Humans are social animals and have since the beginning sought together to bear the burden of life, thus society was born through our nature. No matter how independent someone claims to be, they will always rely on the one persistent institution that defines them: the state. It is common knowledge that the state’s sole purpose is to benefit its present and future persons. It is by the people and for the people. This is because human instinct tells us we are more likely to reach our destination if we work together. The ideal state would then be a place where good life is not only achievable; it is achieved. Aristotle summed this up by saying: “The state comes into existence for the sake of life and continues to exist for the sake of good life.”
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Neither is there one right model for the ideal state as Plato wants it.
The ideal state exists instead only as infinite, desirable ideas in the minds of the people. It is something unachievable, but because the human soul is structured to dream, it is nonetheless of vital importance. [Strategy???]
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Plato’s definition of an ideal state is a just state, and his definition of justice is that everyone should be “doing one’s own business, and not being a busybody”. What he meant by this was that every human should follow their nature, rather than meddle with everything else. A shoemaker should only make shoes, a cleaner should only clean, and a captain should only steer. If you were meant to be a farmer, you could never be a soldier. If you were meant to be a soldier, you could never be a philosopher king. People were to fulfill their roles. Only then could it be an ideal state, and only then could it reach its destination of …show more content…
The workers he referred to as slaves, the soldiers were with power, and the philosophers on top were with reason, closer to God than anyone else. This trisection was no coincidence. Plato believed that the structure of the just state had to be equal to the structure of the just soul. According to Plato, every individual is also made out of three elements: the appetites, like the workers; the will, like the soldiers; and the rational element, like the philosophers. A moral soul as a moral state would only occur if it was the rational element, and not the appetites, that controlled the
Neither is there one right model for the ideal state as Plato wants it.
The ideal state exists instead only as infinite, desirable ideas in the minds of the people. It is something unachievable, but because the human soul is structured to dream, it is nonetheless of vital importance. [Strategy???]
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Plato’s definition of an ideal state is a just state, and his definition of justice is that everyone should be “doing one’s own business, and not being a busybody”. What he meant by this was that every human should follow their nature, rather than meddle with everything else. A shoemaker should only make shoes, a cleaner should only clean, and a captain should only steer. If you were meant to be a farmer, you could never be a soldier. If you were meant to be a soldier, you could never be a philosopher king. People were to fulfill their roles. Only then could it be an ideal state, and only then could it reach its destination of …show more content…
The workers he referred to as slaves, the soldiers were with power, and the philosophers on top were with reason, closer to God than anyone else. This trisection was no coincidence. Plato believed that the structure of the just state had to be equal to the structure of the just soul. According to Plato, every individual is also made out of three elements: the appetites, like the workers; the will, like the soldiers; and the rational element, like the philosophers. A moral soul as a moral state would only occur if it was the rational element, and not the appetites, that controlled the