The following criticisms are dealt with in this article:

• Literary ploys to confuse readers.
• The use of lies to confuse readers further.


• The use of the good name of Socrates to confuse even further.


• Aristocratic prejudice.


• Tyrannical use of power to keep education for the children of the oligarchy.


• Censorship of Literature Works of Art and Music.


• Anti-democratic prejudice.


• A misuse of the word “justice” or “righteousness”. (Gk. Dikaiosun?)


• The theory of the “forms” or ideas.

The Republic is a tract, it is designed to persuade people. In this it seems o have succeeded except with some scholars among whom are Bertrand Russell and Karl Popper. The latter writes of, “the spell of Plato”. It certainly seems that he has had generations of politicians, particularly those of an oligarchic persuasion, under his spell.

Using literary ploys is not unusual. When writing a story they can be used legitimately. When trying to persuade they may be tools of subversion in the hands of the skilled. Plato was a writer of great skill. He uses the esteem Socrates is held in to lead his readers down a dubious road of Socratic dialogue. Some scholars see works like the Crito and the Apology to be early works of Plato where we have the real Socrates. The one under review is, it is claimed, a later work. Certainly there is a difference between the Socrates who goes round the city questioning everyone he meets, including slaves, and the Socrates whose twisted argument with Thrasymachus seems out of character. (Book One) He is also out of character with the man who would only educate the children of the guardians and have them never to be able to acknowledge their biological parents. Contrast his own solicitude for his own children in The Apology.

Another ploy is that we are easily misled by sympathizing with the apparent gentleness of Socrates and the crudeness of his opponents, particularly Thrasymachus. The others we meet in the dialogue, Glaucon and Adeimantus are really there as stooges so that we find ourselves, with them, agreeing, “Yes Socrates, of course Socrates.” Any reader must stop immediately at such words and ask what it is that Plato is inviting us into agreeing with.

Socrates imagines a small city of farmers and suggests to his companions that this would have no culture of any worth. It would be, in his words, a “city of pigs”. He develops from this the need for luxuries, and from that the need for all sorts of craftsmen and because of the increase in population the need to “take a slice of our neighbor’s land and so, the need for an army and an even bigger city. This is hardly justice for those neighbors who are to lose out. Nor are a few farmers incapable of the arts of civilization. Plato is determined that justice shall be seen in a state (polis) not in individuals. That is why the lengthy exploration of the subject where Socrates shows every definition put up by his friends is at fault.

In Book two the idea of the division of labour is introduced as is the idea of the need for a professional ruling class. This is based on what some refer to as the “founding myth” but which is in fact “the founding lie”, (pseudos). This is that God has introduced different metals into the natures of people. There are men of gold, of silver and of bronze and iron. The latter are the laborers, the people who do the dirty work, for even the “perfect” Guardians who have a “vision of the Good” need people to clean up after them and to cook their meals. Those with bronze are the craftsmen, traders and other professionals.

The two classes, silver and gold, are the Auxiliaries and the Guardians proper. The Auxiliaries are the police and the army and also need to stick to one trade, that of skill in weapons. The longest education is for the guardians who have to be men and women of intellect and wisdom while also, presumably, having the courageous spirit of the auxiliaries. To justify the need for these Plato uses an analogy of guard dogs who are also intelligent in that they warn off or attack strangers but not the family they serve. Readers will find this somewhat wanting but if we are to justify a Hitlerian ruling elite as the Nazi Party they too have their dogs of war, the Army, the SS and the Gestapo. These are really the Platonic elite of the ‘righteous’ polis, fitted to the modern state.

If we are to talk about education then we must believe that the state,s greatest and most valuable resource is its people. Therefore all the people need, and ought to have, the best possible education which the state, or private enterprise, together with parental guidance can give them. How that is to be done and what it consists of is beyond the scope of this paper.

