Could Plato's Republic have worked, if it had been tried?

[BrainGlutton]

Plato’s Republic or “City in Speech” is a lot like ancient Sparta, very slightly kinder and gentler, with an elite of philosophers grafted on top of the elite of warriors. It is usually taken as a pure thought-experiment to illustrate Plato’s theories on the nature of justice. Nevertheless . . .

From A History of Western Philosophy, by Bertrand Russell, Chapter XIV, “Plato’s Utopia”:

Plato’s Republic, unlike modern Utopias, was perhaps intended to be actually founded. This was not so fantastic or impossible as it might naturally seem to us. Many of its provisions, including some that we should have thought quite impracticable, were actually realized at Sparta. The rule of philosophers had been attempted by Pythagoras, and in Plato’s time Archytas the Pythagorean was politically influential in Taras (modern Taranto) when Plato visited Sicily and southern Italy. It was common practice for cities to employ a sage to draw up their laws; Solon had done this for Athens, and Protagoras for Thurii. Colonies, in those days, were completely free from control by their parent cities, and it would have been quite feasible for a band of Platonists to establish the Republic on the shores of Spain or Gaul. Unfortunately chance led Plato to Syracuse, a great commercial city engaged in desperate wars with Carthage; in such an atmosphere, no philosopher could have achieved much. In the next generation, the rise of Macedon had made all small States antiquated, and brought about the futility of all political experiments in miniature.

Had such an experiment had tried, could it have worked? Bear in mind that Plato’s standards for “worked” would have been quite minimal. As Russell says earlier in the same chapter:

. . . Although all the rulers are to be philosophers, there are to be no innovations; a philosopher is to be, for all time, a man who understands and agrees with Plato.

When we ask: what will Plato’s Republic achieve? The answer is rather humdrum. It will achieve success in wars against roughly equal populations, and it will secure a livelihood for a certain small number of people. It will almost certainly produce no art or science, because of its rigidity; in this respect, as in others, it will be like Sparta. In spite of all the fine talk, skill in war and enough to eat is all that will be achieved. Plato had lived through famine and defeat in Athens; perhaps, subconsciously, he thought the avoidance of these evils the best that statesmanship could accomplish.

Nevertheless, could a real-life Plato’s Republic have succeeded, at least to the extent of avoiding those evils, at least until the Romans came along to conquer it?

[CJJ]

No; I’m of the belief that the government described in the Republic was speculative at best, and even if Plato did take it seriously (I doubt it) no one with the real power to enact it has.

The ideal city is simply a metaphor for discussion some problems of justice and personal ethics; the well-ordered city is an analogy for the well-ordered soul. For this reason alone the Republic is well worth reading; but as a political primer, not so much.

[BrainGlutton]

@CJJ

No; I’m of the belief that the government described in the Republic was speculative at best, and even if Plato did take it seriously (I doubt it) no one with the real power to enact it has.

The ideal city is simply a metaphor for discussion some problems of justice and personal ethics; the well-ordered city is an analogy for the well-ordered soul. For this reason alone the Republic is well worth reading; but as a political primer, not so much.

You’re probably right, but . . . Don’t fight the hypothetical! The hypothetical loves you . . . The hypothetical wants you . . . It wants your essence . . .

[Tom_Tildrum]

It fell apart quickly on the Simpsons.

[Mr.Excellent]

Eh - with the right people in power, almost any form of government can work for a while. The Roman Republic was an unwieldy kludge of a thing that conquered the Western Mediterranean. Any number of monarchies have muddled through periods of bad governance, and endured. Hell, even North Korea is still holding together.

[Malthus]

Allegedly, Mussolini was heavily influenced by Plato’s Republic - he may have got some of the details wrong, however.

Benito Mussolini had a strong attachment to the works of Plato.[141] In The Republic (c. 380 BCE), Plato advocated a system of elite minority rule by highly educated, intellectual rulers called philosopher kings, who were allowed to exercise total control over the politics and security of a society. This argument has been considered an inspiration for fascism’s promotion of elite rule by a supreme leader and a single-party state.[142]

Fascism

[GHO57]

No.

Within a week the city would’ve been on fire; either a military coup or revolution by people who thought they were miss-classified and feel strongly THEY are the smart ones.

[Larry_Borgia]

No, it could not work. It is the essence of a paper utopia.

