For Plato, an ideal state should be ruled by philosophers who possess strong leadership skills and are able to control the masses. Socrates no doubt persisted in suggesting that democracy was an unsound form of government: just as a city that decided questions of public health by popular vote (Monoson 114). During Plato’s life, the democratic constitution set the seal on the work of the tyranny, for it ensured the exclusion of the large landowner from a predominating influence on politics, and it put effective power into the hands of the townsman — the merchant, the manufacturer, and the proletariat. Socrates’s execution demonstrates strengths of the Plato’s argument and proves his position that the state should be ruled by philosophers (elite).
Socrates stayed for the trial. Socrates was condemned to death for corrupting the youth and for worshipping strange gods. Plato’s Apology can be seen as a report, but also edited and polished to bring out the philosophic issues that the situation held. Socrates asks the jury to forget old prejudices they may have against him based on The Clouds, and explains that he inquires because he has a “divine mission.” To his surprise, however, Socrates found he had one advantage over all he met: about important things (for mere craftsmanship could not count as the highest “wisdom”), the men he talked to knew nothing, but we’re absolutely sure that they did know; he, at least, realizing his own ignorance, was that much wiser (Recco 83). The real “clear and present danger” seemed to be the men who had complete power, confidence, and ignorance, who spoke of “justice” but with no knowledge of its meaning, who made laws for national security with excellent intention and uncritical stupidity. The legal case against Socrates was known to be weak; his honesty and integrity were widely recognized, and the temper of the day was inclined to toleration (Monoson 115). Socrates was now seventy years old: the Athens he had loved was gone, never to be rebuilt. Almost deliberately he seemed to press for a final decision, refusing absolutely to escape from prison or to accept the various offers of help that came from his many friends (Barrett 43).
In effect, Anytus must have seen Socrates as a “clear and present danger”; and those of us who have lived in the twentieth rather than the nineteenth century can very readily see why he might have done so. Where Anytus would much have preferred uncritical patriotism and conformity as the order of the day, Socrates was insisting on giving young people ideas that at least implicitly were critical of the government (Recco 54). By his own account at the trial, Socrates had deflated a good many politicians in a debate by asking simple questions and had stirred up a number of young men to imitate his example. Although this charge could carry the death penalty, it was almost certainly intended only to frighten Socrates so that he would leave the town, as Anaxagoras had many years before (Monoson 114).To show that the accusation represented general opinion, Anytus chose as his associates a conservative religious man, Meletus, and an orator–about whom nothing else is known–Lycon. However, they had miscalculated: Socrates stayed in Athens, stood trial, and forced the issue. Thus public opinion was against him as the trial began (Barrett 47).
Socrates” speech is interesting because it follows the topics of other defendants’ speeches in establishing Socrates’ character and citizenship, then, unlike any other such defense, rejects this evidence as irrelevant to the point at issue. Socrates has done all of the things a good man and good citizen should do: he has a family, an excellent military record, he was not intimidated by “The Thirty” into complicity in their crimes, though his resistance risked his life. If he had stopped there, he could surely have gained an acquittal (Monoson 116). What was really on trial, he reminded the jury, was the social value or danger of his inquiries; and other considerations should be set aside. To deny the importance of his mission, to admit he should be punished for it, or even to agree that he will now stop it, are not open to him, he tells the jury; all would be unjust, and he has always been motivated by a love of justice (Recco 39).
As an Athenian, Socrates was under an obligation to the Laws, and he had been tried and sentenced by their due process. Whether the sentence was just or unjust, said the Laws, will not change the fact that due process was observed and the sentence was a legal decision. The Laws said to Socrates that if he were to run away, he would be committing an act of cowardice and of injustice, and would indeed be guilty of the charges brought against him. It might have been within his rights to disobey a court injunction, but only if he was then willing to stand trial for that disobedience before the court (Recco 83). He owed the principle of respect for law his allegiance, and he was not released from his implicit contract with Athenian law just because he found it personally unpleasant. The Laws told him it would be wrong to escape; and Socrates remained (Barrett 76). In the Republic Plato writes:
Unless the philosophers rule as kings or those now called kings and chiefs genuinely and adequately philosophize, and political power and philosophy coincide in the same place, while the many natures now making their way to either apart from the other are by necessity excluded, there is no rest from ills for the cities, my dear Glaucon, nor I think for humankind, nor will the regime we have now described in speech ever come forth from nature, insofar as possible, and see the light of the sun. (Republic 473d-e).
