Plato's 21st Century

 Being a Political Science student sometimes challenges your thoughts about contemporary world especially when you thorough study the western political thoughts. One of the stalwarts among western political thinkers – Plato, an ancient Greek philosopher and regarded as the first western political thinker. A disciple of Socrates who laid the foundation of this whole philosophical mania.

He embedded his ideas in one of his most novelistic work – Republic. There’re certain philosophies on which Plato talked about among which a concept of an “Ideal State” or “Just State” arose. He challenged those concepts ages ago but we are still in 21^st century struggling for the proper definition and execution for an ideal state.

Although in many nation state powers are snatched forcefully with show of force or popular support, those are anarchic states. In context of democracy failure, he reasoned it that its due to people are not equipped with proper education to select the best ruler. For the rising of populist leader around the globe and their attitude to challenge the democracy and its institutions, could be citizens be blamed for this as if they are not educated? The answer lies in the evolution in behavior of citizens. Criteria to select leaders now have changed drastically, instead of developmental policies people are more concerned about ethnical disproportion in different places, a tug of war between majority and minority, for e.g. Rohingyas crisis in Myanmar, Kurds in Turkey, Immigrants in USA, minorities in India, Koreans in Japan etc. Its just the one context of choosing leaders now, there are many other reasons like extreme rise of nationalism, unequal claims of resources, efficient demagogue leaders, territorial expansionism and most importantly dominance on smaller state. And that is the reason we are lagging behind to achieve reasonable goals like employment, poverty reduction, hunger reduction, climate change, forest conservation, literacy and health care.

Under the crisis in existing government, Plato turns to the problem of selecting best rulers. According to him statesmanship is highly specialized job and leader with unblemished moral character must be chosen. But interestingly it is also proposed that “Like man, like state” which means state reflects what its citizens are or vice versa. State leaders are not alone to be culpable for political instability or their election, they get their back from their followers, who are ultimately part of society and citizens.

He defined the track for ideal state in his own time and in accordance with his own experience. He elaborated four Cardinal Virtues with their traits which must be attained in an ideal state. It seems like we have deviated from that track so far in context of all those four Cardinal Virtues i.e. Temperance, Courage, Wisdom, Justice. All of these are either overhyped in political fields or their true meaning has been changed for personal agendas. With all these four virtues either we can make a just state or we can still carry on our voyage for perfect state. 

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