What about different views?

Plato envisioned that in a perfect society philosophers would rule and ultimately govern over the less intelligent and reasonable people. These philosopher kings were supposed to be lovers of wisdom who would not ,because of their knowledge and reasoning, give in to temptation. We would hope that all of these philosopher kings would come from different backgrounds and there fore have different ideas and opinions on problems. But Plato is a little vague on how exactly these kings would work together. For instance what if the philosopher kings disagree on how to solve a problem? Who is supposed to decide which is correct? When addressing this idea the book says: "Plato hopes to use rational argument... But when someone thinks they know the ultimate truth about such questions of value and policy, they may be intolerant of anyone who disagrees, and may feel justified in forcing their view on others" (86). If all of these kings are supposed to have an ultimate understanding of things and reason has brought them to that very conclusion there is no one to decide which of the king's has the best solution and which truth should be accepted by all. This is one of the fatal flaws in Plato's plans that he seems to neglect to acknowledge or solve.

Passing of Reason

Plato said that his Philosopher Kings would be selected to breed and their children would then be raised by the community and nurses. Even if the true parent of one of these children ever met their child, neither party would know that they were related. According to Plato's plan these children would be raised within a life of reason, but Plato himself said that we need a balance of Reason, Spirit, and Appetite in order to be well rounded individuals. In the situation that Plato describes, the children of the Philosopher Kings would most likely have a very weak Spirit and Appetite because they would never have a solid parental figure to learn from and have emotions towards, a relationship that it has been agreed upon in many studies that children need. (While you do not necessarily need your actual biological parent to have any part in your life I do believe you need some sort of stable mentor figure.) Even if this did work and the child grew up with perfectly reasonable emotions there is nothing to say that they would have the same amount of reason or intellect as their parents, especially if they were never allowed to be taught by them. However good Plato's intentions were with this proposition it simply would not work the way he hoped.

A Little Flaw

In chapter four it is mentioned that: "Plato thought it absurd to give every person an equal say, when most people- in his view- do not know what is best" (83) in relationship with democracy. Although I believe Plato takes the idea much too far, he does bring up a valid point. Our government's system is built off of everyone getting a equal say and all participating in voting and voicing their opinions. But what happens when an uneducated person votes? What if they only know what they have seen on TV commercials for the candidates? When that happens and people vote without truly knowing anything about their options they might as well be picking a name randomly out of a hat. I am not trying to say that people should not be allowed to vote, instead I urge that before anyone even considers actually going to the polls to vote, that they truly know what they are choosing for their state or country.

Turning Away from Death

Our class discussion on science reminded me of a very similar idea in sociology. We discussed that science, as a whole, can never be 100% proven. Scientists can only work from what they can observe and although the can make assumptions based on those observations there are always factors that will be unknown. Even so, people tend to take up these theories and ideas and hold them as the absolute truth. When evidence is presented to them that could possibly prove them wrong they try to ignore them or give reason that it is invalid. This act of turning away from anything that could disprove your believes is something parts of humanity have perfected. In sociology it has been observed that almost every culture or religion was based off a way of dealing with death. Being the only species that can not only reflect on our past, but also idealize our future, we forever have the knowledge that we will eventually die, at the same time we don't know what happens next. To help us deal with this we build up ideas and methods to deal with this unknown. As a society, when these ideas of ours are challenged in any way we commonly feel threatened and do anything to defend out ideas. Our first reaction is to simply ignore them, dismiss the challenger as 'crazy' or hopeless and turn away from them. If that doesn't work we try to covert them, convince them that we are right. As a last result we  resort to violence, we see no other option but than to eliminate those who are opposing us. I'm am certain that if you look deeply  into the history of many wars you will find  that the sides fighting had different ideals and cultures in one way or another. Perhaps it is in part our nature to stubbornly stand by our ideals, no matter what evidence is there to prove us wrong.