Introduction

Plato’s “Republic” is an outstanding book that has formed the base of the western philosophy, it is overall an investigation of what is morality in general, and it was written in 370 BC when Plato has established his school: The Academy.

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As for us to get more fully understanded and himself better explained, he presumed a community--- which the different parts of them correspond different parts of our mind------to show us what is morality. In my view, Plato has divided the explanation of the community into three facets: The parts of the community, the education of the community, and the aims of the community. Once he has well defined morality using the community, he answered some common question that’s pervasive in the public, including why philosophers should be the king, what is goodness, what is the common political system, the pleasure of morality, and why morality is rewardable than immorality.

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1.????? Community: The parts of the community

At first, Plato explains how was the community establish. It was established due to our desire, necessary ones. The want of existence, cloth, has clung people together. As each person has a different but single job to do, in order to maintain the well rotation of the community. (Plato believes that people should have multi-works. They should devote themselves to a single job, and put all their effort on it. This can help the community to rotate better.)

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Then, the unnecessary desires appeared. People started to want more than they should have. Therefore, the guardian cropped up. They are the philosophers who will rule the whole community, the next are the auxiliaries, they are people that helps they guardians to rule over the community. Lastly, there are the workers. They are the lowest class of the community, but they have formed the base of it.

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Before anymore further explanation of the parts in the community, I must first explain the tripartite-mind theory that Plato propose. He believes the human mind have three parts: The rational part, the passionate part, and the desire part. The rational part is the part where we do rational thinking, pursue the truth, and obtain knowledge. The passionate part is the part where we have compulsion. The desire part is where we have desire. Desire divides into two categories. Necessary desire, and unnecessary desire. Once the rational part has rule over our passionate and desire part, we have the morality.

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Back to the community. The philosophers are the ones who have morality, which the passionate part of them help their rational part to rule over the desire part. If we say that desire is a monster, then passionate part is the lion, and the rational part is a human. The human tames the lion, telling it methods to the lion as to calm the monster down. But the monster can never be killed, because the human and lion can’t fight over it. With the ability to restrict desire, the philosophers also have wisdom, courage, self-discipline, and morality.

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Auxiliaries are people who help philosophers to govern. They respect authority, and willing to obey authority. But they also want to gain authority themselves. They are the ones which the passionate part rules over them. They can be the in military or the officials in the government. They prefer power more than money.

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Workers are the people who were filled with desires. They are the practitioners and artisans. In the community. You might wonder if the worker will rebel because of the desires to be the king. Thanks to the laws, they don’t. Also, they prefer money more than power. But this won’t happen due to the education of the community.

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2.????? Community: The education of the community

The education has played an important role in the utopia Plato create. And it has revealed some of his dissention on the society he lives in. His education programme includes two parts: The primary education, and the dialectic education. In the dialectic education, each level of course could weed out a bunch of people. And people who survived to the last deserves to be the ruler. Plato’s educational programme serves for the unity of the community, it facilitates everyone to be more or less pursuing the truth and gain both knowledge and goodness in their mind. Most importantly, it makes everyone to belief that pursuing goodness is a rightful thing.

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Let’s begin on the primary education. This period of education started as a child and ended as an adult, which he believes, 17~18 years old. Plato started by reading stories to child, and the stories must be chosen following 3 principles: Imitating the god, people being moral, and honour to heroes not fearing the death.

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The first one is imitating the god, this comes to a premise that the God is unflawed, it represents goodness. So that any stories praying for the God is praying for goodness.

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The second one is telling moral stories. By bringing large quantity of moral stories to children, they would have a clear view of what a moral person should behave when they haven’t leaned what’s the definition of it.

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The last one is stories honouring guardians fearless of the death. Using those stories, children will be inclined to the behaviour of guardians above rather than the cowardness they will face when they’re in the military.

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Generally, stories for children should be educating. There should be more narrative lectures than fun recreational anecdotes or epics. This will give children a feel of the virtues Plato protested. In order for them to pick up more easily on the future course they will meet.

