by Shehzad Ghias

Created on: February 20, 2009

Plato (428/427 BCE-348/347 BCE) and Aristotle (384 BCE-322 BCE) were Greek philosophers who dwelled into the realms of politics and even though Aristotle was a student of Plato, his view on politics are strikingly different from those of Plato's. They both belonged to the Greek-City state (poleis) hence their works need to be reflected on in the context of that. The social structure was such that keeping slaves was deemed natural and women were not given the same level of citizenship as men; men were the leader of the households and they gathered at the agora to discuss matters of interest. Plato and Aristotle differ in their philosophy; Plato's works are more of a metaphysical nature whereas Aristotle tends to be more analytical. Let's look into their political philosophy individually now.

In The Republic, Plato seeks to explain the notion of justice. For Plato the word of forms is different from the susceptible world of sights and sounds. Forms are objects of knowledge, which are eternal and unchanging. Justice as an ideal, as a concept, is the same in the case of a state or an individual, as the state is bigger than an individual it will be easy for us to look at justice in the context of a state. The allegory of the cave, is a concept which is found much later in the Republic, it holds that people who have lived their entire lives in a cave held to chains and can only look at shadows well think they are real until one of them gets free and is able to look at the true form; look at the sunlight outside the cave. After he has been exposed to the true form it is his job to go back to the cave and enlighten his fellow members. This is exactly the job of a philosopher in a society, as he is the one who has the ability to know true wisdom as he loves the entire thing rather than just a part of it. Hence, Plato comes to the conclusion that philosophers should be kings. Now we shall see how he actually arrives at this conclusion. In a society every person has a specific role to play and he should specialize in that particular field. In the construction of the state the role of the guardians is paramount, it is out of the guardians that a ruler shall be picked and the rest of them will be the auxiliaries, who act as soldiers. The role of the guardian is so important because they will be responsible for protecting the city-state. Great efforts should be put in to make sure the guardians do not go astray as that would lead to the destruction of the city-state, their

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