For my political ideologies class I am required to read Republic by the famous Greek philosopher, Plato. I must tell you that I am apprehensive about reading this work because I consider Plato to be one of the most evil philosophers in the history of mankind.
Plato’s philosophy in a nutshell:
1. There are two realities: a perfect, shapeless reality in which concepts exist as an unified whole; and an imperfect reality which is composed of broken reflections of that perfect reality (mysticism)
2. To common sense, an individual human being is an individual entity. But this is false. A human being is just a broken reflection of one perfect whole: Man. Since it is the unified whole which is perfect, it is the unified whole which is the standard of value, the standard of reality. The good, in this imperfect world, is to best represent that perfect whole in the separate reality. (collectivism)
3. Since the good is represented by the perfect whole, every individual should be willing to sacrifice themselves so that the whole benefits in the best way possible and best represents that perfect reality (altruism)
In Plato’s Republic, the fundamental question is: what is justice? Plato answers that justice is every individual serving the whole in the best way possible by fulfilling his designated function to the state.
This means that YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO EXIST, unless you are sacrificing yourself to the whole. You have no right to your own life as you see fit, you have no right to exercise your free will and determine what profession you want to choose, you have no right to determine where you get your education from, you have no right to determine what activities outside of your profession you engage in, you have no right to determine what art you want to be exposed to, you have no right to exist.
Since every individual should sacrifice themselves in order to form the perfect whole (Man), the purpose of government according to Plato is to force all individuals to serve the state, to create that perfect whole.
Plato is the father of dictatorship in our world. He is ultimately the founder of a form of political system which has been responsible for millions and millions of deaths. He is the intellectual father of the likes of Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, etc.
Absolutely sick. This utterly barbaric and savage philosophy should never be taught by any rational education system except to establish the historical context necessary to ensure that the influences of this philosophy are completely eliminated from this earth.
However, this philosophy still has a very large influence in academia as well as in various political systems across the world. Join me in condemning this horrific philosophy.
It may be true that those tyrants were dominating their countries in the name of equality, but that is not Plato’s idea. Plato wants everyone to serve everyone else. In such a system, there could be no Hitlers or Stalins. They manipulated the system for their own self interests, not the good of everyone. It’s not Plato’s fault that modern politicians bastardize his philosophy to fulfill their own selfish gains.
Comment by 9/4/2003 @ 6:13 pm
I wholeheartedly agree with you on this Steve.
As for Arthur’s comments, I don’t believe they’ve “bastardized” Plato’s philosohpy; these dictators were following it to the letter, as according to what they percieved to be the ‘common good’ of men.
When the accepted value and purpose of an individual’s life is not his own life, but “to serve everyone else", when collectivism and altruism are the standards by which a society chooses to live, a totalitarian government is what follows. And this IS in fact Plato’s idea.
This is precisely the problem with placing the ‘common good’ at the core of human value and purpose; whatever the State deems to be ‘the good’ is what everyone must work for.
Comment by 9/4/2003 @ 8:58 pm
Jennifer has made a great point. Plato wants everyone to serve everyone else. How is this achieved? Usually the answer is doing what is best for society or doing what’s best for the “public good”. The question is who determines what is best for society? Who determines the public good? The answer always is government. Government is the voice of the public or society. The “public good” is undefinable and no one has ever given a defintion of the “public good”. The public or society is what? It is just a group of individuals. Different individuals have diffrent abilities and different values and should have the right to act accordingly. The “public good” in practice means the majority or mob rule. The public good is the tyranny of the majority against the minority. The smallest minority is the individual and needs to be protected from the majority. That’s were individual rights come in. Any system that is collective completely sacrfices the individual to the masses because the system does not value individuals only the undefinable “public good”.
Comment by 9/24/2003 @ 2:51 am
i agree with Arther if every one served everyone to make things better then do you understand how much better life would be
Comment by 10/2/2003 @ 4:07 pm
I agree with you totally, but you should still read it to educate yourself and protect yourself from the ideas it presents.
I love how arthur uses the exact same argument that people used about the soviet union that they didn’t apply the system correctly. hahaha, you people are always good for a laugh.
Comment by 10/28/2003 @ 1:01 pm