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Next, the songs. Plato was very sensitive on the environment in the community. He believed there should be no immoral buildings. For example, casinos, brothels, and all other solid entities from big to small that debase the value of morality in children’s mind. Therefore, the songs for children should not include immoral thoughts or words in it. It can’t be too recreational, so no wide range of notes displayed. Similar to the stories, songs need to show the braveness of the guardians. The braveness here is not only fearless of death. It comprises the braveness of all kind. For instance, the braveness of making a decision.

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Now we’ve came to Plato’s theory of physical education. He thinks the physical exercise must be highly practicable. It will serve only for warfare. The exercises should be simple. If it contains too many fancy moves, it will lose its intrinsic value: Prepared for warfare.

The exercise should also be moderate. If the juvenile spent too much effort on physical exercise, they will lose the balance between cultural studies and physical exercise.

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Plato believes that there is a balance between cultural studies and physical exercise. If the kids are too passioned on culture, they would become feeble, if there is too much passion on physical exercise, the kids would become feeble. The two should fit harmoniously together, just as the rational part and passionate part should do.

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The second part of Plato’s education is dialectic education. He thinks that a person’s mind has already got all the knowledge inside, but hidden. The work that education need to do is to guide the mind to the right path. The only method that can turn us into the right path was dialectic training, it will also lead us toward the truth. The dialectic programme is the king programme that Plato designed in his curriculum.

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After the primary educational programme those new adults must attend 2~3 years of military training to the year of 20, then start the dialectic programme. Plato started it by 10 years of pre-dialectic course. This includes arithmetic, geometry, solid geometry, astronomy, and music. Those courses are teaching people to become dialectic. Then when they got 30, they will attend a new course call solid dialectic. They will study for 5 years of pure dialectic, until they are 35. Then, they become teachers, who teach the course I have mentioned above. After 15 years of teaching, they will finally become guardians.

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I guess you may have formed a question by now: If everybody, become guardians, where are the auxiliaries and workers? Yes, the only course that was needed for everyone is primary education. After that, the courses will not be for anyone. Each layer of it would weed out a bunch of people, those populations will become worker or auxiliaries depending on which level they have been. Such as a person knocked out only after graduated from primary education would certainly become workers. Now, we’ve learned that what do people need to become a guardian or a philosopher, and how to find people who born to be philosophers out of public.

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3.????? Community: The aims of the community

What Plato proposed for the community was actually revolutionary in his era. If we restrict our discussing extent only to the wellness of community rotation, we can find that there are 4 categories that Plato wants to emphasize: Gender equality, family relationship, possessiveness, and war.

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The first one is gender equality. Plato claims that both men and women are the same, but men are slightly better than women, despite of that, he thinks each gender deserves the same occupation, same education, and the same social status. That means women can also be a guardian if she has the natural ability on it.

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The second one is family relationship. Plato propose that men and women will be paired intentionally in the years of procreation (Women:20~40, Men: 25~55), the kids they produce will be send to the creche under professional care immediately. They will not recognize their parents, and their parents won’t recognize which of them is the parent’s child. The milk the mothers produce will feed all the babies in rotation. After the years of procreation, men and women could have sex with anyone else they like, but the child they produce (if they can) would be either killed or send out of the community, because their quality can’t be guaranteed.

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“How could they do those crucial things?” you might ask. This is because of Plato’s notion on possessiveness. He believes no one should have the sense of possession, almost everything should be shared to avoid almost all of the conflict in the community; Therefore, the community could become a unity.

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The last one is war. If there is a war happening, children who got the skill of horse riding would immediately go to the battlefield to observe wars by riding the fastest horse. The men or women that are the brave in a war could choose a person to kiss, and the person chosen should not refuse. Plato thinks this will facilitate the other to fight bravely, but I think this will only engender jealous and disguise. Plato has also created some rules at war. He regards poking corpses in battlefield as cowardness and an immoral behaviour, because this will stop the enemy recovering the body. And he believes that there would be no land devastated when people from the same nationality started conflict, but steal the annual harvest.

