Plato's Conception of the Appropriately Ordered Soul and Society

February 2008

Plato’s Conception of the Appropriately Ordered Soul and Society

The Republic, by Plato is a result of the struggle that Plato had after Athens executed Socrates (Plato’s mentor).  Plato believed that Socrates was the most just man he knew and that a just state does not execute just men.  He sets out to define justice and critique Athens and the path that the demos and state are on.  Plato’s conception of the appropriately ordered soul and thus an appropriately ordered political society is one that is justly ordered by his standards.  Given this definition Democracy is fundamentally unjust because it is ruled by any and all men or unequal stature.

Plato clearly divides both the state and the soul into three different categories the “Rulers (legislative and deliberative), Auxiliaries (executive), and Craftsmen (productive)” (Plato, 102).  Plato describes the soul of the individual as gold, silver, or bronze using a fable, “like an Eastern tale,” that would be told to the demos.  A god would have “mixed gold in” the ruling class, the auxiliaries would have “put silver in” them, and finally “iron and brass in the farmers and craftsmen” (Plato, 106-107). 

This fable allows the distinction between different peoples and the justification of their distinctly different places in society.  Having a gold soul did not make a person a ruler initially, but it only meant that they had the potential to be a ruler.  They would only become a ruler after having to prove themselves worthy by withstanding “every test in childhood, youth, and manhood” (Plato, 105).

Plato said that a gold soul is ruled by wisdom which is why their soul is thought of in the order of reason, spirit, and then appetite.  This is one reason why they would be able to make the rules and legislation.  They would be philosophers and be able to see “the Good” and then make legislation based on it because they can go into the worlds of the being and becoming (Plato, 215).  A silver soul is ruled by courage thus they are spirit, reason, and then appetite.  Thus they are the ones that make sure that the legislation that the gold souls make is kept and put into practice.  They are also the ones that go into war, if that time should come.  Finally, the bronze souls are not ruled by a higher virtue like wisdom or courage so they are thought of having souls comprising of appetite, spirit, and then reason.  This is why they make up the majority of the demos and are the ones that produce everything that the society needs to survive.

The idea of appetite is divided into two types, the “irrational appetite” or “unnatural appetite” and the “rational” appetite (Plato, 137, 284).  Where rational appetite is that appetite where there is some reason still involved and irrational appetite is that which is “associated with pleasure in the replenishment of certain wants” (Plato, 137).  Plato uses bread as an example to clarify this.  A man needs bread therefore eating enough “to keep in health and good condition may be called necessary” but to over indulge is irrational (Plato, 284).

This plays into why the gold souls should be the rulers.  The gold souls have the capacity to see “the Good” and to navigate their way from “the Good” to the different forms of “the Good” into legislation which would begin to encompass what “the Good,” in its essential form, is (Plato, 220).  Plato believes that for a state to be Just “philosophers [should] become kings” or kings should be “inspired with a genuine desire for wisdom,” in other words, kings should become philosophers (Plato, 178).  Plato uses the example of the navigator to show his friends how a philosopher is not useless but the most useful and skilled of the bunch if put in his appropriate position in the state.

Plato has the master of a ship be a “deficient” seaman and all of the crew, save one, are pleading with the master saying that they are “skilled navigator[s],” but in reality none of them know how to and will merely bring the ship into disaster (Plato, 195).  The problem is that every time a crew member receives the master’s permission to take the helm “they kill them or throw them overboard” (Plato, 195).  The one crew member that does not even tempt his fate with trying to convince the master that he knows how to navigate, because he knows it would be in vain, is the philosopher that can read the stars and navigate properly.  This shows how a philosopher can navigate the ship (demos) in the correct way only if the rest of the crew is in their proper place.  If everyone else is trying to lead but does not know how to, then the ship (state) will come into peril.  Thus, it is only proper for those few philosophers to come to their proper place and lead.

One can see that Plato believes that every person’s soul is suited to a specific duty which would make them happiest and most useful to society.  Plato describes the soul and society to have been built on four qualities which create a perfect and Just society.  Three of them, “wisdom, courage, and temperance” were discussed already and “the one left over… justice” would be the one that “makes it possible for the [other] three” to come to term (Plato, 127).

            Justice, in part, is a function of the allocation of duties.  Plato even goes so far as to say that “…everyone ought to perform the one function in the community for which his nature best suited him. Well, I believe that that principle, or some form of it, is justice (Plato, 127).”  Since justice is defined as such one can say that the way in which Plato has set up his just society by using gold, silver, and bronze souls as the Ruler, Auxiliaries, and the Craftsmen, respectively, creates “justice as a quality that may exist in a whole community as well as in an individual” (Plato, 55).  Since “justice in the state meant that each of the three orders in it was doing its own proper work” one can say that a just person is one that fulfills “his proper function, only if the several parts of our nature fulfill theirs” (Plato, 139-140). 

It may be obvious at this point that democracy is anything but what the Just state and soul, according to Plato, would look like.  Democracy has the features of “an agreeable form of anarchy,” but before getting to this agreeable anarchical state, three forms of government come before it (Plato, 282).  The first is Plato’s state, then timocracy which is based on virtues (when the silver souls come to power and rule), then this would lead to oligarchy which is based on necessary appetites, and finally “…when the poor win [the civil war], the result is democracy” which is based on “unnecessary pleasures and appetites” (Plato, 282, 284).

Plato believes that the demos live a life that is ultimately not of “the Good” because their souls are not ordered and that they are ruled by whatever whim they possess at the moment.  The democratic man values all of his wants and needs equally and does whatever “suit[s] his pleasure” to attempt to govern “his soul until it is satisfied” (Plato, 282, 286).   The tragedy is that since these are unnatural appetites they are “appetites which cannot be got rid of” (Plato, 284).  If you can not get rid of them, then one can never satisfy them or the soul which is governed by them.

This plays true to the way the democratic state is run as well.  Plato asserts that “knowledge, right principles, true thoughts, are not at their posts; and the place lies open to the assault of false and presumptuous notions” (Plato, 285).  He also claims that the demos has an “indifference to the sort of life a man has led before he enters politics” and that “democracy tramples” “all those fine principles we laid down in founding our commonwealth” (Plato, 283).  The democratic state is one in which because everyone and everything is considered equal the navigator can not take to the helm.

Democracy then leads to the worst of all forms of government, despotism.  This form of government is the polar opposite of what the just state is, just as the despotic man is the polar opposite of what the just man is.  Plato spends a bit of time on this to emphasize why a just man is better.  Plato makes his case clear that the appropriate way to order a state and a soul is to make sure that it is just by allocating every person their own duties and social status.