Plato

Plato was born in Athens into a wealthy and politically connected family, probably in 428/427 BCE (the Stanford Encyclopedia gives '429?'), and died in 348/347 BCE; both dates are approximate. He grew up during the Peloponnesian War, which ended with Athens' defeat in 404 BCE and the brief oligarchy of the Thirty, in which some of his relatives took part. The restored democracy tried and executed his teacher Socrates in 399 BCE. The Seventh Letter, whose authenticity is disputed, presents his political philosophy as a response to disillusion with both oligarchic violence and democratic justice. He travelled to Sicily several times and became entangled in the politics of the Syracusan court, and around 387 BCE he founded the Academy in Athens, where Aristotle studied for twenty years.

Plato wrote dialogues rather than treatises. Most of the political argument is voiced by Socrates or, in the late works, by an anonymous Eleatic or Athenian visitor, so scholars disagree about how far any position can be attributed to Plato himself and how far the dialogues are thought experiments rather than proposals.

Justice in the city and the soul. The Republic builds an imaginary city to make justice visible. The city has three functional classes — rulers (guardians), auxiliaries who defend it, and producers — that mirror the three parts of the soul: reason, spirit and appetite. Justice is each part doing its own work under the guidance of reason.

Philosopher-rulers. The dialogue's most famous claim is that cities will not be free of evils until philosophers rule or rulers become philosophers (Republic 473c–d). Philosophers are fit to rule because they know the Good and because they do not want power; they rule out of obligation rather than ambition. The guardians live without private property or private families, receive a long education in mathematics and dialectic, and are sustained by a founding myth (the 'noble lie') that each class is made of a different metal.

The critique of democracy. Book VIII describes the decline of constitutions from timocracy through oligarchy and democracy to tyranny. Democracy is criticised for treating all desires and pursuits as equal, for distributing office without regard to competence, and for a love of freedom that ends in disorder and opens the way to a demagogue. The ship-of-state image (488a–489a) portrays citizens as sailors fighting over the helm while despising the navigator's craft.

Law as a second best. The Statesman distinguishes lawful from lawless versions of rule by one, few and many, and treats written law as a necessary substitute when true political knowledge is absent. The Laws, Plato's longest work, designs a colony called Magnesia in detail. Its citizens have a greater political role than in the Republic; laws open with persuasive preambles that explain their purpose; the constitution blends monarchic and democratic principles; officials are chosen by a combination of election and lot and are subject to audit; private wealth is capped at a multiple of the basic land allotment; and a 'Nocturnal Council' of senior officials and younger associates reviews the laws.

Plato set the terms of one of the oldest debates in institution design: whether political authority should follow knowledge or consent. Modern arguments for epistocracy — giving more weight to informed citizens or experts — and arguments for insulating technical decisions from electoral pressure both have a Platonic lineage, and critics often describe technocratic and algorithmic proposals as attempts to build a new class of guardians.

Robert Dahl devoted part of Democracy and Its Critics (1989) to 'guardianship' as democracy's most serious rival, and answered it by arguing that no reliable method exists for identifying a virtuous and knowledgeable ruling class or for keeping it virtuous once in power. Karl Popper's The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945) famously charged that the ideal city of the Republic is totalitarian and made Plato a central figure in mid-twentieth-century debates about totalitarianism; readers such as Gregory Vlastos answered that Plato conceives the city's good as the good of its citizens.

The Laws has had a quieter influence. Its devices — explanatory preambles to legislation, audits of outgoing officials, mixed selection by vote and lot, limits on inequality of wealth, and a body charged with reviewing whether laws serve their purpose — anticipate later practices such as explanatory memoranda, audit offices, sortition-based panels and constitutional review. Aristotle's Politics responded directly to both dialogues and turned the debate towards the mixed constitution.

• Authoritarianism. Popper and later liberal critics argued that the Republic subordinates individuals to the state, licenses censorship and deception, and treats citizens as material to be shaped. Defenders reply that the city is an analogy for the soul, not a policy programme.
• The guardianship problem. Dahl and others argue that political questions combine moral judgement with technical knowledge, that no class has privileged access to the former, and that unaccountable rulers are corrupted by their position. 'Who guards the guardians?' has no institutional answer in the Republic.
• Aristotle's objections. Politics II criticises the community of property and family, arguing that what is owned by all is cared for by none and that excessive unity destroys a city.
• Exclusion. The Laws' city relies on slaves and resident foreigners for labour and closely regulates religious and artistic life. Feminist readers note that the Republic admits women as guardians while still treating them as weaker on average.
• Interpretation. Because the dialogues are dramatic and often ironic, any statement of 'Plato's political theory' is contested.

• Republic (c. 375 BCE) — Jowett translation on Project Gutenberg
• Statesman (c. 360s BCE)
• Laws (c. 350s BCE), Plato's last and longest dialogue
• Overview: Eric Brown, 'Plato's Ethics and Politics in The Republic', Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Overview: Richard Kraut, 'Plato', Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy; Eric Brown, 'Plato's Ethics and Politics in The Republic', section 4.4 on the totalitarianism charge
• Critique: Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, vol. 1 (1945); Robert A. Dahl, Democracy and Its Critics (1989), Part II on guardianship