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Plato: The Necessity of War, the Quest for Peace
Henrik Syse

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 Journal of Military Ethics (2002) 1(1): 36– 44
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Editor ’s note: In this special column of the Journal of Military Ethics we highlight important historical
contributions to the ethics of war, peacemaking and military affairs. Associate editor Henrik Syse, senior
researcher at the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO), introduces this column with an article
about one of the pivotal figures in Western philosophy, Plato.

Plato: The Necessity of War, the

Quest for Peace
Henrik Syse
International Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO), Fuglehauggaten 11, NO-0260 Oslo, Norway.
Tel: »47 22 54 77 13. Fax: »47 22 54 77 01. E-mail: henrik@prio.no hsyse@online.no

Although Plato writes less about war than we might expect — especially considering
the fact that his dialogues are historically set during the Peloponnesian War — the
right conduct of war constitutes a crucial concern for Plato. In both the Alcibiades
and Laches dialogues, rightful conduct of war is linked to the practice of virtue.
Neither a good statesman nor a good military man can ignore this link, which joins
military pursuits not only to courage, but to the whole of virtue, including justice. In
the Republic, the passage from a luxurious city to a well-ordered and virtuous city is
described by means of the proper education of the city’s military guardians, and a
teaching of ius in bello — to use a just-war term — for wars between Greeks is
outlined. Finally, in the Laws, peace, not war, is presented as the true aim of good
laws, and the importance of legitimate authority in war-making is duly emphasized.
KEYWORDS: Plato, virtue, just war, military ethics, political philosophy.

The best, however, is neither war nor civil war

— the necessity for these things is to be regretted—
but rather peace and at the same time goodwill towards one another.
Plato: Laws, book I, 628c

Plato (427– 347 B.C.)— alongside his teacher Socrates and his student Aristotle, the
most famous of the Greek philosophers — writes surprisingly little about war. I say
‘surprisingly’ since the conversations and speeches of Socrates that Plato reports (or
invents) in his dialogues are supposed to have taken place right before, during or right
after the Peloponnesian War — that terrible contest, so eloquently described by the

© 2002 Taylor & Francis

 Plato 37
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From Laches, 192b– d (trans. James H. Nichols, Jr., from The Roots of Political
Philosophy, ed. Thomas L. Pangle, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987):

[Socrates is asking the Athenian general Laches for a definition of courage.]

Laches: In my opinion, then, it is a certain steadfastness of the soul, if one must say
about courage what it is by nature in all cases.

Socrates: Indeed one must, at least if we are to answer for ourselves what is asked.
Now then, it looks this way to me at least: not quite all steadfastness, I think, appears
to you to be courage. I make that conjecture from this: I pretty much know, Laches,
that you hold courage to be among the altogether noble things.

Laches: Know well, then, that it is among the noblest.

Socrates: So then, is steadfastness accompained by prudence nobel and good?

Laches: Certainly.

Socrates: And what about it accompanied by folly? As the opposite of this, isn’t it
harmful and evildoing?

Laches: Yes.

Socrates: Will you then assert that such a thing, which is evildoing and harmful, is
something noble?

Laches: It would certainly not be just, at any rate, Socrates.

Socrates: You will therefore not agree that steadfastness of this sort, at any rate, is
courage, since it is not noble, and courage is a noble thing.

Laches: What you say is true.

Socrates: Prudent steadfastness, therefore, would be courage, according to your

argument.

Laches: It seems so.

