Is Plato Right in not Including any Concrete Laws in the Republic - Essay Example

Is Plato right in not including any concrete laws in The Republic? The Republic is the best known work byPlato and it is the book which has made him known as a philosopher and thinker. While there are many elements of a republic which have been discussed by Plato, he does not include any concrete laws for the republic except a few. It can be debated if Plato was right in doing so and there can be arguments made on both sides. However, with the evidence gathered from the book itself and other analysts, it can be shown that Plato was right in doing so. There are several reasons which can be given for this and the first is that the notions included in The Republic are based on Plato’s ideals and not the ideals we uphold today as a republic being an entity which is based on concrete laws and regulations that govern the systems of a country. Fundamentally, Plato’s ideal republic is based on the concepts of good, human wants and needs, personal property, justice, a benevolent ruler and the differences between classes. However, as discussed by Plato, these concepts themselves become so vague and their exact meaning has so much variance within them that to form laws based on them would be more or less futile. The Republic therefore comes more of a guide for governors and justice givers than for magistrates and lawyers who seek to find laws within it that define how a country should be run. While the book does not deal with laws directly, it does a lot to explain what justice really is and how it related to the relationships which humans engage in. These relations may be between a master and a servant, the king and his people or even buyers and sellers. However, it also poses the question if being unjust could be better than being just and in some cases, the government of a republic may have to be unjust in order to bring about the greater good. Without giving any laws, we are made to understand that a just society would be a good society and a just city would be a city of virtue. What Plato does within the book is to defend the idea of justice and the idea of being just as an individual as well as a city itself. The ideals of a good city are presented with several challenges which are defended to show that the existence of a good city is entirely possible. While the defense of a good city is being conducted, it is unlikely that a defense of the laws concerning the city could also be given a defense simply because that would be an argument on the laws and not on the ideals of a state. Since the book becomes a book about the ethics of justice and the ethics of how justice should be established, the laws which concern the justice may be seen as irrelevant. This point has been further expounded by Brown (2003) who reports that: “The center of Platos Republic is a contribution to ethics; a discussion of what the virtue justice is and why a person should be just. Yet because Socrates links his discussion of personal justice to an account of justice in the city and makes claims about how good and bad cities are arranged, the Republic sustains reflections on political questions, as well (Brown, 2003, Pg. 1)”. In this manner, justice remains an important consideration while the laws themselves are not as important. The laws connected with the republic can be seen as guidelines since ethics, politics and the management of a state become important concerns for Plato. Further, in books five to seven, we are told that the just person and in effect the just city would be wise and thus know what is good for them. The explanation of what is good depends on the knowledge that a person has and the explanation of knowledge is given as smoothing which the philosophers possess. Since the philosophers know what is to know, they know the difference between good and bad and thus they are the only individuals who can know exactly what virtue is and what is just. Thus, because the good, virtue and justice are fluid concepts, creating laws based on them would make it difficult for philosophers to give rules that people have to follow. In the ideal city, the philosophers would be compelled to rule and without their assistance the ideas concerning good and evil would simply be blurred. The perfect city depends on having the perfect mind which is based on learning that has only been acquired by philosophers. Discussing this issue with regard to The Republic, Brown (2003) notes that: The philosophers are the best rulers because they prefer not to rule even while they are ruling. The philosophers knowledge of justice alone does not motivate them to rule; rather, their knowledge of justice motivates them to follow the law, which justly compels them to rule (Brown, 2003, Pg. 1). Thus one of the laws given to a state is to make sure that the philosophers in the city are the rules of the city since they are the only ones who know exactly what justice is and what needs to be done in order to ensure justice and good for all. Without them, disarray and anarchy would rule when the king is unwise or not aware of the good. This agrees with the approach towards the city which is given in the book as a city where everyone does exactly what they are good at and since philosophers are good at ruling through knowledge, virtue and justice, they should be made to rule the city. Perhaps the first objection which would be made to Plato in terms of not including any laws would be his decision to give laws which go against the principles of democracy and the egalitarian approach taken by modern society. In fact, he does not even consider men and women to be equals in government and notes that a woman is inferior to a man. As a law, this statement would cause many individuals to be socially ostracized in today’s society. However, his idea of the best men in society leading society as guardians of the country might be acceptable as laws if women were also allowed to join up in the process of acting as guardians of a republic’s laws. However, Plato does note that the guardians and the philosophers who rule the city also have to follows the laws that have been created for them and this idea is certainly in line with the modern concept of no one being above the law. At the same time, the concept of having everything in common and no private ownership sounds suspiciously like a communist approach to the process of government. However, the lack of private ownership also takes out the need for laws concerning private property and the problems associated with creating laws for private ownership. In conclusion, it becomes easy to see that the only law which overrides everything else in the republic is that the aims of justice must be served and what is good must be done. However, we do not get a clear understanding of what is just and what is good. Perhaps we are meant to take Plato’s word as to what he knows to be good is good and what he thinks to be just is just. Therefore, the laws created by him or a philosopher who has the same amount of knowledge as him would be perfect, unquestionable and would certainly not need an explanation since they would be just. Despite the objections that can be made to such an approach today, it must be kept in mind that the ideas of Plato are more thousands of years old and it is certainly possible that the ideas we hold in high regard today could be seen as objectionable a few centuries from now. Works Cited Brown, E. 2003, ‘Platos Ethics and Politics in The Republic’, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, [Online] Available at: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-ethics-politics/ Plato, ‘The Republic’, Wikisource, [Online] Available at: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Republic Word Count: 1,378 Read More