Running head: POLITICAL SYSTEMS 1

Political Systems

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Political Systems

Plato’s Perfect Political System

According to Plato, a perfect political system is an aristocracy led by a philosopher-king.

The political order of the ideal society has three classes - guardians, auxiliaries, and workers

(Korab-Karpowicz, 2019). The guardian class comprises of Philosopher kings who are the rulers

of the people. Since they are supposed to care for the well-being of the entire society, they must

be people who are capable of making sound decisions. Thus, they need to love wisdom and be

the most self-controlled, rational, and intelligent. In the auxiliary class are the soldiers charged

with the role of protecting the society from external aggression and maintaining order. The

workers are the producers of society, and they are the majority. They labor to create services and

goods for everyone’s consumption.

Moreover, he states that the ruler of a state must attain certain minimum qualities,

including selflessness, virtue, and exceeding wisdom. That means the leader has to be

exceptional in character and abilities. In this system, the people dwell together with their rulers

and lead communal and simple lives to avoid corruption. Moreover, in Plato’s political system,

the ruler can either be a man or a woman as sex or gender should not be important an important

consideration in choosing a ruler (Korab-Karpowicz, 2019). According to the Socrates, in the

guardian class of the aristocracy, the duty of biological parents is to mate and bear children.

Once they are born, children’s upbringing becomes the responsibility of the whole community

and not just their parents. As such, the Socrates propose that guardians' offspring should never

know their real parents to ensure that all adults focus on the common good and do not show

favoritism in raising the young guardians. The next rulers of the aristocracy are selected among

the guardians' children by testing them to determine the wisest.

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Reply to Posts

Hi Kristie Banks.

I found your topic of utopia interesting because it is almost the exact opposite of what my

discussion was about. In my discussion, looked at Plato's perfect political system, which is an

aristocracy. Skinner's Utopian idea was inspired by the need to end social inequalities, chaos,

and discrimination, which are all entrenched in Plato's aristocracy. Nonetheless, I find Skinner's

picture of a perfect world quite unrealistic, given that he proposed a free society without

political control as the remedy for chaos and social inequality. On the contrary, I believe a

society where everyone is free to do what they want without any restraint from a higher

authority is the perfect recipe for chaos, anarchy, and social injustice. Moreover, Horton (2018)

argues that utopia should be seen as a means to a good society and not a goal. Fernando et al.

(2018) also state that utopia must be based on the recognition of social failure, responsibility,

and provisionality.

Hi Kati Buoncompagno.

Based on the class question, I was unable to figure out what Bacon’s perfect political

system is from your discussion. However, your discussion did a good job pointing out the

weakness of Plato’s and Aristotle’s work, as being based on philosophical reasoning and

religious beliefs rather than empirical methods. Thus, it calls into question their perfect political

systems, one of which was the subject of my discussion - Plato's aristocracy. Moreover,

although I concur with Bacon's belief that science plays a crucial role in the preservation of

humanities, I believe that scientific ideas work better in organized societies with stable political

systems. According to Andersen and Hepburn (2015), scientists have, over the years criticized
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Bacon's method as inflexible and scientifically impractical. Besides, the authors state that

Bacon's system of Logic is accused of not paying sufficient attention to scientific practices.
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References

Andersen, H., & Hepburn, B., (2015). Scientific method.

Fernando, J. W., Burden, N., Ferguson, A., O’Brien, L. V., Judge, M., & Kashima, Y. (2018).

Functions of Utopia: How Utopian Thinking Motivates Societal

Engagement. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 44(5), 779-792.

doi:10.1177/0146167217748604

Horton, R., (2018). Offline: The media—"from utopia to dystopia." The Lancet, 392(10155),

1294. doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(18)32538-8

Jalobeanu, D., (2013). Four Idols of Baconian Scholarship. Procedia - Social and Behavioral

Sciences, 71, 123-130. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2013.01.017

Korab-Karpowicz, W. J., (2019). Plato: Political Philosophy. Retrieved from

https://www.iep.utm.edu/platopol/#H4