historian Thucydides, which shook the foundations of Greek culture in general and
Athenian pride in particular.
We may suspect, however, that the question of war is closer to Plato’s mind than
it may seem at Ž rst glance. His concern for a well-ordered city, which values education,
virtue and the rule of the best men (and, in the Republic, women), is a concern for peace,
and by consequence for the cessation and absence of war. Plato may write little
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explicitly about war because he wants to turn his readers’ attention to the requirements
of true peace. As a contrast, then, war certainly looms large in Platonic thought.
However, while believing that politics and philosophy should both exist for the sake
of peace, not war, Plato is no paciŽ st. He believes that a well-founded and healthy city
must be prepared for war, and that great importance should be attached to the right
education of soldiers.1 He is more of an idealist than Thucydides before him, and also
more of an explicit critic of both the realism of Athens and the military virtues of Sparta
than the great historian,2 but he harbors no hopes of a city that can eschew preparation
for and occasional participation in war. Plato’s point is that war should not be
considered apart from justice. In that way, he is indeed one of the originators of the just
war idea.
My aim in the following is to introduce some passages from Plato that deal, directly
or indirectly, with the justice and rightness of war. They span the stretch from what is
considered to be one of Plato’s earliest dialogues, the Laches, where Socratic conversation
and education are central, to what is most likely his last work, the vast and much less
dialogic Laws, where Socrates is no longer present. They are all united, however, by
Plato’s concern with the right sort of virtue, and the need to have institutions and
teachers who apply themselves to the proper care and quality of the soul.3
As a deeper motivation for writing this article, I hold that there is much to be
learned from Plato, especially about the proper relationship between use of force and
virtue, not least the virtues of justice and courage, and the need to understand military
matters in relation to a larger view of the good of human society.

Alcibiades and Laches4

Alcibiades is, next to the philosopher Parmenides and the poet Aristophanes, probably the
most famous of Socrates’s interlocutors. We know him from Thucydides’ History of the
Peloponnesian War, where he Ž gures prominently as one of the most important generals of
Athens. Among students of philosophy, Alcibiades is famous for his ‘drunken speech’
towards the ending of Plato’s dialogue Symposium, but there is also a dialogue bearing his
name which ‘was held in the greatest esteem in the Platonic school of antiquity’,5 indeed,

1
We Žnd in the Statesman : 307e – 308a, a telling passage about how too much peacefulness and
tranquility, on the one hand, and too much manliness and readiness for war, on the other, are both
inimical to the good of the city. Plato is indicating that there is a golden mean between too much and
too little attention to war and military matters.
2
A Žne comparison of Thucydides, on the one hand, and Plato, Aristotle and Cicero, on the other, can be
found in Pangle and Ahrensdorf 1999: chs. 1 – 2.
3
I certainly do not claim to cover all relevant passages about war in Plato here. I merely attempt to point
to some works that give a relatively clear and coherent picture of the Socratic Platonic view of war.
4
See James H. Nichols, Jr. and Steven Forde, in Pangle 1987, as well as Bruell 1999 for illuminating
recent discussions of these dialogues. Wyller 1981 contains, in addition to eloquent Norwegian transla-
tions of the two dialogues, an interesting commentary concentrating on the Socratic pursuit of self-
knowledge as the main theme of these dialogues —this commentary has, alas, not been translated into
English.
5
Steven Forde, in Pangle 1987: 222.
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it was held by the neo-Platonist Iamblichus as containing ‘the whole philosophy of Plato,
as in a seed’.6
Alcibiades was clearly one of the most talented of all Athenian politicians and
generals, and Socrates seems at one time to have regarded him as his favorite student and
‘beloved’. But Alcibiades somehow failed to learn Socrates’s lessons. While brilliant, he also
lacked moderation, and was involved in several hapless military and political adventures.
He almost ended his career with the Athenians when he, amid great controversy, was
relieved of his duty right before the spectacular Athenian defeat at Sicily. After this he
switched sides to the Spartans and became, in the eyes of some, a traitor to Athens. In 411,
he was again restored to prominence and actually led the Athenian forces towards the end
of the Peloponnesian War, which ended in defeat for the Athenians. While neither of them
ever became traitors, we are led to remember such military Ž gures as Patton and
MacArthur; brilliant men whose lack of moderation led them to make decisions or consider
plans that were unwise and not conducive to peace.
We are in the Alcibiades dialogue confronted with the young Alcibiades, who certainly
comes across as highly ambitious. Indeed, he wishes to be a leader of Athens, possibly
surpassing even the great Pericles in renown. But if he is to give the Athenians advice on
how to run their city, and be an advisor, i.e. a politician, to whom the people will listen and
whom they will come to obey, what is the subject matter he needs to master?
This is where war enters the picture. Socrates suggests that the affair that sums up the
core of what the city’s leaders need to know is deliberation about war and peace. And we
then come to see how the question of war, in the mind of Socrates, is necessarily linked to
justice:

