# Plato on race, where is Plato a Eugenist?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plato-on-race-where-is-plato-a-eugenist/357399
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [May 19, 2006, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plato-on-race-where-is-plato-a-eugenist/357399 "2006-05-19T14:08:29Z")
**Posts on this page:** 2
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@gitfiddle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gitfiddle)
#### Post date: [May 19, 2006, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plato-on-race-where-is-plato-a-eugenist/357399/1 "2006-05-19T14:08:29Z")
I’ve been studying Eugenism, and Plato’s name keeps popping up, but never with any citation. Everyone always says that Eugenism has existed “at least since Plato.”
Why? When did he talk about it?
---
### Author:  [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)
#### Post date: [May 19, 2006, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plato-on-race-where-is-plato-a-eugenist/357399/2 "2006-05-19T14:30:46Z")
[Plato’s Republic](http://www.friesian.com/plato.htm)
> [@](#):
>
> The Guardians will even have their families in common. Children will be raised in common and will not know who their real parents are. These children will also not be randomly conceived. They will be bred deliberately to produce the best offspring, as though the Guardians were a pack of hunting dogs. Even Plato realizes that such cold blooded match making might be too much for the Guardians, so he proposes that the process be kept secret from most of them. Every year, after the breeding committee, or whatever, secretly makes its choices, there is to be a kind of fertility festival. Everyone chooses names by lot, and the name they draw, or no name, is the choice of the gods for them. This is the kind of thing that Plato calls a “noble lie”; for the lottery is to be rigged by the breeding committee. Everyone will actually draw the name designated for them; and those who draw a blank were simply thought undesirable for offspring. The idea that people should be bred just like animals is usually called “eugenics” (eu, “well,” and gignomai, “come into being” or “born”) and was popular early in this century; but the only regime that has tried to formally implement eugenics was Nazi Germany. So it is not surprising that Plato thought this should all be kept secret.