Introduction to Political Philosophy Assignment

Introduction to Political Philosophy Assignment

Has any of the writers which you have studied in this module successfully identified the principles which would enable us to build a perfect society?

Approaches towards Political Philosophy and defining it has been attempted by great philosophers in the past. These Philosophers having their own morals and principles use them to identify how the social circuit works to build a perfect society.

The question is had they been successful in establishing a society which they could turn into being perfect through their findings, and analytical skills and assumption.

Three great Philosophers of time expressed their own views and illustrated this for people to understand. The first being Plato born Athens circa -427BC, taught by his tutor Socrates who himself was a Philosopher and his death taught Plato that Philosophers should govern.

According to Plato to build a perfect society you will have to follow a Philosopher King and it is him who shall make all the decisions in the best interest of the people.

In order to retain a perfect society Plato states that there is a true and a false version of everything including government, he puts this forward by talking about 'Forms'. Plato defines the forms as in the "true" form and as an "Ideal" form. What he tries to state is that what we see is not real and that it is an ideal form, and that the true form is there but it us hiding.

The only people who can distinguish the correct forms are the 'Philosophers' and philosopher's alone according to Plato's opinion. Here is an example which Plato would illustrate as being a form;

" A 'Form' could be a perfect form of a cat. All cats on earth have some correspondence and similarities to this form, but none would be pure or as catlike as the form of a cat."

[ Rikowski. A,(2005), Flow of Ideas articles. http://www.flowideas.co.uk/htm]

What is being said here is that there are plenty of cats but they cannot be classed as the 'perfect cat'. Reason being because they might have whiskers, stripes and paws which makes them alike but not a cat. In the sense that we have our mind set on the forms of a cat and what we think a cat is and think how it looks in the everyday world, this is our perception not exactly knowing what the perfect form cat is. The same theory applies to everything else we discover to see as reality.

As to this Plato had sketched out a diagram on how he thought the society operates within the forms and what revolves around them, this is illustrated below;

[Hughes.G (2000), The Republic (squashed version). http://www.btinternet.com/~glynhughes/squashed/plato.htm]

The diagram simply portrays Plato's way of viewing the society and the way it works within the two different forms,(i) the ideal and (ii) the true form also relating to the amount of knowledge required and the opinions given towards the forms. Out of which the visible realm is what we observe and indicates towards the reflections and shadows we see. The physical things which we acknowledge through belief and opinion and leaving the upper half as the forms of reality and the lower knowledge as not opinion but being forced on the society. In relation to build a perfect society we in Plato's view would have to be able to recognize the true forms in the everyday world and live according to them.

Plato also believes that;

"Man is born good and is corrupted by society."

[Harris. E, (2003), Opinion, The Telegraph. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml.]

Plato is saying man is born good but it is corrupted by society and with this happening it cannot be possible to build a perfect society. But what Plato has missed out there is that it is not the society that corrupts man but the 'desires' within the society that affects man. This now takes further the development on how to build a perfect society with desires coming into the picture. The philosopher who approaches this aspect of society is 'Rousseau'.

Jean Jacques Rousseau born in Geneva in 1712, having mostly wandered Europe as a young man who then entered a competition at the Academy of Dijon and successfully won it. As according to this he eventually moved onto writing on previous philosopher's work on how the society is and how it would be better to be able to build a perfect society.

Rousseau describes 'natural man' as being good but also claiming to be free, his theory works along the line of what 'Plato' stated but to a developed stage. Natural man living alone is happy and free but fears pain and hunger. The fear of pain can come from and element of 'desire'.

The fact that unnatural desires, those caused by 'vanity' also known as 'amour proper' can get people to be selfish and greedy which then corrupts the society