PHILOSOPHERS INCOMPETENT & RASCALS Adeimantus (echoing, no doubt, some hot brotherly debate in Platos home) objects that philosophers are dolts or rogues who would rule either foolishly, or selfishly or both. The votaries of philosophy who carry on the study not only in youth with a view to education, but as the pursuit of their maturer years-these men for the most part grow into very strange beings, not to say utter scoundrels; and the result with those who may be considered the best of them is, that they are made useless to the world by the very study which you extol. PLATOS SOLUTION FOR INCOMPETENCE By philosophy Plato means an active culture, wisdom that mixes With the concrete busy-ness of life; he does not mean a closeted and impractical metaphysician; Plato is the man who least resembles Kant, which is (with all respect) a considerable merit. So much for INCOMPETENCE; PLATOS SOLUTION FOR RASCALITY as for RASCALITY we may provide against that by establishing among the guardians a system of communism. 1. None of them should have any property beyond what is absolutely necessary; 2. Their provisions should be only such as are required by trained warriors, who are men of temperance and courage; their agreement is to receive from the citizens a fixed rate of pay, enough to meet the expenses of the year, and no more; should they· ever acquire homes or lands or moneys of their own, 1. They will become housekeepers and husbandmen instead of guardians; 2. Enemies and tyrants instead of allies of the other citizens; 3. Hating and being hated, plotting and being plotted against, they will pass through life in much greater TERROR OF INTERNAL THAN OF EXTERNAL ENEMIES; and the hour of ruin, both to themselves and to the rest of the State, will be at hand. NO LUXURY FOR THE GUARDIANS For they will be protected from want; the necessities and modest luxuries of a noble life will be theirs in regular provision, without the searing and wrinkling care of economic worry. But by the same token they will be precluded from cupidity and sordid ambitions. WHAT ABOUT GUARDIANS WIVES? But what will their wives say to all this? Will they be content to forego the luxuries of life and the conspicuous consumption of goods? The guardians will have no wives. Their communism is to be of women as well as of goods. . They are to be freed not only from the egoism. of self, but from egoism of family. But this does not mean indiscriminate mating rather it should be strictly supervised, a sort of selective breeding. All offsprings from these guardians will be brothers and sisters. Then he suggests the age limits of men and women for breeding and when man and woman can have sort of free love making on the condition that no child sees the light of this world as a result of this mating (and many laws which by todays standards would have been barbaric, inhuman. Majority of international human rights organizations would have declared him tyrant, wild, animal etc.) He afterwards emphasizes the need for military and commerce. So our political structure will be topped with a small class of guardians; it will be protected by a large class of soldiers and auxiliaries; and it will rest on the broad base of a. commercial, industrial, and agricultural population. This last or economic class will retain private property, private mates, and private families. But trade and industry will be regulated by the guardians to prevent excessive individual wealth or poverty; Anyone acquiring more than four times the average possession of the citizens must relinquish the excess to the state. Perhaps interest will be forbidden, and profits limited. The communism of the guardians is impracticable for the economic class. they hunger and thirst not after righteousness, nor after honor ,but after possessions endlessly multiplied. JUST STATE If the guardians rule well and live simply, the economic man will be willing to let them monopolize administration if they permit him to monopolize luxury. In short, the perfect society would be that in which each class and each unit would be doing the work to which its nature and aptitude best adapted it; in which no class or individual would interfere with others, but all would cooperate in difference to produce an efficient· and harmonious whole . That would be a just state.
Posted on: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 10:59:35 +0000