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Plato

Plato’s Just State

Chris Wright ponders Plato’s masterplan.

One of the purposes of Plato’s Republic is to put forth a conception of the ‘just state’. Plato describes how such a state would be organized, who would govern it, what sort of education the children would have, and so on. He goes into great detail, laying out ideas that may at times strike the modern reader as wrongheaded, petty, or even immoral. Sir Karl Popper argued in The Open Society and Its Enemies that Plato’s ideal state is totalitarian, with little freedom of expression allowed, little diversity, and a perverse commitment to a Spartan-like regimentation of social life. Others see evidence of democracy in Plato’s description, for instance in the egalitarianism that characterizes certain aspects of his educational program.

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