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

PLATO'S POLITICAL THEORY 71
referred to in Chapter XIX 1 , where reasons are given for
rejecting the criticism which it implies.
The Twofold Excellence of the Guardians. A further
parallel between Plato's ethical and political doctrines it
afforded by the two conceptions of the good life which
Plato respectively prescribes for his two main classes in the
State. (I say "main classes" because the military class
tends, as the Republic proceeds, to fade out of the picture.
In a later Dialogue dealing with politics, The Laws,
there is a different division of the population into four
classes,, membership of which is based upon a property
qualification).
I pointed out above 9 that the -specific good ofthe reason*
ing part of the soul was to be found in the contemplation
of the immutable realities, which Plato called the Forms;
the specific good of the third part in its subjection to the
control and guidance of the first. Even by reference to its
own specific end which is the gratification of desire, the
third part of the soul, as Plato is careful to point out,
fares best if it subjects itself to the rule of reason. Plato
adopts a similar formula to describe the respective goods
of the first and third classes in his State.
For the members ofthe Guardian class there are, broadly,
two sorts of excellence which constitute the "ends" of the
Guardians, and two sorts of good life which are devoted to
the pursuit of the two excellences. The first excellence is to
be found in the life of reason, which consists for Plato in
the pursuit of philosophy, since it is philosophy which
enables, or seeks to enable, those who have been trained
in its special dialectical technique to penetrate through
the semi-reality of the world known by our senses to the
world of full reality which underlies it. This excellence of
the philosophical reason is a purely individual excellence,
and the activity in which it consists can, presumably, be
pursued in isolation. But the philosopher has a debt of
gratitude to the city which has trained and educated him,
1 See Chapter XIX, p. 791. *See Chapter II pp. 58, 59.