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Plato's Ethics and Politics in The Republic

Eric Brown · Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy · 2017

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Eric Brown
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2026-09-01

Claims citing this source

3 claims
EstablishedIn the Republic Plato's Socrates argues that philosophers are the best rulers both because they know what is good and because they do not want to rule, ruling only because justice obliges them to.EstablishedThe Republic faults democracy for honouring all pursuits equally, which opens the city to conflict and disorder, whereas the Statesman distinguishes good and bad forms of rule by one, few and many (301a–303b).DisputedKarl Popper's The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945) famously charged that the Republic's ideal city is totalitarian; others, such as Gregory Vlastos, reject that reading, and scholars still debate which features of Kallipolis are totalitarian and why.