Socrates: Then that ‘better’ in relation to waging or not waging war against those we
ought or ought not and when we ought or ought not, which I was just asking
about —does it happen to be anything other than the more just?7

In other words, questions about waging war —described as the central concern of the
statesman— are essentially questions about justice. And so Alcibiades has to agree, albeit
somewhat grudgingly, that it is about justice that he will have to be a specialist if he is to
give sound advice on the city’s most fateful decisions, that of waging war and making
peace. Thus, the right use of military force is closely linked to questions about the just, a
view which is not gainsaid later in the dialogue, and which we may thus infer is close to
Socrates’s true view.8
Interestingly, the dialogue, without explicitly going much further into the debate
about war and peace, seems to suggest that the good and wise ruler will be able to avoid
war, since he should seek to command respect and inspire allegiance not only from his own

6
Ibid. It should be added here that there is also a second dialogue named after Alcibiades, often referred
to as Alcibiades II or Alcibiades Minor, but it is less often read, and its authenticity as a Platonic work has
been questioned (as has, probably mistakenly, that of Alcibiades I ).
7
Alcibiades : 109c, trans. Carnes Lord, in Pangle 1987: 183.
8
This dialogue, like the Laches , is highly ‘aporetic’, that is, it does not aim to produce positive deŽnitions
or solutions, but rather indicates negatively what things are not. However, the dialogic form invites us to
draw the conclusion here drawn, that justice and war should be linked, since that is indeed the direction
in which Socrates seems to want to move Alcibiades.
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citizens, but from the enemy as well.9 In other words, true justice will lead to harmony
between enemies, and the virtues of enemy leaders may then— we are led to surmise— be
transformed into virtues working in concert with the virtues of the perfect ruler. Thus, the
contention that the art of war must be understood in light of the virtue of justice leads us
to the Platonic teaching, well known from the Republic, that justice consists in the harmony
of the other virtues; and therefore justice is the virtue par excellence which precludes war
and con ict. The truly just ruler, should he exist (and, we ought to remember, we are led
to believe by Plato that he does not), will rule in a way that makes war at most an
exception to the rule. And since the wars that nonetheless have to be fought will always
be just, they will also be waged for the sake of peace, not in order to perpetuate con ict.
Much of the same virtue perspective which we Ž nd in the Alcibiades is emphasized in
the Laches dialogue. Socrates converses with Nicias and Laches, two Athenian generals,
about the usefulness of being educated in the military arts. It is gradually made clear to the
reader that the virtue around which the conversation is centered, is courage, the central
military virtue. However, Socrates indicates that possessing courage without coming to
grips with and internalizing the other virtues — moderation, justice and not least prudence
(or practical wisdom) — is not true virtue. Courage is connected to what we may call ‘the
whole of virtue’, and so Ž ghting well in war has a close connection to living and behaving
well as a human being.
Socrates leads one of his interlocutors, Laches, to a deŽ nition of courage as ‘steadfast-
ness accompanied by prudence noble and good’ or ‘prudent steadfastness’. If courage is
accompanied by folly, it is no longer a virtue, but ‘harmful and evildoing’.1 0 Now, Socrates
still has some questions about this deŽ nition, as it seems to contradict common-sense
opinions about courage. Yet, these questions do not gainsay the essential link between
courage and prudence, or between virtue and war-making. Therefore, it is reasonable to
claim that in this highly aporetic dialogue, with no deŽ nite conclusions drawn or
deŽ nitions arrived at, it is the closest we get to a proper understanding of the right conduct
of military affairs.
Thus, we see Plato’s Socrates working to integrate military matters into a view of the
common good, moderation, justice and prudence, where courage uninformed by a broader
kind of wisdom is no true virtue. Plato, in short, argues that it is inherently difŽ cult, if not
impossible, to achieve true virtue in the affairs of war without attention to the virtue of a
good human being as such. Indirectly he criticizes the pursuit of military virtue as a
separate pursuit, a motive which returns later in the Platonic corpus.

