Plato’s REPUBLIC, Book 8, Part 4
When I teach Plato's REPUBLIC in the classroom, Book 8 is a perennial favorite. It is truly astounding the insight Plato had into human nature, both individually and corporately. He was a brilliant psychologist and sociologist, as well as the greatest philosopher in the Western tradition.
Having completed his description of the ideal city ruled by the philosophers, Socrates now again addresses an earlier statement from Book 5:
"Good, then, and right, is what I call such a city and regime and such a man, while the rest I call bad and mistaken, if this one is really right; and this applies to both governments of cities and the organization of soul in private men. There are four forms of badness."
"What are they?" he said. And I was going to speak of them in the order that each appeared to me to pass from one to the other.
There is a direct and causal relation, Plato asserts, between the character of the individual and the character of the society in which he resides, and the relation is reciprocal. Other than the correct form of government outlined in the 1) Kallipolis (an Aristocracy, rule by the best) in earlier books, there are four kinds of organizations of the individual soul and the society, in declining order of goodness from the Kallipolis: 2) Timocracy (rule by the honor loving), 3) Oligarchy (rule by the wealth-loving), 4) Democracy (rule by the freedom-loving), and 5) Tyranny (rule by the arbitrary whim of an individual).
There is, Plato tells us, a logic to this descent, a natural story by which the highest values slowly give way to lesser values, and as the values of the individual and the society decline so too does the government. It is this story that my students find so fascinating and compelling, as we can all see ourselves and our culture on Plato's continuum. His portrait of the democratic man and the democratic society, in particular, seems as though drawn from our own day rather than from 2500 years ago. The "inevitable" decline from democracy to tyranny that Plato paints should chill our hearts!
Enjoy the ancient wisdom that is as relevant today as when it was first written, and I pray to God that we may learn Plato's lessons!
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