[Chronos]

Allegedly, Mussolini was heavily influenced by Plato’s Republic - he may have got some of the details wrong, however.

For starters, Mussolini probably wasn’t quite as despotic. Just because nowadays we use the word “republic” for a sort of democracy doesn’t mean that’s what Plato meant by the term.

[BrainGlutton]

@Chronos

For starters, Mussolini probably wasn’t quite as despotic. Just because nowadays we use the word “republic” for a sort of democracy doesn’t mean that’s what Plato meant by the term.

“Republic” comes from the Latin res publica, “public thing.” Plato, of course, never used that term as he wrote in Greek, and the book was called Politea, “city-state governance” – not implying any particular form of government.

[CalMeacham]

It’s been some time since I read Russell’s book, but doesn’t he later make the claim that the Medieval Catholic Church had something very much like Plato’s Republic in place?

Of course it didn’t precisely resemble it – no “sacred lie” and so forth. But IIRC he implied that it had the same degree of almost total control over its citizens, as well as a strong hand in dictating beliefs that made it the closest thing that has existed to the Republic.

[BrainGlutton]

@GHO57

No.

Within a week the city would’ve been on fire; either a military coup or revolution by people who thought they were miss-classified and feel strongly THEY are the smart ones.

Well, a Greek new-city project (there were many in those days) would have started out with settlers who agreed in advanced to the terms; in this case, certain families would have signed up on the understanding that they were to be of the worker or warrior castes, that there was to be a ruling elite of philosophers monopolizing political power, and that that elite’s members alone got to judge who was worthy for admission to it. Recruiting settlers on that understanding would not have been as hard as it sounds – not everybody in the Greek world was ideologically committed to democracy; and many would have found Plato’s idea an improvement over oligarchy (meaning, in practice, rule by the rich), which was the de facto system in many polities in Plato’s day. Whether the Republic would have been stable in the long term after founding is another question – and submitted for debate here – but in the short term it would have been in no immediate danger of revolution.

Some families would have wanted to bring their slaves with them – that’s another point; I don’t recall what provision, if any, Plato made for slavery in the Republic.

[Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor]

No political theory functions as stated, in real life.

[BrainGlutton]

@CalMeacham

It’s been some time since I read Russell’s book, but doesn’t he later make the claim that the Medieval Catholic Church had something very much like Plato’s Republic in place?

Of course it didn’t precisely resemble it – no “sacred lie” and so forth. But IIRC he implied that it had the same degree of almost total control over its citizens, as well as a strong hand in dictating beliefs that made it the closest thing that has existed to the Republic.

Though it does not mention Plato, this passage from the Introduction to Book II: Catholic Philosophy might be what you’re thinking of:

The period in which we shall be concerned in this book differs from earlier and later times not only in philosophy, but in many other ways. The most notable of these is the power of the Church. The Church brought philosophic beliefs into a closer relation to social and political circumstances than they ever had before or since the medieval period, which we may reckon from about A.D. 400 to about A.D. 1400. The Church is a social institution built upon a creed, partly philosophic, partly concerned with sacred history. It achieved power and wealth by means of its creed. The lay rulers, who were in frequent conflict with it, were defeated because the great majority of the population, including most of the lay rulers themselves, were profoundly convinced of the truth of the Catholic faith. There were traditions, Roman and Germanic, against which the Church had to fight. The Roman tradition was strongest in Italy, especially among lawyers; the German tradition was strongest in the feudal aristocracy that arose out of the barbarian conquest. But for many centuries neither of these traditions proved strong enough to generate a successful opposition to the Church; and this was largely due to the fact that they were not embodied in any adequate philosophy.

Or this from Chapter XXVI: Cynics and Sceptics:

During the period of ecclesiastical domination, from the fifth century to the fifteenth, there was a certain conflict between what was theoretically believed and what was actually felt. Theoretically, the world was a vale of tears, a preparation, amid tribulation, for the world to come. But in practice the writers of books, being almost all clerics, could not help feeling exhilarated by the power of the Church; they found opportunity for abundant activity of a sort that they believed to be useful. They had therefore the mentality of a governing class, not of men who feel themselves exiles in an alien world. This is part of the curious dualism that runs through the Middle Ages, owing to the fact that the Church, though based on other-worldly beliefs, was the most important institution in the every-day world.