Republic
The large dialogue known as the Republic, Plato’s most famous work on political matters,
deals with the creation of the ideal city, something which seems possible only in speech,
but which is nonetheless important as a guide to the virtuous political life.
Plato distinguishes between three main social classes in the city: the rulers (ideally
philosophers), the soldiers (or auxiliaries) and the rest of the population —artisans, farmers,

9
Cf. 120a ff. I am indebted to Steven Forde for this interesting observation, see his discussion in Pangle
1987: 232.
10
Laches : 192c – d, trans. James H. Nichols, Jr., in Pangle 1987: 256.
 Plato 41
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merchants, and so on. The Ž rst two classes are treated together under the name of
guardians, and much time is spent discussing their qualities. The guardians must look to
the city’s protection and foster in themselves those qualities that make them apt to be
protectors. Plato clearly sees the danger of military personnel that lack proper training, and
he fears the creation of a soldier class which may become antagonistic to the city and its
citizens. Thus, the education and integration of soldiers is a basic building-block of Plato’s
ideal city.1 1
The topic of war in the Republic is inextricably tied to Socrates’s questioning about the
inward disposition of the soul. This linkage is established as Socrates and Glaucon discuss
the characteristics of what they come to call a ‘luxurious city’ — a city which goes beyond
the rudiments of that quite austere community which Socrates has just Ž nished describing,
and which he has called the ‘healthy’ and ‘true’ city.1 2 It is here that the dialogue Ž rst
introduces the topic of war. While the so-called luxurious city will include intellectual and
cultural life, as well as many amenities that the citizens would not enjoy in Socrates’s
‘healthy’ city (which Glaucon has dismissed as a city of pigs!), this larger and more
sophisticated city will also be ‘driven to make war on its neighbours to feed its excessive
appetites’.1 3 According to this argument, war is an unavoidable consequence of the desire
to have and own ever more —a desire which seems unavoidable once a taste for luxuries
and the Ž ner sides of life has been introduced. The enemies in such wars, however, will not
be enemies because of their transgressions of justice; they will merely be the possessors of
land and property, which the citizens of the luxurious city need in order to lead ever more
luxurious lives.
With this description of the luxurious city and its striving for ever more goods, we
have discovered, Socrates states boldly, ‘the origin of war’.1 4 And, while Socrates refuses to
pass Ž nal judgment on whether war as such is evil or good, he makes it clear that the roots
of war, as described above, are evil: ‘War arises out of those things which are the
commonest cause of evil in cities, when evil does arise, both in private life and public life’.1 5
In short, unlimited desires lead to the pursuit of luxury rather than the pursuit of true
virtue. This hunt for comfort and luxury, in turn, leads to the creation of a large army and
a class of guardians, presumably needed both to acquire and to defend all the goods of the
city.
At this point, however, an interesting twist occurs. Through the ideals laid out for the
guardian class, austerity is actually reintroduced into the city.1 6 By means of a very
well-regulated mythology (or theology) to guide the education of the guardians, we see the
dialogue producing a groundwork for the ideal city out of what was originally a city too
preoccupied, according to Socrates, with luxury.1 7

11
See Republic : book III, 415d – 416d.
12
Ibid.: book II, 372e, in Plato 2000: 55.
13
John Ferrari, in ibid.: xxvi.
14
Ibid.: book II, 373e: 56.
15
Ibid. This can be compared to book VIII, 566e – 567a, where Socrates portrays the tyrant’s wish always to
wage war.
16
See John Ferrari, in ibid.: xxvi; cf. Socrates’s exclamation in book III, 399e.
17
See ibid.: book II, 374b ff. In this discussion of the education of the guardians, courage plays a central
role (see book II, 375a, and book III, 386b), and its connection to prudence is stressed (see book II,
376b – c), as it was in the Laches.
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Of importance to us is the fact that war is portrayed by Socrates as a consequence of