The relation between the community and the individual was one problem that Plato knew from experience; to find a solution was presumably one of his goals for the new Academy. On the one hand, it was only in a social context that fully human life could be led, and such a context seemed to impose an obligation to have respect for the law; on the other hand, the group wielding power in a state, whether it was a dictator, an oligarchy of Thirty, or democracy, could and often did use this power unjustly; critics admit that there is the dilemma of Socrates, a good man in a bad state, unjustly sentenced but unwilling to set an example of disrespect for the law by running away (Recco 57). The possible solutions of declaring either that the state or the individual alone was real and hence took priority may have occurred to Plato, but since he held that both were real, this simple kind of solution was not open to him. Instead, he proposed to design a state such that no just man in it could ever be treated unjustly. But before this could be well done, it was evidently necessary to have a clear idea of the nature of justice; as critics have seen, this was a point on which Socrates, professional legal opinion, and the common sense of the time, differed sharply. “Justice” in the individual, the state, and the universe is the theme of Plato’s Republic, the most widely read, admired and criticized single work in Western philosophy. The Republic is a brilliant discussion, showing Plato’s ability to bring together many fields of knowledge and relate them to a single central speculative theme. In the course of the discussion, a state is described which is ideal in respect to social justice; and an educational system outlined which presupposes the theory of forms, and Socrates’ equation of virtue with knowledge (Monoson 118).
The execution of Socrates proves that society is wise if its rulers make policy well; brave if its soldiers execute policy effectively; temperate if all its classes are harmonized by an agreement as to which should rule and which be ruled; and just when each citizen has and does his own proper work, not meddling in other classes’ business. These conditions of value can be generalized to apply to other sorts of organizations, as well as to the political one (Monoson 119). For example, critics test the tentative result by seeing whether it will work for justice and injustice in the individual soul, as well as in the state. Examination of their conflict shows three independent “parts” in the soul. These are the appetitive, aggressive (“spirited”-the part that loves contests and prestige), and rational. (The rational faculty must be separate since reason can come into conflict both with ambition and appetite.) An excellent individual will be exactly like an excellent society: wise if the rational part is strong; brave if the ambitious part co-operates with reason and is not deterred by pain and pleasure; temperate if the parts are in their proper (reason-spirit-appetite) order of subordination; and just if each part of the soul does its own proper work. In the individual, then, justice is a psychological balance, with appetite and ambition guided by reason to their proper exercise and satisfaction (Recco 55). Critics admit that it is necessary for truly human life, justice turns out, as Socrates had thought, to have intrinsic value for the individual; it is the psychological state necessary to lead human life fully and well. Since the rulers have absolute power, the state seems totalitarian to some readers. On the other hand, justice and social welfare both require equality of opportunity, so that each person functions in the class for which he is fitted; the aristocracy is one of ability. Finally, the rulers are trained as public-spirited administrators, who will be objective in their judgments of policy (Barrett 65).
