Plato's Philosopher King Plato and the Philosopher-King

With the Allegory of the Cave, Plato expresses the notion that the best thing a philosopher can do is lead the people and that, in turn, a leader (king) must be a philosopher. Plato emphasizes this idea by equating the unenlightened citizens of his Republic to prisoners in chains (they are, in effect, chained by their ignorance of reality and transcendental truth). The philosopher is he who is able to loose himself from the chains of ignorance and follow the light of knowledge and wisdom. Moving toward this light is an ordeal in and of itself, but Plato makes it very clear that embracing the light is only half of the battle: the philosopher must not be content merely with being enlightened, but must descend to the cave from whence he came and share the light with those still imprisoned in darkness. Because the philosopher has an understanding the of the good, the true and the beautiful, he is in a better position than anyone else to be a leader, or king, of the people of the Republic. This paper will examine the assumption that Plato makes in The Republic (that philosophers must be kings) by focusing on the way that a philosopher's virtues are defined both in the ideal state and in the individual; it will also use the Allegory of the Cave and the theory of forms to give a better representation of the philosopher's role in the city. Finally, it will conclude by answering the question: should today's society be ruled by philosophers?

A philosopher's virtues, according to Plato in The Republic must be rooted in humility, perseverance and justice: the humble man realizes he is in ignorance and must pursue truth; the persevering man realizes that he must not quit whether the going gets tough; and the man who exercises the virtue of justice will embrace philosophy (the study of wisdom) and encourage his fellow man to do so too -- because it is an act of justice to...

In the ideal state, justice demands that citizens strive to be good -- as good as they can be. It emphasizes the transcendentals: the good, the true and the beautiful. These are the ideals that citizens of Plato's Republic ought to strive to reach. By having a king who embraces philosophy and the transcendent ideals, a Republic is in a much better position to flourish because the king will encourage the subjects to do as he does: "The business of us who are the founders of the State will be to compel the best minds to attain that knowledge which we have already shown to be the greatest of all -- they must continue to ascend until they arrive at the good; but when they have ascended and seen enough we must not allows them to…remain in the upper world" (Plato The Republic 256).
In the individual, the attainment of these ideals requires the virtue of humility and the virtue of perseverance. They also require the pursuit of love, which Plato defines as union with the divine in The Symposium: the ability to "behold the divine Beauty itself, single in nature…to look there and contemplate that with that by which one must contemplate it, and to be with it… In seeing the Beautiful with that by which it is visible, to beget…true virtue, because he touches the truth" (Plato in Greek Philosophy 153). The individual must devote himself to the common good of the Republic, and the Republic must submit to the Ideal Form -- the Good, which Plato describes in Parmenides: "There is a certain kind of each thing, a nature and reality alone by itself, and it will take a man more remarkable still to discover it and be able to instruct someone else…" (Plato in Greek Philosophy 268). This "remarkable" man, of course, is the philosopher.

The philosopher is the individual who, in the Allegory of the Cave, escapes the darkness of illusion and turns toward the light of truth, which emanates…