Plato on the Individual, Polis and Political Authority in Republic

Offering an in-depth examination of the political philosophy of Plato’sRepublic, Stephen O. Peprah challenges the prevalent scholarly interpretation that misreads and underestimates Plato’s view of the status and role of non-philosophical citizens. Rather than seeing the ordinary human beings who make up the civic population as servile to the select philosophical elite, the argument is not only that they make an important contribution to the polis based on their moral, epistemic, and somatic competences, but that the political community serves their well-being. Grounded in recent work on Plato’s political philosophy and within Plato’s contractarian commitment (koinonia) in Book II ofRepublic, this study shows that the individual and the polis have positive, if not equal, standing. Each is positively dependent on the other, and political authority of the philosopher-rulers is justified to create enabling conditions to facilitate this mutual interdependence. And so, by arguing that Plato’s just society –Kallipolis– evolves from the collaborative efforts of individuals who aim to deal with a common human predicament (insufficiency), Peprah reveals that Platonic political theory is engineered to be a more inclusive system than previously thought. This study is an important reassessment that shows the artisans ofRepublicas possessing individual and political agency. Are the non-philosophical citizens capable of being moral in Kallipolis? Are they epistemically competent to contribute to their own flourishing and that of the polis? Following Karl Popper and many Anglo-American interpreters of Plato, especially during the twentieth century, a popular interpretation, the Metaphysical Interpretation (MI), answers that the non-philosophers are morally handicapped and epistemically incapable because they lack knowledge of the Good. Consequently, the MI conceptualises Kallipolis as an arena for philosophical healing for the moral subaltern, and political rule by the philosophers serves as an external force to foster this moral health. In this regard, the citizens are slaves to the philosopher-rulers and the functions they perform in Kallipolis is but slavish. This book rejects the MI and its implications by presenting an alternative interpretation of Plato’s political intent in Republic, the Naturalistic Interpretation (NI). By adopting an analytic approach, the NI does not deny that the philosopher-rulers must need knowledge of the Good. However, it rejects the claim that Plato justifies political authority by appealing to his metaphysics. Instead, Plato’s justification hinges on the principle of optimum functionality, as articulated by the famous ergon-argument. The NI reads Plato’s political construction from Book II where Socrates plainly articulates that the polis is a product of partnership: a city comes to be because none of us is self-sufficient and because we need many things people gather in a single place to live together as partners and helpers (Rep. 369b6-c6). Consequently, the NI conceptualises the polis as an arena for individual and cooperative flourishing, and the philosopher-rulers are among the partners and allies creating enabling conditions for this flourishing. Within the Kallipolis contractarian ethos, the moral capacity of non-philosophers is explained by their ability to form partnership and accept the morally binding principles that accompany it. The NI accounts for the partnership as a human social value that essentially defines and justifies the political, moral, and economic aspects of lives in the polis, and suggests ways in which it allows Plato to speak positively about all the non-philosophical citizens. To get the best out of each partner’s talent, all citizens must concentrate on professions that align with their natural aptitude and education, enabling them to function optimally in the best possible way or given the right circumstances such as when all conditions for acting are posited. The philosopher-rulers are vested with political power because they can function optimally. Therefore, the NI defends the thesis that the realisation of the eudaemonistic goals and aspirations of both the individual and Kallipolis depends on the cooperative interactions between the -rulers and the ruled, as partners and allies, in accordance with their natural aptitudes and cognitive competences. In particular, the NI argues that the ruled are indeed partners and allies who possess somatic and epistemic competences.