead a quiet life away from politics as it is
currently practised (T1). No present constitution is ‘worthy of the philosophical nature’
(497a). But it is not impossible for the right person to take charge of the right kind of city,
however difficult it is (499c-d).

Why should philosophers rule?

1. The Motivational Claim

Those who love ruling will not seek the good of the whole city, but will pursue political
power for their own benefit (VII: 521b4-5). This will lead to civic unrest. If one’s desires are
trained on the objects of wisdom, they are at the same time trained away from the competitive
material things that lead most people to injustice (485d-87a).

T7: “What we need is that the only men to get power should be men who do not love it,
otherwise we shall have rivals’ quarrels” (521b4-5). Philosophers “look down on” that life
(521b1-2; 520e-521b).

2. The Epistemic Claim

A second answer to the question: ‘why philosopher-rulers?’, then, is that wise rule requires
knowledge of the Forms and philosophers just are those who know forms. Philosophers have
knowledge of the just, the fine, and the good, and this makes them better at ruling. How so?

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What is the nature, scope and political relevance of this knowledge?

T8: “Each of you in turn must go down to live in the common dwelling place of the others
and grow accustomed to seeing in the dark. When you are used to it, you will see vastly better
than the people there. And because you have seen the truth about the fine, the just, and the
good, you will know each image for what it is and also that of which it is the image. Thus, for
you and for us, the city will be governed, not like most cities nowadays, by people who fight
over shadows . . . but by people who are awake rather than dreaming (Rep. VII.520c1-d1).

T9: “I don’t imagine that there’s time for the person who truly has his mind fixed on reality
to glance down at the affairs of men, or compete with them, and be filled with envy and ill
will. No he fixes his view and his gaze on those things which are properly arranged, which
are always the same, which neither wrong one another nor are wronged by one another, and
which are all ordered according to a rational plan. These are what he imitates and tries, as far
as possible, to resemble…..

…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 I suppose that, 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, I suppose, and draw in another until they had made characters for
human beings that the gods would love as much as possible” (Rep. VI.500b-501c3).

What is the significance of the philosopher as artist?

Theory and Practice

T10: “Is it enough if they devote themselves to argument, and nothing else, continuously and
energetically, in a training equivalent to their physical training in the gymnasiums, only twice
as long?...You will have to make them go back into the cave we were talking about. You will
have to compel them to hold military command, and another other position which is suitable
for the young, so that others will not have an advantage over them in practical experience.
And even in these positions they must be on trial, to see if they will stand firm when they are
pulled in different directions, or if they will to some extent give way” (Rep. VII 539d-e).

Reading: Annas, J. ‘Politics in Plato’s Republic: His and Ours’ in C. Witt and M. Matthen
(eds.) 2000, Ancient Philosophy and Modern Ideology, Apeiron, 37(4): 303–326.

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Griswold, C. ‘Platonic Liberalism: Self-Perfection as a Foundation of Political Theory’ in
J.M. van Ophuijsen (ed.), Plato and Platonism, Washington, 102–134.
Kraut, R. ‘The Defense of Justice in Plato’s Republic’ in Kraut, R. (ed.) The Cambridge
Companion to Plato (Cambridge, 1992), 311–337. Reprinted in Kraut 1997, 197–222.
Mabbott, J.D., 1937, ‘Is Plato’s Republic Utilitarian?’ Mind, 46: 386–393. Revised in Vlastos
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Taylor, C.C.W., 1986, ‘Plato’s Totalitarianism.’ Polis, 5: 4–29.