A Dialogue With Plato Essay Research Paper

A Dialogue With Plato Essay, Research Paper

As I walked through the Professor Einstein?s massive laboratory I remembered how lucky I was to be his assistant. At the back of Einstein?s laboratory was a special top secret room that I had never been allowed access to. The professor was meeting the president and wouldn?t be back until Thursday so I?d be safe checking it out just this once. I opened the door and was disappointed to only find a small table with a large book laying open on top. I took a closer look and the only words the book contained were ?Plato 328 B.C.? I shut the book and was about to leave when I heard a whirling of hidden machines and a bright flash of light, suddenly I was in a sunny grove wearing a toga, sitting next to me was a man writing on a scroll labeled ?The Republic.? I realized must be Plato.

Plato: Ah hello my young friend, you must be one Professor Einstein?s students. How can I help you?

Jacob: I really have to get home if the professor realized I used his machine he?ll be furious.

Plato: Really? You don?t want to ask me anything?

Jacob: Well I guess. In my time there are many different types of government. What is your idea of the perfect form of government, an ideal state?

Plato: An ideal state would be based on the model of the soul; we?ll get to that later. The ideal state has three castes in which everyone would know their place, The Philosopher Kings, the Guardians, and the Laborers. The Philosopher Kings rule society. The Kings would not be a monarchy, they are the ones who train their minds to reason, and have gained wisdom. Above all, the Philosopher Kings must reason, because the creation of a good state depends on its ability to be governed with reason. It is not enough to govern with senses, because they are based on the body and our unreliable. The Philosopher Kings must come to decisions based on sound reason. Then there are the Guardians who protect society and must aspire to courage. Neither the Philosopher Kings nor the Guardians raise children; have a family life, or own private property. They should focus their entire lives on serving the state. The vast number of people though would be laborers, made up of farmers, artisans and merchants. The Laborers are the ones who provide for society. They have natural appetites, so laborers must aspire to temperance.

Jacob: What would the role of women be in this state?

Plato: Women would be equal. Women can govern just as effectively as a man, because they have they have the same powers of reasoning, and rulers govern through their ability to reason. Women though in order to rule must have the same education as men and be exempt from child bearing and housekeeping, like men. After all a state that does not educate and train is like a man who only trains his right arm.

Jacob: Well since you are the greatest philosopher in the history as Western civilization what do you think about the nature of reality?

Plato: You see reality is divided into those two parts, the region of reality and the region of ideas. The region of the senses you see is everything around us it?s what you can see, hear, feel, smell, and taste, the material world. We can never truly know, or have knowledge, about anything in the material world, because everything in it flows. What I mean is that everything in the material world is everything changes, nothing is constant; time dissolves any substance. And you can never have true knowledge about a world that is in a constant state of change, only opinions. The realm of ideas is where we gain our true knowledge. This realm of ideas can?t be seen or heard but its idea?s are eternal and immutable. These ideas are the patterns on which everything in the material world is built on. For example in the material world for example there is a butterfly. That butterfly dies in the material world, but in the world of ideas the idea of butterfly?s remains; it is eternal, and because the idea of the butterfly is eternal we can have true knowledge about it.

Jacob: How do humans fit into this?

Plato: Humans have a body, which flows with the rest of the material world, and will eventually die. But humans also have a soul, which is separate from the body. Our souls are immortal, this soul contains our reason; not being physical our souls can survey the world of ideas. But when our body dies the soul being immortal does not. It ascends back to the realm of ideas and learns the perfect ideas of that realm. But before leaving back to a human body it drinks from the river of forgetfulness. But when the soul reaches the body it still has a vague remembrance of the realm of ideas. When it sees the imperfect copies of the world of ideas in the material world it stirs the soul nostalgically for the realm of ideas. This makes the soul want to return to the realm of ideas, I call this yearning eros.

The soul is linked to the human body though. The human body contains three parts: the head, the chest, and the abdomen. For each part of the body there is a faculty of the soul, the head has reason, the chest has will, and the abdomen has appetite. Each soul faculty has a virtue: reason aspires to wisdom, will aspires to courage, and appetite must be curbed so temperance can be exercised.

Jacob: How does this relate to the ideal state?

Plato: The ideal state I talked about is