Plato's Ideal Leaders: Qualities and Selection Process

Selection of Leaders

The selection of rulers is divided into the following stages:

1. Stage 1: Childhood to Age 20

   Children are raised apart from their parents to minimize the influence of undesirable habits. Those not selected for leadership by age 20 join the artisan class. During this stage, education focuses on arithmetic, geometry, gymnastics, and observing war.

2. Stage 2: Age 20 to 30

   Studies include arithmetic, plane and solid geometry, astronomy, and harmony. Those who excel advance to Stage 3 and begin studying dialectic.

3. Stage 3: Age 30 to 35

   Students delve into ascending dialectic. Mastery without reliance on the senses is required to proceed to the next stage.

4. Stage 4: Age 35 to 50

   This stage involves descending dialectic, applying learned principles to practical matters, particularly those related to war. Those who excel advance to Stage 5. Those who do not pass stages 2, 3, or 4 become warriors.

5. Stage 5: Age 50 and Beyond

   Continued study of dialectic, ultimately aiming to grasp the Idea of the Good.

6. Final Stage

   Those who complete all stages become philosopher-rulers and govern the city.

Characteristics of Leaders

After completing their education (paideia), rulers should possess these qualities:

• Intelligence
• Strength, courage, and beauty
• Virility (although Plato also suggests women could govern)
• Dedication to study and learning
• Good memory, tireless work ethic, and a love for all kinds of work

Careful selection is crucial. Choosing unsuitable rulers would harm philosophy, especially since sophists currently hold influence.

Individual and Community

Plato believes humans are not self-sufficient and require cooperation to meet their needs. A just state requires each citizen to fulfill their role, enabling individuals to achieve happiness and virtue.

Vocabulary

Theory of Ideas

Asserts the existence of intangible, conceptual, immutable, eternal, absolute, transcendent, and intelligible realities that serve as ideal models for sensible things, which are mere imitations.

Ontological Dualism

Sensible things in the physical world copy or imitate the Ideas of the intelligible world.

Doxa (Opinion)

A lower level of knowledge focused on the changing, sensible world. It is superficial and linked to the senses.

Episteme (Knowledge)

The highest level of knowledge, revealing true reality by focusing on Ideas. It is objective, unchanging, and based on intelligence.

Moral Intellectualism

The Socratic belief that virtue is knowledge and vice is ignorance, applied by Plato to politics, resulting in the concept of the philosopher-ruler.

Dialectic

The art of rigorously and seemingly irrefutably expounding Ideas.

Relativism

The doctrine, championed by Sophists, that all truth is relative and no objective, universal truths exist.

Political Empiricism

The Sophist doctrine, criticized by Plato, that what is just is determined by the desires of the people.

Skepticism

The Sophist theory that absolute certainty is impossible because truth is unknowable, and even if known, language cannot truly reflect reality.