Following the discussion of social classes and psychological excellence, Socrates illustrates what he means his ideal rulers to be, by describing their training intemperance, courage, and wisdom, in that order. Although he keeps saying that his illustrations are “not impossible,” the account is not a practical program but a fascinating description of family life and education in an imaginary community of these guardians. It is primarily intended to show in more detail what sort of rulers his abstract aristocrats are. They must never put personal interest ahead of the welfare of the community as a whole. While the motives of gaining profit and prestige are natural and proper for the craftsman or farmer, they are not so for the legislator. The way to ensure that there will be no conflicts of interest is to give the rulers no personal ties that could interfere (Recco 87). This means no private property; it also means no private families. Women and children will be held in common so that the rulers form a single-family. To judge from later reactions of its readers, one might think the main intention of the whole Republic was to advocate such communism, rather than to define justice (Monoson 118). The proposal is shocking to the modern reader and was meant to be so. Temperance, in this limiting case, will require a radical alteration of what Greek and American alike have always thought of as “human nature”; the natural pursuit of our own profit, and the natural tendency, even more, marked then than now, to give one’s own relatives preferential treatment whenever possible. This community is helping to define an idea; it is not a program that is recommended for actual operation. Rulers should be taught to be fearless from an early age; critics take them into battle, so that they will not be frightened of pain and combat, and can make decisions of policy without timidity. To the reader of his time, who could easily visualize this “children’s cavalry,” this plan surely seemed startling; and no less startling was the scheme of education that follows later. The great danger in giving a group total power is that they use this in ignorance of what they are really doing; the great temptation of politicians is to rely on experience and guesswork, in the state Socrates now describes, that temptation is to be corrected by ten years of study in pure mathematics before they are allowed to discuss public policy (Monoson 120).
The case of Socrates demonstrates that when a group of rulers confuses national welfare with national power and honor, the result is a “timocratic” state, rather like Sparta; in the individual, it produces a man in whom ambition exceeds the limits set by reason (Recco 87). The appetitive motive prevails in a money-loving individual, and in a state ruled by an economic oligarchy that makes policy in terms of national wealth. At least such persons and states have a consistent policy; perhaps because of some past insecurity, Socrates suggests, they are afraid of being in want of necessities. When opinions alternate in their claim for satisfaction and there is no fixed policy, critics have the democracy and the personality–for whom all desires are equal (Monoson 120). Finally, a mind or state gone mad, dominated by a single insatiable desire for individual power and pleasure, is the domain of the tyrant. A vivid picture of the tyrant’s terrors and limitations is given as a case study–a life of terror, surrounded by illiterate mercenaries, devoid of friends since anyone his superior or equal seems to him a rival for his power (Barrett 82).
Having put before his hearers’ case studies and classifications of types of society and personality, Socrates finally sums up the case for justice. The good man is best and happiest; and it even turns out that his life, of all the lives examined, is the most pleasant. The pleasure critics find in life depends on the right choice of goals, a skillful selection of means that will lead us to those goals, and an opportunity in the environment people live in to choose and utilize those means. The just man is best in all three respects. Socrates sums up, “the just man is then immeasurably better and lives 729 times more pleasantly than the tyrant” (Recco 83). Here critics find what the earlier discussion of temperance, courage, and wisdom lacked: a picture of justice and the just man operating in a real universe like our own, not simply being constructed like two-dimensional figures in abstract argument (Barrett 49).
In sum, the execution of Socrates proves that democracy is based on the strict rule of the elite and state laws stipulated by the elite. In Plato’s State, only the philosopher must rule. These rulers are subjected to discipline. For they are to be the defenders of the State against internal discord and foreign aggression and on their absolute integrity depends on the well-being of the whole community. Their education, therefore, is chiefly concerned to ensure three things. In the first place all personal interests must be suppressed, the desire for wealth, family, bodily pleasures, and so on. For such interests, if they become paramount in a ruler’s life, will corrupt his administration and make him another wage-earner no better than the civilians. The wise elite must be given a moral training so strict and so severe that nothing can divert them from their service to the State.
Works Cited
Barrett, H. The Sophists: Rhetoric, Democracy, and Plato’s Idea of Sophistry. Chandler & Sharp Pub, 1987.
Recco, G. Athens Victorious: Democracy in Plato’s Republic. Lexington Books, 2007.
Monoson, S.S. Plato’s Democratic Entanglements: Athenian Politics and the Practice of Philosophy. Princeton University Press, 2000.
Plato. The Republic. 1992. Web.