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No matter what, Plato propose his rules for the sake of the community’s unity. Those rules could intrinsically prosper the community he creates, to let every citizen in his community more or less become moral.

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4.????? Why philosophers should be the king

There is actually another aim of the community, which is the philosopher should be the king. But I think it’s better to discuss in this section. We will form our discussion into 4 facets, the inner state of a philosopher, the qualities of a philosopher, why people think philosophers are useless, and how rare can a philosopher become a king.

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Before we begin, I would explain 2 terminologies: knowledge and belief. In Plato’s epistemology, there are 4 levels of knowledge. The first one is conjecture, or representative. These are things that can’t be formed in 3D level but still exist in the solid world. Like paintings, shadows, etc. The next one is entity. Which includes all the natural and artificial things human made, which is touchable. The third one is thoughts, or believes. Those are the conclusions that all practitioners made in their field but have no idea how it works in science. The last one is knowledge. This is based on the things we imagine. Something that’s permanent, unchangeable. For example, mathematic, geometry, or simply science. The knowledge relies on reality.

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Back to the topic. Plato thinks that philosopher is the one who will be eager to learn knowledge. They love reality, they would be eager to study it. So that’s why we always define philosopher as the person who studies the nature of things itself.

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Philosophers should be the king is also based on the qualities they have. A lone list of qualities was given in the book. Which are: Fast memory, quick learning, broadness of vision, elegance, love of affiliation to truth, morality, courage, and self-discipline. Some of them is the prerequisites to be philosopher, and some of them is things that what studying philosophy will produce.

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Are philosophers really useless? This is a common question in the world Plato live in. He first explained this on why people will dislike philosophy. In his view, philosophers are the sole member of the society pursuing reality. Their mind is ruled by rational part, and the others are ruled by desire or passionate part. The mass thinks the philosophers are smart, thereafter they would want the philosophers to satisfy their desires. Philosophers, obviously, would refuse to do what the mass want, and the philosophers knows is hard to change the mass because they haven’t been though the educational programme Plato invented. They will find the mass irrational, and do the opposite way the mass want. That’s why people would dislike the philosophers. And why philosophers would refuse to be the king.

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So now it is obvious that a philosopher should rule the community same as the rational part should rule over the mind. They have those outstanding qualities, and are not insatiable of power. Unfortunately, the best is the hardest. It is almost impossible to let the philosophers to be the king. First, it’s hard to convince a philosopher to become a king. Second, it’s hard to mollify the mass to obey the philosopher. Third, it is hard to let the philosophers’ son to became philosophical. Forth, it’s hard to combine the continuous energy and the broadness of mental vision into an ordered, steady life.

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Even though it is hard, there is still some way to convince the philosopher to become a king. First, we can persuade them by saying that the goodness inside them should coincide with the goodness in the community, it is immoral to escape the duty of a ruler being a philosopher. Second, we will tell them that people less competent than them has become the ruler, with the kindness and compassion inside the philosopher, they will be eager to put the community into the right path. Lastly, we can use the gratitude of them to convince. The community has fed them up, they ought to pay for it.

5.????? What is goodness

The definition of goodness is a very popular in the philosophical field. The discussion of it has last over 2000 years, but there isn’t an answer on it even at now. In this section, I would only share what Plato thinks goodness are, and my interpretation of his words.

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Plato has not given a clear definition of goodness, but has given an analogy on it. What has given us the ability to see? The answer might be ‘sight’. But there is another thing, which is light. Sight and light together give us the ability to see. But what produce the light most thoroughly and widely? The sun. Goodness resembles the sun. Goodness is the key to procure truth and knowledge. If you are knowledgeable, you have the goodness in your mind (It might be easy for you to be knowledgeable which means to know the permanent nature of thing itself. But in the classical ages of Plato’s time, it is extremely hard to gain knowledge because they haven’t formed a scientific system yet. The ones that are considered knowledgeable were Euclid, Pythagoras, etc.). Which will help you to learn more and more of the truth.