In Book three we have presented to us the need for more censorship. Stories of the Gods who behave worse than the most depraved humans are to be banned as are songs other than in the Dorian and Phrygian modes. In other words we only allow Rule Britannia and Pomp and Circumstance to be played. Plato considers education to be of supreme importance and is to be fully under the control of the Guardians of the state. This makes it to be what the guardians want it to be and no one dare question that. This is not education but indoctrination. We have seen a similar situation in the Nazi state with its Hitler Youth and in the Stalinist state with its Young Pioneers. Both had the same aim, that of fitting young minds for complete obedience to the leader or party secretary, as the case may be. Education, on the other hand, helps the young mature into open, independent, self-controlled and wise citizens of the state, able to take part in the life of that state and to off well thought out opinions in the courts, in the parliament, or on the field of diplomacy. None would be guilty, if properly educated, of dogmatic certainty but, with humility would be able to admit to having failings for “to err is human”. Only tyrannies run by megalomaniacs want to the young to become rigid copies of themselves, forced into the mould of their totalitarian thinking.

These arguments are continued in Book Four while in Book Five we find that Plato wants his Guardians to be protected from all forms of distraction such as love of one’s spouse or one’s children. Children are never to know their biological parents but to respect all adults of a certain generation as mothers and fathers. Equally the parents are not to know who their children are but to treat all as theirs which in effect means, the state’s.

Instead of marriage there are to be special times for mating organized as a lottery, by the guardians. It appears as a lottery but in reality this is fixed. Again the analogy of dog breeding is used so that Plato seems to think that the Guardians will know which are the best of the men and women and see to it that they only breed together. Those who miss out are to see this simply as “the luck of the draw”. One can only imagine the mistakes, resentments and opportunities for corruption in this system. If ever there was a formula for disaster it is when the state starts to mess about with human sexuality and family life. The Nazis tried it so did the communists. In the Soviet worker’s paradise it meant a complete breakdown threatened. The Nazi experiment also turned out to be a tragedy as well as a disaster, with emotionally broken children starved of love.

In spite of all the Darwinist, Hitlerian and Platonic comparisons with the breeding of domestic animals it has to be understood that humans are not animals. We are far more complex and, inspite of behaviourist claims, we have the rare gift of language and the capacity to deal with abstracts which animals do not. Breeding experiments are bound to turn out a calamity, most of all for the subjects of those experiments. The very basis of these ideas is false, perverted and grotesque. Who, for instance, is to decide and to dictate who or what is “the best”? Who is it who decides whether Nigel or Napoleon is to be the pattern? Is George Eliot to be reckoned as “better” than Mrs. Pankhurst? For that matter how many parents have children which are exact clones of themselves? Even identical twins have remarkable differences and who can say how and to what degree nurture plays a part in moulding the potentialities in our genes?

To show how closely modern totalitarianism has followed the Platonic pattern we may consider the following quotation from Mein; Kampf. Discussing racial purity Hitler wrote. “The Weltanschauung which bases the State on the racial idea must finally succeed in bringing about a nobler era, in which men will no longer pay exclusive attention to breeding and rearing pedigree dogs and horses and cats, but will endeavour to improve the breed of the human race itself.” In the next chapter he returns to the theme and again could be paraphrasing Plato. “A Weltanschauung which repudiates the democratic principle of the rule of the masses and aims at giving this world to the best people, that is, to the highest quality of mankind, must also apply that same aristocratic postulate to the individuals within the folk community. It must take care that the positions of leadership and highest influence are given to the best men. Hence it is not based on the idea of the majority, but on that of personality.” (Mein Kampf, trans Murphy 1939. pp.228, 248)

That this idea was not simply Hitlerian raving but was taken seriously by the leadership of the party and was taught assiduously to the young, may be seen from this extract from a speech to the Hitler Youth by its leader Baldur von Schirach. “We Germans are not prepared to undergo these mutations like the lower animals, like unthinking cattle. Quite the contrary, we must control and encourage these changes. We must help them. Before other races, which are decadent or even completely degenerate, we must reach that state of the prefect and complete human animal, the Superman!” (Other Men’s Graves, Neumann London 1965, p7) The idea of the Superman comes straight from Nietzsche, but whether the Nazi use of the term was exactly what the Philosopher meant is a matter for debate.

