Was Plato a Monarchist? If Not, Where Does the Idea of the Philosopher-King Come From?

by James Hankins

If ‘polyarchical’ means rule by more than one person, i.e., non-monarchical government, then the ideal government as depicted in the Republic is polyarchic. The regime Plato envisages is an aristocracy of the perfectly wise and good. These men have been chosen from among the guardian class (described as defensive warriors) for their aptitude for philosophy. They receive a special philosophical education leading to a vision of the Good, after which they are unable to make moral mistakes.

Note that the Republic is essentially a thought experiment (a ‘polity in the heavens’), not intended as an action plan. How Plato’s principles might be applied in founding an actual state is discussed in the Laws. (Sometimes the Laws is presented as a late development in his political thought, a departure from the principles explored in the Republic, but I am convinced by Julia Annas’ argument in Virtue and Law in Plato and Beyond (2017) that the fundamental principles of both works are the same.)

Plato’s aristocracy can therefore be seen as a species of political meritocracy—and a meritocracy of the most conservative kind, in which the candidates for the ruling class are chosen by co-optation. (The other historical selection procedures in classical Greek democracies were election or sortition; in Hellenistic times the alternative of hereditary succession is also considered.) Thus, in the Republic there is no ‘social mobility’ possible from the mass of the population unless they are first recruited by the city rulers into to the permanent military class. Elite selection is an entirely ‘top-down’ process.

Serious students of Plato in the Western tradition since the 15th century (when the text was first translated into Latin) almost universally see him as favoring an aristocracy of merit. The often repeated view that Plato favored a ‘philosopher-king’ (singular) is just mistaken. Sometimes this is a lazy inference from the work’s most famous dictum: that cities will suffer no end of ills “until philosophers rule as kings or those now called kings (οἱ βασιλεῖς) genuinely and adequately philosophize” (473d). Basileus is the traditional Greek word for a monarch. But since the time of the Roman empire, if not before, there has always existed the topos of the philosopher-king (singular), especially as a way to flatter kings. Marcus Aurelius was often called a philosopher-king, for example. Cassiodorus tells us that Theoderic the Great, the Ostrogothic king, wanted to be a philosopher-king. You can find numerous other examples of this topos in The Golden Thread. Some of the most amusing are Michael Psellos’ dubious application of the topos to describe Byzantine contemporaries.

It makes sense that the interlocutors in the Republic favor polyarchy. All Greek philosophy is based on the principle that rationality and justice are achieved by free discussion and argument from shared principles. Ideally these principles are natural and cannot be doubted by any rational being. The defenders of democracy also believed discussion was the basis of prudent decision-making and tried to make it a principle of government. Plato refuses to believe that most people, driven by passions and appetites, are capable of debating their way to the true good for individuals and polities. His educational program and social arrangements for guardians and rulers are designed to purify the character and intellect of the ruling class and guarantee the wisdom of their decisions. But it would be a violation of Plato’s most deeply held principles, inherited from his master Socrates, if decisions were made by one man rather than as a result of rational discussion.