Great Dialogues of Plato by Plato

Author:Plato
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Penguin Group USA, Inc.
Published: 1984-10-27T10:00:00+00:00

BOOK VI

“So then, Glaucon, they have appeared at last!” I said, “and we know who are the philosophers and who are not, after our argument has travelled a long and difficult road.”

“Perhaps,” he said, “it would not have been easy by a shorter road.”

“So it seems,” I said, “though I can’t help thinking at least that it might have been better shown if we had only had this to discuss. But there are so many things left to examine for one who means to discover how just life differs from unjust.”

“Well, what are we to take next?” he asked.

“Why, the next thing, of course!” I said—“since philosophers alone are able to lay hold of the ever same and unchangeable, and those who cannot do so, but keep wandering amid the changeable and manifold are not philosophers,—which ought to be leaders of a city?”

“I hardly know what to say, without saying too much,” he said.

“Whichever of the two,” said I, “appear able to guard the laws and habits of cities, set them up as guardians.”

“Quite right,” he said.

“Here is another question,” said I: “Ought a guardian to be blind or sharp-sighted when he watches anything? Is that clear?”

“Of course it is clear,” he said.

“Well then, are those any better than blind men who are in truth deprived of knowledge of what truly each thing is?—who have no bright-shining pattern in the soul; who cannot fix their eyes on the truest, like painters, always referring to it and beholding it most exactly, and only thus lay down ordinances here as regards what is beautiful and just and good, if that is necessary, and preserve and keep safe those already laid down?”

“No indeed,” he said, “they are not much better than the blind.”

“Then shall we choose to establish these as guardians, or those who do know everything that really is, and in experience are not inferior to the others, and in any portion of virtue, too, are not behind them?”

“Really it would be extraordinary,” said he, “to choose others, provided that the philosophers were not otherwise inferior, when they would be superior in this very knowledge—perhaps the greatest of superiorities.”

“Then let us say now, in what way the same persons will be able to have both qualifications.”

“By all means.”

“Then we should first learn their nature, as we said when we began this talk. And I believe that if we can satisfy ourselves as to that, we shall agree both that the same persons are able to have both, and that these and no others ought to be leaders of cities.”

“How?”

“One thing in the nature of philosophers let us take as agreed, that they always are in love with learning, that is, whatever makes clear to them anything of that being* which is eternal, and does not merely wander about between the limits of birth and death.”

“Let that be taken as agreed.”

“Further,” said I, “they never leave hold of this being, if they can help it, the whole or a part, neither a greater part nor smaller, neither a more honourable part nor less honourable.

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