FEMI TAIWO ON MONDAY: Plato’s Republic
This is my review on a book (The Republic by Plato) I think everyone interested in the subject of governance should read. I am providing this review as a way to summarize the book while inviting you to go pick up a copy and read. The book is also available online for free.
Plato examined the nature of justice or the just man and contrasted it with injustice or the unjust man. In drawing his parallel, he made little distinction between the soul of a man and the soul of a city. This is why the Republic is as much a political treatise as an exhortation for moral living. He constructed, on paper, a perfectly just city and a perfectly unjust one and investigated in which of these cities pleasantness reigns. If we find happiness in a perfectly just city then we can find it in a perfectly just soul and if we find unhappiness in a perfectly unjust city then a perfectly unjust soul cannot be a happy one. This is regardless of whether or not they have a reputation of justice before god or man.
He famously declared that a State will not know peace unless her kings are endowed with a spirit of philosophy or unless her philosophers become kings. To Plato, a true philosopher and a perfectly just man are one and the same. Plato was not concerned with whether such an ideal State exists or whether it can be created; his point was that if it does exist, this or that would be its characteristics. And he could care less also as to whether a perfectly just man should seek after such a city as a personal quest; if indeed the man – or woman, of course – is perfectly just, he is already happy because he lives according to the patterns of another city with fixed and immutable laws which mirror what obtains in heaven.
A just man is happy because he is pure. There is purity in his vision and purity in his life. Every part of his soul is in perfect harmony. He contemplates things that are divine and looks up to the patterns in heaven to order his life as much as possible. He knows that both pleasure and pain dull the senses and so satisfies these only to the extent in which they don’t become a distraction to his chief purpose which is investigating the essence of things. If he finds a city suitable to his nature, he will be happier because he can rule the city and make their ways as far as possible agreeable to the ways of God. If he doesn’t find a city suitable to his nature, he is already a happy man.
An unjust man however is a miserable soul. He may never be caught in his unjust ways and may even have a reputation for being just while committing the most atrocious acts but he remains at war with himself. Different parts of his soul pull him in different directions and he is enslaved by his passions. He wants more always and is never satisfied. The more he consumes, the less satisfied he gets. The unjust soul is an unhappy one. The unjust soul is a tyrant and how unlucky is the city whose leader is a tyrant! He will drag the State through the hell he daily experiences internally.
You can hardly contend with the force of morality with which Plato argues. He does an excellent job of constructing the ideal city on paper. He is a great thinker. But anytime he tries to offer practical solutions to real problems he trips himself up. His idea of common wives is repugnant not to mention impractical. It will create more problems than it solves. I am not also sure that rewarding soldiers with as many women as they want won’t have unintended negative consequences. His solution to the corrupting influence arts and poetry may have on the youth of a city also leaves much to be desired. But Plato can be forgiven for his flawed pragmatic approach to the real problems he deftly uncovered. We can safely say he is not a practical political strategist like say, Machiavelli. After all, we remember him more for his powers of reason rather than his ability to proffer workable solutions to the nagging problem of governance.
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