excessive desires —indeed, of a lack of harmony in the soul. The solution to the problem is
found in the right education of the guardians who are to Ž ght and oversee the wars. If they
are properly taught and trained, the city may avoid the evils attendant upon a wrongful
disposition of the soul. Thus, we come to understand that war arises from a lack of
harmony among the soul’s desires — but the beginning of rectifying this disharmony is
described as the proper education of guardians (including soldiers), not as the abolition of
soldiery and war altogether. This means that what we today call military ethics plays a
very crucial role in the development of Plato’s ideal city.1 8 (We are led to wonder, however,
whether there is any way in which the path towards war could have been avoided in the
Ž rst place —that is, we cannot help but ask why Socrates agreed to debate ‘the luxurious
city’ at all, and did not stick to his original, more austere and much simpler city, where
there seems not to have been a need for war-making in the Ž rst place.)
These observations show us that Plato’s thoughts on the ethics of war in the Republic
cannot be seen apart from the ever-present tension between the seemingly unreachable
aspirations of the ideal city that is being constructed in speech, and the very real seeds of
decline and disaster that are ultimately found in the human soul. War is clearly seen by
Socrates (and Plato) as an outgrowth of those seeds. But at the same time military
education, discipline and virtue are seen as important factors in the right education of the
ideal city’s guardians.
Alas, the framework of this short article does not allow for a thorough analysis of
Plato’s ‘psychology of war’, which reaches for ‘the sources in the soul —ineliminable
apparently— that lead to war’,1 9 an analysis that is surely needed in order to come fully to
grips with the Platonic view of war and morality. I hope, nonetheless, that the hints given
so far help the reader see the ambiguous, yet very important, role played by soldiery and
war in the Republic.
More directly on the topic of justice and war, we Ž nd in book V Socrates and his
companion Glaucon (an older brother of Plato) discussing a topic which is central to the
ethics of war, and which certainly struck close to home for the Greeks: civil war.2 0 While
not racist in any modern, biological sense, Socrates here seems to adhere to the Greek view
that non-Greeks are somehow barbarians (literally: people whose language we cannot
understand), and that Ž ghting them in war does not call for the same moral restrictions as
internal war between Greeks (or ‘Hellenes’).2 1 The Peloponnesian War was, of course, in
the main a war between Greeks. Implied in the conversation in book V is a harsh criticism
of the military conduct of the Peloponnesian War. But, interestingly, we also Ž nd, more or
less explicitly laid out, the contours of a ius in bello for wars between the Greeks, with the
following main elements: (a) pillage and ravaging of lands is to be avoided, (b) only those
actually responsible for the dispute are to be seen and treated as true enemies, (c) no
enslavement or killing of the defeated should be permitted consequent to war, (d) the

18
See especially 374b – 375d re. the education of guaridans pertaining to the ethics and virtue of military
affairs.
19
I am grateful to one of the journal’s anonymous reviewers for these formulations, and for contributions
to my overall perspective on war and the soul.
20
See ibid.: book V, 470c– 472a.
21
Overall, it is true to say that Socrates, Plato and Aristotle indirectly criticize the narrowness of Greek pride
and self-centerednes s in their own time, and that they indicate the possibility of a more cosmopolitan
view of man, see Pangle and Ahrensdorf 1999: 46– 50, with reference to, inter alia, Aristotle’s Politics,
1279a– 1281a, and Plato’s Laws, 713a – 718c, 886a, 903b – 905c.
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dispute must be conducted in a way that allows for a just and mutually acceptable peace,
so that a state of war does not continue interminably.2 2
Thus, appearing several centuries before an organized teaching about ethical conduct
in war had been formulated, we Ž nd in Plato a set of implicit yet recognizable criteria,
which are mirrored in the later tradition’s emphasis on proportionate use of force, right
intention and the aim of peace. Certainly, the actual Ž ghting of the Peloponnesian War
was, as Thucydides vividly reminds us, to a large extent not conducted along these lines.