Plato was something of a quisling in the fully democratic state that was Athens at the time of the Peloponnesian War. Being descended from kings he clearly despised the democrats and, when Athens was defeated in the war with Sparta, he tended to see all things Spartan as good. His state is modelled on that of the Spartan form of government which was a racial and military oligarchy. In Books eight and nine he argues that the individual exists for the state and not the state for the individual. He argues that, only in the perfect state can man find perfection. All this is based on his idea of the forms. By which he seeks to justify this state tyranny of an educated oligarchy. In fact his Guardians, in spite of long training, are not educated at all, for education makes people better. We could hardly call it education if it corrupted them. No educated person wants absolute power over others. Educated folk know their own faults and failings and would shun this exercise of despotism. They might agree with Mill that, “if all the world but one were of one opinion, the world would no more have the right to force him to change his view, that he, had he the power, would have the right to force the world.” Plato does try to justify it by saying that the Guardians take office, not for love of power but because they cannot bear their state to fall into the hands of lesser men who were incapable of wise guidance.

The despotic and disastrous rule of the thirty tyrants after the fall of Athens was led by Plato’s uncle Critias. Under them there were executions of political rivals and the attempt to put down the democratic party by force. Arbitrary justice was meted out by kangaroo courts and informers were encouraged. This Plato would have seen as an attempt to cleanse the state of all subversion.

That the Spartan ideal did not in fact exist is evidenced by the readiness of the Spartans to be corrupted with and by riches. They proved themselves to be far more corrupt than even the worst of the Athenians many of whose richest citizens considered it a privilege and a religious duty to pay to beautify their city with magnificent buildings.

The forms are what give rise to the material things in this world of sense. They are the “essence” of the things in the physical world. The form of the Good is rather like God in that it gives rise to all that is good. This sort of reasoning is a bit like Anselm and his “ontological argument” for the existence of God. To try to understand it is rather like picking up water. The moment you think you have some in your grasp, it all slips through your fingers and you have lost it. Plato, like Marx, suggests that there was a “golden age” and that human society has degenerated since then. What is needed, he suggests, is that kings should be philosophers and philosophers kings. These, he insists must have a vision of the good. However this is only explained by a series of analogies. The Cave, the Divided Line, and The Sun. There is no such thing as an “essential table,” though there may be absolute goodness and truth, though not in the world of men, nor ever can be while humans are in control.

One can more easily argue that all humans, brain damage apart and even that does not rule out the possibility, have it in them to be philosophers. Why, therefore, one might ask, should not all be kings? That is that all have the potential to take part in the political life of the state. Academic success is not guarantee of anything but knowledge. It does not ensure that the winner of a quiz show can use that knowledge by processing it and applying it. Understanding (intelligence) and wisdom are not guaranteed to quiz show winners, nor to academics; any more than is common sense. The latter is another way of understanding wisdom. One needs to add that measurements of I.Q. are highly suspect and debatable.

Popper has called Plato”s system “Historicism”. This is any grand overall plan to reform society instead of a piecemeal tinkering by trial and error with each generation, by democratic discussion and argument, working out what is best for them at their time and in their place. Popper includes the Judeo-Christian system among Historicist ones but I disagree.

A final criticism is that, like all tyrannical systems, Plato believed that human nature, being subject to corruption, needs to be controlled. The democratic system, which also includes the Judeo-Christian system recognizes human frailty and is willing to admit that people, particularly politicians, can be wrong and that, therefore, a dialogue is necessary. Control comes from within by the enlightened individual over himself or herself. Plato clearly thinks that perfection is possible and that his Guardians, by their breeding and their training are the best of men and therefore qualified to rule.

“Better is he that has control over his own spirit than he which takes a city.” This is not an idea to which Plato is likely to have become endeared. It is, however a better basis for a stable state than one ruled through fear of the Guardians and their “dogs of war”. Self control is a virtue the democrats of Athens would have recognized. Indeed so would the oligarchs though they would only only have applied it to the character of the aristocrat. They had a word for it, “sophrosune”. A little thought will show that the idea must imply virtue and not vice. Such a person who is self-controlled can never knowingly do evil, though we have to add, without strong misgivings and feelings of guilt. Alas we are human, all too human.