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In my understanding, goodness is more like a tool rather than the outer behaviour which contains morality. It gives you the ability to gain knowledge and truth, and helps you to become a philosopher. And goodness in a community can led it to prosper.

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6.????? The five political system

It is very hard to maintain the type of Plato’s community, which Plato admit it himself. The political system he creates is called aristocracy, that means “ruled by the best”. The word “best” can be subjective, but here it means philosopher. It is a paradigm for us to imitate, a perfect assumption that Plato made. So, Plato give a degeneration of political system from aristocracy to dictatorship, and gives each political system a personality to correspond with.

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The first one is aristocracy. I would not spend time discuss on how it works because I have already explained much. I’ll only show how aristocracy degenerate. At the beginning, the rulers are unaware of pairing mates in a correct order* they create, that cause the quality of child become worse. If the unqualified child was born, conflict will appear between auxiliaries, workers, and philosophers. Then, the sense of possession will start to exist in the worker’s class, and so on slaves appeared. The slave owner will try to guard their assets, and the ruler and auxiliaries will come and try to put the community in order. Since the conflicts inside has appeared, people become competitive and ambitious. They moved into a political system called timarchy. *(He says that the correct order corresponds to the perfect number 12960000=(3x4x5) ?, but haven’t explained well about how it works)

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Timarchy is a political system ruled by the passionate part of mind which people pursue power. People in there are obstinate. They like culture and be willing to listen but they aren’t good at speaking it. They treat slaves whatever they like, and respect authority while they are eager to gain it themselves. Also, they are fond at sport and hunting.

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Timarchy turns into oligarchy by the lure of money. Its principle is “ruled by the rich”. It is a political system ruled by the desire part. People values money, and are hardworking in order to obtain it. They’re ascetic for gaining money, and hoard money into a vault. They treat being rich as their lifetime goal, so they will have multiple occupation. This disobeys Plato’s principle of “one person one work”, which is personal specialization.

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Oligarchy turns into Democracy by the rebellion of the poor. Because the poor has taste what is it like to be ruled, they give all the authorities to public. Laws and political act will be voted and decided by the lots, and freedom will be given to everyone. This political system treats everyone equal but Plato thinks they don’t. The equality is only for citizens, but not for women and slaves. A man who lives in this type of community will spent time and money on both necessary and unnecessary desire, and keep them in the same value. They would indulge every passing value. Now, the three parts of mind has disappeared, the 3-part come into disorder.

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Democracy turns to dictatorship by the slaves and the poor creating conflicts with the rich. The rich have sucked all of their money, and they remain poor. They were led by a leader, and dislikes Democracy. The leader led them to take dominion of the rich and ruled over the coommunity, so the leader’s fellows all obeyed to him. At first, he will make a good impression to the public about how will the future goes if he rules the country. Then he will keep starting wars to other communities in order to create a need of a leader. With the scare of being toppled, he will kill people that are a threat to him. After that, people will start to be irritated at him, so he will hire more slaves as his bodyguard. At last, the desire part has come to its acme. The dictator will be keep searching things that can satisfy his need until he has lost all his money. His insatiable desire won’t stop. So, he turns to kill and steal, with the mind saturated with evil deeds. In the end, a dictator would be resentful, unreliable, immoral, friendless, unjust, fear on the rebellion of slaves, and a person in constant state of poverty and need. This is the most miserable condition that a human being will ever have.

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7.????? ?Morality is happier and more rewarding than immorality

Plato has given 3 proofs that show morality is happier than immorality. The first is from the political system that I previously explained, the second is from the tripartite-mind theory, the third was the type of pleasure that moral person will procure.

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The first argument is based on the political systems. Since dictatorship is the unhappiest condition that is ruled by pure desire, then the happiest one must be aristocracy, which is ruled by pure rationalism. There would be no poverty, no needless desires, everyone sticked on their occupation contributing for the community’s goodness.

