How close is today's society to plato's ideal republic. and which group of people, if any, serve as the guardians. sometimes it seems society is heading in the wrong direction. it would be nice to hold our 'guardians' accountable.
2007-08-20 09:20:40 · 2 answers · asked by aretwo_d2 3 in Arts & Humanities ➔ Philosophy
An analogy that Plato himself uses in the Republic is to compare the part of a society to the parts of a body. If your body was not well, it would be foolish to blame your feet for not being able to see trouble or to blame your fingers for not being able to digest food.
The warriors in Plato's state were there for protection and enforcement. They would do much the same things that soldiers and police do in our society. If you want to blame these elements for anything, Plato would say it would only be for not enforcing laws, acting where they are not needed, or executing their tasks poorly.
On the other hand, those who MAKE the laws are supposed to be the ruling class. In Plato's republic, the rulers lived in some senses in the most privation of all the classes. This was to eliminate corruption. Because they were not permitted to amass wealth, greed would have no place among them. And because they did not even know their children and family, there could be no special favoritism based on blood. These folk are the 'head' of society and probably most to blame if it is going in the wrong direction.
Certainly our rulers are far from non-wealthy and their corruption seems barely checked, if indeed it is at all. They are highly prone to demagoguery (as Plato seems to have predicted) as well. If you wish to enact changes in line with Plato's ideals, I would suggest that you start from there.
2007-08-20 09:42:47 · answer #1 · answered by Doctor Why 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Today's society is virtually the opposite of Plato's Republic, for at least two reasons:
a) Any society in which the leaders are elected by the citizen is one in which the appetites control the body, and thus is incapable of living according to the path of contemplating the unchanging form of the Good. A body ruled by its appetites is deemed to destruction ultimately.
b) Today's political rulers are far-removed from the philospher kings of the republic. They usually come from privileged strata of society, and are highly influenced by those who can help them and their allies get re-elected.
The guardians of Plato have their equivalents in the armed forces of the country, and here the difference is probably the least striking, but the idea of citizen soldiers is quite different from that of a class of professional soldiers which Plato describes in his Republic.
2007-08-27 14:27:34 · answer #2 · answered by Yupon Bachi-Bazouk 2 · 1⤊ 0⤋