Plato's Republic By Plato

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In “Plato’s Republic,” Although Plato himself is a philosopher; Plato’s view on philosophers in a society is rather unorthodox compared to others who study philosophy. Due to Plato’s idea of individuals each having different skills they are naturally good at, Plato states that only philosophers will be fit to rule. All others that try to rule will result in a city with a terrible outcome. Philosophers are shunned by the people because they are lovers of knowledge and are then looked to be different. The majority of people in a city are not lovers of knowledge; rather they are lovers of beauty.
In the book, every person has different skills they are naturally good at. Knowing this, philosophers must be naturally good at thinking and arguing.
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In this case, the sophists are the ship crew, and the true philosopher is the captain. The ship crew all think that the captain is “a star gazer, a babbler, and a good-for-nothing” (488e) because he is not ruling in a way they would. In reality, the captain is a great captain because he is looking at the stars as a form of navigating the ship. The sophists do not understand, therefore they do not accept him as their captain. This is what Plato means when he agrees with Adeimantus that the best philosophers are …show more content…
I agree with him that most philosophers are vicious because in a lot of ways it is like that in society today. An example of this is law school. A lot of big companies will hire a law student if they show excellence throughout school; therefore all the law students will be vicious, trying to be the best so they can be ahead of everybody else. I somewhat agree with Plato that philosophers should be the only ones to rule, but only true philosophers. True philosophers, unlike sophists try to understand why people are happy or sad or act the way they do. They will do their best to ensure they can keep the people happy, whereas a non-true philosopher will try to benefit himself at any given chance, while not angering the people. I also agree on his view with democracy and how it does not work. If you have a look at the world right now, the world is controlled by money and corrupt companies. The majority of the people act as a “huge beast” where everybody acts the same and thinks the same. This would make democracy fail, because most people have a fever, therefore people without a fever would have no say, and the city would forever stay

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