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The second argument is from the tripartite-mind theory. The 3 parts of mind can each refer to philosophical temperament（rational part）, competitive temperament (passionate part), and avaricious temperament (desirous part). The rank of them is from the experience they have. The lowest rank is an avaricious person. They regard money as their assess criterion. Anything that can help them to gain money is good, and anything that can’t help them to gain money is bad. The second rank is competitive person. They find money less satisfying than power, and think learning useful, but will not step in thoroughly because they think that will be a waste of time. The highest rank is a philosophical person. They have experienced two kinds of pleasure above, and claim the intellectual pleasures as the happiest. They are the closest to reality, and know how it feel to be a competitive and an avaricious person. With the intelligence and the experience, the philosophical person is the happiest.

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The third argument is from the different types of pleasure. When you are ill, you will think of being healthy is a pleasure, when you are taking drugs, you will think having a healthy life without drugs is a pain. Therefore, the healthy life is an intermediate state, its pleasure or pain is unreliable. Plato want us to get pure pleasure, a pleasure that can last forever, a non-temporary pleasure. This pleasure is sticking with the truth, because truth is also everlasting. For the reason that rational mind and thinking is pursuing the truth, we can concede that the philosophers with morality will have the true pleasure. In contrast, the dictator is the furthest from law and order, so they will have the least happiness. Plato gives an interesting number: 739, which is (32)3. This is how much times a philosopher would be happier than a dictator.

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Let’s retrace our step to the human, lion, and monster. Which stands for the three parts of our mind. We will use it to proof that morality is more rewarding than immorality. If the human isn’t lazy, spending time taming the lion and the monster, the mind gains self-discipline. If the human were lazy, letting the monster do whatever it wants, the mind itself would become a monster. So, we ought to restrict our mind. Self-discipline is the best, and law that make the community good and prevent immorality is the second best. That’s why we must have law. Even though we can’t make our law as good as Plato would like, we can still prevent of a lot of immorality behaviours. Moreover, only philosophers can gain self-discipline, and they are the small part of the community, so there’s a lot of people who don’t. In conclusion, morality is clearly more rewardable, because you’ve contributed for the community, and gain self-discipline yourself.

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There is another reason on why morality is more rewardable than immorality based on the tale of reincarnation. Plato said the moral person will “be in the god’s favour”, and the immoral person will get a 10-time-worse punishment for each mistake they have (Waterfield, 368). The moral person will eventually be prized by the god alive or after. If he’s alive, the god will bring him to prosper, if he is dead, he can choose what to become in his next life. Even if immorality seems to be good at first, people having it will be determined to get bad consequence in their life.

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8.????? The assaults on poems

Now, we’ve come to the last part of Plato’s Republic, which is the assault on poetry and painting. They are representational, which depict things in a single angle, or tell things in a single facet. It prevents people from seeing the truth, but are satisfying people’s desires. The poem and painting will fatten parts of mind that isn’t rational. For example, in order to let us getting touched, the poets will underscore the depiction of heroes lamenting while death. Watching those kinds of poems will only make us become more sensitive. Even if we think will can endure it, the willingness of desire will pervade inside you unnoticed. Same and painting. The painters will only draw thing in his own perspective. It can’t represent the whole of it, because it is formed 2-dimensionally, you even can’t see what is the back side of the thing that painters draw. Poetry and painting prevent us from seeing the truth, they only give us unreliable pleasure.

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Surely, poems and painting will never disappear in Plato’s world, just like phones and TVs will never disappear in ours. Plato is only giving what a perfect world would look like, and he knows it’s impossible to come true.

Conclusion

Plato lives in a world with blooms of thoughts. People discuss with each other, debate with each other. What Plato want us to know is what an ideal life will be. Morality, goodness, rationality……All those virtues can lead us to a good inner state of mind and the outer state of body. It brings us to true satisfaction. Although attaining this kind of life isn’t easy. It will take years of training, and you might never have it. The important thing is not the spurious rewards (reputation, money, etc) that it will bring, the important thing is the virtues inside it. It is a lifestyle, which will satisfy what we truly want. This life, will bring us, the pure pleasure.