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... any innovation in the established physical or academic curriculum. The conception of education professed by those who say that they can put into the mind knowledge that was not there before-rather as if they could put sight into blind eyes. The capacity for knowledge is innate in each man's mind, and that the organ which he learns is like an eye which cannot be turned from darkness to light unless the whole body turned; in the same way the mind as a whole must be turned away from the world of change until its eye can bear to look straight at reality, and at the brightest of all realities which is what we call the good. Then this turning around of the mind itself might be made a subject of professional skill, which would effect the conversion as easily and effectively as possible.
It would not be concerned to implant sight, but to ensure that someone who had it already was not either turned in the wrong direction or looking the wrong way. In order to know it what do they need? They need education; physical and mental education. They have to be physically and mentally educated. They have to be strong, and they should also have mental ethic, they should know how to serve for the good of the society (p 126, part. 420 -b) so the example here given by Socrates is that they are the watchdogs. He says watchdogs for the soldiers because he trusts watchdogs to protect the society.
Soldiers as watchdogs know who is ally and who is enemy of the society and they know their masters. However humans are not as the watchdogs because they change their minds thus watchdogs can demonstrate these abilities after certain training (p. 60 part. 370 -c book 2) Humans also can be trained and be a good soldier or guardians so education is done through supervision of stories, people have to choose the suitable ones and reject the unsuitable ones. The Greek mythology is full of violent stories, it is about the Greek gods, they are not always the good gods, and they may become violent. Some of them maybe evil so according to Plato we should not educate people with the knowledge of all these gods we should select them, select good ones and tell the stories of these gods not the bad ones. So this is a kind of indoctrination we are not telling everything, we are telling something that we think they should know.
So truth is that god, is good and he must be described as this. Thus the materials those should be used through the education must be selected very delicately. So education should ensure a proper harmony between energy and initiative, on the one hand and on the other hand reason so that we are going to raise bargain who are completely devoted to the interest of the community / common good and never prepared to act against them, so this is again the same principle of one man, one job. Thus according to Plato everybody has a metal in them, rulers have gold, auxiliaries have silver and the others have bronze and iron. He states that there would never be any guardians and auxiliaries from bronze or iron, or any farmers or businessmen from silver or gold. Any of these confusions would corrupt the whole system.
This is of course and analogy, not real, the real point is the essence of those people who are born with it, it could be silver, gold or ordinary metals (p 306 -part. 551 -a book 8) According to Plato, the state or government must have four virtues of wisdom, courage, self-discipline and justice. It must have wisdom because of the knowledge possessed by the rulers, courage of the auxiliaries, self-disciple because of the harmony between all classes. Justice is the principle of one man's job, interfering with other's jobs. Firstly there should be wisdom in a state in order to make a decision wisely. People can make a good decision with their knowledge, ignorant people who do not have any kind of knowledge cannot be useful for society and cannot provide anything useful for common good. These knowledge makes us educated enough to make good and effective decisions for both state and individuals.
This knowledge is found in the minority of people who are guardians. Secondly, rulers are educated about what is good and what is not good and not useful for the state. They have power to make the state courageous. Courage in a state and individual must occur with the education, (p 132, part. 424 -b) it should not be instinct also man cannot be ruler or guardian without any courage.
Thirdly self-discipline is a kind of order and a control of our desires and appetites. Similarly there are also same elements in Plato's state. If the state can control the worst element, it can be called being master of itself. The last element is justice that keeps the three elements mentioned above alive, doing only our job.
It is very effective for society as much as wisdom, courage and self-discipline. According to Plato, there are five types of constitution / government . This also means that there are five types of individual characters / souls . There is an ideal state in his mind, which is the perfect state that can be unreachable one, which is the ruling of the philosopher king for Plato.
When we say that until society is controlled by philosophers there will be no end to the troubles of states or their citizens. (P. 238, part. 501 -e) so this becomes reachable. In conclusion, Plato's intention is to create an ideal working society divided into classes so as to have order and justice. His way of creating this ideal society is not just and defendable. Since the classification of people is an essential part of the society but who gets to decide, to which class a person should belong is an important question, which lacks a clear answer. Another point which weakens the arguments of the thinkers is that if a person is part of only one class and not included in another at the same time, the efficiency of a person's abilities and the society can be lessened.
Plato's argument in itself lacks two points. Firstly, the maintenance of every citizen's belief in his class is hard to accomplish since human beings tend to question the given ideals. Secondly the education system is artificial and unrealistic in its way of teaching since some facts are hidden in order to serve the purpose of benefiting the society. However we can say that Plato's view is defendable because in Plato's separation of people there is mobility between the classes: for instance if a person of bronze has guardian characteristics, he may improve and move to the upper class. People are equally divided by their individual merits and these classes are equally accepted and appreciated in the society.
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Research essay sample on Common Good One Man