That the Platonic state is a tyranny is clear from the arbitrary exercise of power by the Guardians. This is the power of life and death with no safeguards at all. Because the Guardians are held to be the best then, as magistrates they have the authority to condemn me to death without appeal and without a defense. The judgment of the magistrate is final. Here is what Plato puts into the mouth of Socrates in Book Three. “then the healing art such as we described it, coupled with the art of dispensing justice in this fashion, you will ordain by law in the city: These will care for those of the people who are naturally good in body and soul, but if any are not, those who are not so in body they will leave to die, and those who are naturally bad in soul and incurable they will certainly themselves put to death?” “The best thing that could happen to them,” he said, “and the best thing for the city.”

Here again we see the Hitlerian doctrine that there are those in society who are judged to be unfit to live because they do not fit in with the doctrines taught by the founder of this system. Such is a tyranny when anyone thinks he must be right and those who disagree with him are either stupid or criminal. The Nazi state was not the only such tyranny. Russia under Lenin and Stalin was similar as was China under Mao Tse Tung. The present time has seen many more similar men and women who came to believe that they alone know what is best for their people and so ought to be obeyed. To go down this road is to travel with increasing rapidity to cloud cuckoo land.

We might finish with an extract from Pericles:

“Our constitution is called a democracy because power is in the hands not of a minority but of the whole people. When it is a question of settling private disputes, everyone is equal before the law; when it is a question of putting one person before another in positions of public responsibility, what counts is not membership of a particular class, but the actual ability which the man possesses. No one, so long as he has it in him to be of service to the state, is kept in political obscurity because of poverty….We are free and tolerant in our private lives; but in public affairs we keep to the law. This is because it commands our deep respect….Our city is open to the world….This is because we rely, not on secret weapons, but on our own real courage and loyalty….The Spartans, from their earliest boyhood are submitted to the most laborious training in courage. We pass our lives without all these restrictions, and yet we are just as ready to face the same dangers as they are.”

An educational system worthy of the term seeks to encourage all its citizens in their particular skills, and in the generality, wisdom is within the reach of all. People should be free to choose what they do with their lives and to make their own mistakes if necessary. They should only suffer public disapproval if by those mistakes they injure others. The use of the jury system and the independence of the judiciary from the government ensures that too much power cannot rest in the hands of the few, for “power corrupts’ as Lord Acton has stated. Among the poor, the lowly and the less fortunate there may be many “mute inglorious Miltons.” No society which wants true nobility and excellence (arête-virtue) dare neglect the great potentials which are often undetected among the masses. The arts, if allowed to flourish, and are not restricted by censorship, bring health to a nation or a people. However, here too there must be checks and balances so they are not perverted to become agents of corruption, nor of propaganda.

Though there may be specializations in the arts and sciences, in technology and in entertainment, there are skills to which we all may attain. These are in politics, so all ought to have a say in how they are governed and so ought to be educated to be able to understand the laws and to speak out for themselves, to listen to others, to criticize and to be criticized. Wisdom is not a specialized skill available only to the few.

Plato considered knowledge only to be the key to wisdom. Indeed he seems to suggest they are one and the same. It can rather be argued that knowledge has to be ordered and selected, to be put together in order and then to be applied. This too takes skill, a skill which we may designate as Wisdom when it is applied to the matters of the life of the state which is a rule of thumb definition of politics. It is interesting that both the Ancient Greek and Hebrew languages have words which are usually translated, understand or intelligence. They mean, literally, “set in order” and Latin has similar words, “intelligo” and “cogito” which mean much the same thing.

In a Post Modern situation it is difficult to argue about absolutes since so much verbiage has been thrown up reconstructing and reconstructing that we get lost in the sociology of knowledge and its related subjects and ramifications. However, a consideration of the language of ethics shows that it is difficult, if not impossible, to talk meaningfully without resorting to absolutist terms. Plato talks in absolutist terms in his doctrine of the “Forms”. On the other hand in real terms everything is under the control of the Guardians and so is actually relative to what is best for their view of things. Notice in our own times the eroding of the jury system, habeus corpus and the Bill of Rights together with the increase of the central power. Is it that present day politicians see themselves as Guardians, brought up and educated as they have been under the spell of Plato?

To read:

• Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, in two volumes.


• Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy.


• Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War. (The Funeral Oration-Pericles)


• John Christopher, The Guardians.


• Hans Peter Richter, I Was There, and Friedrich.


• Peter Neumann, Other Men’s Graves.


• A. Hitler, Mein Kampf.