Plato’s Philosopher-Ruler: Education for a Just Society
This wording raises the question of what knowledge a person responsible for governing society must possess. Must the person who rules be trained? If so, what education should rulers receive to ensure their work is done best? Should this education be very specific and concrete, or, on the contrary, should it be trained to grasp universality? Based on Plato’s theories, I will try to explain how the training a ruler receives should be, by referring to his philosophy (called the Theory of Ideas), influenced by the situation in Athens.
Aristocles, better known as Plato, was born in 427 BC into an aristocratic family. His childhood and youth were spent during a politically unstable period due to the Peloponnesian War, which ended with the defeat of Athens. These events influenced his thinking from a young age. After the defeat, Sparta installed a period of repression with the Government of the Thirty Tyrants. This made it clear to Plato that tyranny was not just a form of government. At the end of this period of repression, the democracy that existed before the war was reinstated.
At that time, Plato was a student of Socrates. After the return of democracy, the execution of his teacher (the most righteous of men) led Plato to seriously consider how to make society just because, as he had experienced, neither tyranny nor democracy were successful. This is where Plato began to consider that politics needed a solution (philosophy) because, from what he could see, there was no just government in his society.
He then traveled to Syracuse to implement the theory he was brewing: how to make society fair was for rulers to receive a philosophical education, i.e., for them to be philosophers. This is what is called the political doctrine of the philosopher-ruler. For this doctrine to be effective, the governors should be the elite, understanding “elite” and “government of the best” as aristocracy. “The best,” as Plato would say, would be those in whom the rational part of the soul predominates, of the three parts of the soul, the rational should be the one that predominates over the other two (irascible and appetitive). This would be the only way for the governor’s education to produce the desired effect.
If, on the contrary, the way to the ideas of a soul is shown to be irascible or appetitive, these will dominate reason, and the individual will not know the correct way of applying that knowledge to reality (e.g., the rules: if we teach the rules of social reality to someone with an appetitive soul, they will interpret justice in a different way than what is “right”).
Influences on Plato’s Political Theory
However, some of the ideas that Plato advocates are not properly his own; his political theory had many influences from philosophers of the time:
- From the Pythagoreans, he accepted that mathematics was extremely important in developing abstract and rational knowledge.
- From Parmenides, he accepted the idea of epistemological dualism, whereby there are two types of knowledge: the view taken of the physical world and responsive, and true knowledge, accessible to intelligence. In this second, he defends the existence of a Being (immutable, eternal, and intelligible), which Plato would later accept, calling it “Idea.”
- From Heraclitus, he agreed that sensitive nature is changeable and, therefore, there can be no absolute knowledge of what is changing.
- Finally, from his most beloved teacher, Socrates, he accepted moral intellectualism, which will be his solution to the education of rulers, and all its basis is in education.
Plato’s Theory of Ideas and the Education of Rulers
From the above, we can deduce the theory that Plato created to try to create the most just society: the Theory of Ideas. According to him, there are intangible and intelligible ideas that serve as a model for creating the sensory world. Therefore, the proper education of rulers will lead to the knowledge of those abstract concepts that govern sensible reality.
These ideas are only accessible through a proper educational process. Plato based this process, in the first instance, on the study of mathematics so that the mind would not be confused and obscured by the influence of misleading information received through the senses. This first step is an acceptance of the Pythagoreans, who attributed mathematical reasoning as the way of knowledge.
Secondly, the ruler should undergo a dialectical process that would allow them to reach, on their own, the knowledge of what the ideas are. This dialectical process was based, unlike the Sophists who regarded education as a passive transmission process, on an active process of dialogue between the student and the teacher. Through definitions and dialogue, the student, guided by the teacher, reached just knowledge. The teacher had a single function: to guide the student to achieve the same knowledge of Ideas.
In this sense, Plato argues that teaching is not a data transmission for the student to memorize because justice cannot be learned through a finite number of cases, as you never know what you are going to encounter. According to Plato, we already have preconceived ideas within us; what happens is that the senses cloud our consciousness. Therefore, he argues that knowing is like remembering, for it is nothing more than forgetting that misleading information from the senses to see what the actual knowledge of Ideas is.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the education of the ruler should be active: they should be given guidance to reach the knowledge of Ideas, and thus (being a rational soul), it is the only way to govern society in a completely fair manner.