How Did Socrates Support The Philosopher Candidate

In this essay I argue that Socrates would most likely choose to support the philosopher candidate to be the next president because he would consider the other two candidates unfit to rule. The reason that Socrates would much sooner support the philosopher candidate is that one of the most pertinent conclusions he reaches in The Republic is that only true philosophers are fit to rule a government. I also believe he would side with the philosopher because the prompt particularly states that this candidate has access to the eternal truths of existence because he has a full understanding of the nature of reality (180). Since this philosopher turns out to be a true philosopher instead of a “lover of sights and sounds” who are the pseudo-philosophers …show more content…
I believe that Socrates would first take issue with the war hero’s qualifications to lead because of the conclusions he drew concerning the education differences between true “Guardians” and “Auxiliaries” (102-3). In this section, Socrates explains that there is a distinct difference between those guardians who would be fit and groomed to rule a nation, and those who have an impure mixture of gold and silver in their soul which causes that person to become an Auxiliary instead of a true Guardian (103). I believe that it would be most likely that Socrates would severely doubt the war hero candidate’s qualifications because he would not have been a war hero if he was truly fit to lead, according to his own conclusions about who should rule in The Republic (180). I also strongly believe that Socrates would question why the war hero himself thinks that he is fit to rule the nation if he had been relegated to serving the true guardians instead of being groomed to a leadership position like a true guardian would have been (102). Socrates would certainly not doubt that he is an excellent auxiliary who is well versed taking orders and helping enforce the will and demands of actual guardians as an executive power, but he makes an important distinction that auxiliaries …show more content…
He would almost immediately discount the war hero because it has been logically proven that he would not be fit to lead because he is a war hero and not a true leader, with the distinction being made while he was an adolescent in training, and not when he was at least thirty-five years old. He would also most likely not support the businessman because he would have a similarly poor understanding of justice and leadership similar to that of Cephalus (7). I would tend to agree with his assessment because I have taken more than enough history courses in my life to know that war heroes and businessmen rarely become good national leaders. I would also agree with him because I don’t think there has ever been a president who claimed he was a philosopher as his profession before being president, which I think would be a very nice change of pace for