Laws
Plato’s Ž nal work, the gigantic Laws, contains several passages pertaining to war. Firstly,
and maybe most importantly, Plato reports (in book I) the view that a state of war in effect
exists between all cities. It is the Cretan Kleinias who in explaining the laws of Crete to an
old Athenian Stranger (the latter coming across as Plato’s main mouthpiece, in the absence
of Socrates) puts forward the view that the laws and regulations of Crete are framed with
a view to war. However, the Athenian Stranger questions this view (which is said to be
common to the Cretans and the Lacedaimonians, i.e. Spartans) and insists that the best
laws are framed with a view to peace. Indeed, the proper statesman will always ‘legislate
the things of war for the sake of peace rather than the things of peace for the sake of what
pertains to war’.2 3 Peace is properly speaking the state in which virtue may fully
develop— excellence in war can never be more than a part of virtue and, adds the
Athenian stranger, even the ‘lowest’ and ‘smallest’.2 4 Thus, if the laws of Crete are truly
the best laws, they cannot be framed with a view to war.
While the Laws after these introductory remarks very much concentrates on the laws
and requirements of peace, rather than the Ž ghting of war, the question of preparedness
for war does not fall from view. Most importantly, ethically speaking, is the insistence in
book XII that wars are no private matter and may be undertaken only by legitimate
authority:

Athenian stranger: Everyone is to consider the same person a friend or enemy as the
city does, and if someone should make peace or war with certain parties in private,
apart from the community, the penalty is to be death […] If some part of the city
should by itself make peace or war with certain parties, the Generals are to bring those
responsible for this action into court, and the judicial penalty for someone who is
convicted shall be death.2 5

The centrality of legitimate authority is reinforced by another passage, where the Athenian
stranger states that the military organization at all levels must look toward the rightful

22
See Republic : book V, 470d – 471b; Socrates says that the Žghters of such a civil war (in the true sense
of civil!) will employ correction ‘of a gentle kind. Since they are agents of correction, not enemies, they
won’t use slavery or death as punishments’ (471a: 172).
23
Laws : book I, 628d –e, in Plato 1988: 7. See also Strauss 1975: 6.
24
Laws : book I, 630e – 631a: 9 – 10.
25
Ibid.: book XII, 955b – c: 358. See also Strauss 1975: 175
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ruler, and he adds that commonality in action and spirit is the backbone of a just military
order.2 6
This latter discussion is nested, we should note, within the concluding part of the
Laws, which is centered around how the rule of law should be overseen by the best men
of the city (the Nocturnal Council or Council of Elders). While the ambition of the Republic
to create the perfect city led by the philosopher-king has been abandoned, it is made clear
that the authority directing military affairs should be a just and deeply pious one, which
would certainly exclude, in Plato’s view, the pursuit of extravagant, self-serving or overly
violent military campaigns.

Conclusion
Never systematically stated, but still clearly implied in his remarks about the role of soldiers
and military affairs, I believe we Ž nd the contours of both ius ad bellum and ius in bello in
the Platonic corpus. By linking the conduct of military affairs to an overall view of justice,
as well as an ideal of the soldier and his (or her) place in the city, severe limits are placed
on the resort to, as well as the actual use of, force.
Plato’s dialogues are always useful in their insistence on Ž nding and understanding
the art and wisdom proper to each activity in the city— both in delineating the features
that set some activity apart from others, and in connecting those features with the good of
the city and of human society as a whole. I believe that as students of military ethics we
could do worse than turn to Plato for an understanding of the proper place of military
forces within a society that ideally should be directed towards peace, not war.

References
Bruell, C., 1999. On the Socratic Education. Lanham: Rowman & LittleŽ eld.
Pangle, T. L., (ed.) 1987. The Roots of Political Philosoph y. Ten Forgotten Socratic Dialogues. Ithaca:
Cornell University Press.
Pangle, T. L. & Ahrensdorf, P.J., 1999. Justice Among Nations. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.
Plato, 1988. The Laws of Plato, trans. Thomas L. Pangle. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Plato, 2000. The Republic, (ed.) G.R.F. Ferrari, trans. Tom GrifŽ th. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Strauss, L., 1975. The Argument and the Action of Plato’s Laws. Chicago: Univerisity of Chicago Press.
Wyller, E. A., (trans. and ed.) 1981. Platon : Erkjenn deg selv. Oslo: Aschehoug Thorleif Dahls
Kulturbibliotek.

Biography
Henrik Syse (b. 1966) is a Senior Researcher at the International Peace Research
Institute, Oslo (PRIO) and an Associate Professor of political science at the University of
Oslo. He is the author of several articles on just war and international ethics, and has
written extensively on natural law and human rights.

26
See Laws : book XII, 942a – 943a.