GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

70 ETHICS AND POLITICS: THE OREEKf
cation of a willingness in members of the second and
third chases to accept their subordinate positions Plato
lodes to his system of education, whose object is to instil
into each citizen the same views as to what constitutes the
welfare of the State and the excellence of the citizen as
those held by its founders. Now the excellence of the
citizen is to be found in his willingness to function in the
sphere allotted to his class, and not to encroach upon the
spheres of the other two classes. It expresses itself further
in a conception of public duty which leads every citizen
to regard himself as the community's servant, his activities,
whether as soldiery worker or business man, as duties
performed in the community's service, and his possessions
as held in the community's trust. Justice in the com-
munity, as in the soul, is the principle whereby each part
is content to pursue its own proper business and to perform
its own specific function, die Guardian class ruling, the
Soldier class defending, and the Worker class producing,
as its appropriate contribution to the welfare of the
whole.
When Plato proceeds to a description of those States
which fall short of his ideal, he habitually attributes their
deficiency
to the failure of the citizens to observe this
principle. It is, for example, the fact that in a democracy
everybody aspires to do everybody else's business which
means, incidentally, that every citizen conceives that he
is within his rights in meddling with the business of governing
it is this fact which, in Plato's view, constitutes the
fundamental evil of this form of government. A democracy,
he says, corresponds in the sphere of politics to a soxfl in
which die third or appetitive pan is in charge in die sphere
of ethics. Just as the predominantly appetitive man is at
die mercy of 'his multitudinous desires, and behaves first
in this way and then in that as one or another of his desires
gains the upper hand, so, in a democracy, the policy of
the State is at the mercy of the desires and ambitions of
whatever class or party happens at any given moment to
gain the upper hand. This view of democracy will be