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

PLATO'S POLITICAL THEORY 73
falls the duty of making his specific contribution to
the welfare of the State, but since the relation between the
parts of his soul is different from that obtaining in the
soul of the Guardian, and since, because the ordering of his
soul is different, his class is different, his civic contribution
also will be different. Broadly, it consists in contentedly
to the status of his
performing the functions appropriate
class and cheerfully obeying the laws without question.
This sounds very like the excellence which dictators
prescribe for their subjects. It must, however, be remembered
that Plato's State was an ideal one, whose arrange*
ments find their justification in the ideal ends whose
pursuit they are designed to promote. Moreover, just as it
is only by subjection to the first part that the third part
of the soul achieves the happiness which is appropriate
to it, so, Plato maintains, it is only by obedience to the
Guardian class and observance of the laws which that
class has prescribed, that the third class in the State will
achieve such happiness as members.
belongs to the nature of its
Twofold Conception of Moral Excellence. We thus
reach a twofold conception of moral excellence. There is,
first, the excellence of the philosopher, which is the result
of a direct insight into reality, which Plato identifies
in this connection with the principle of the Good.
This insight qualifies the philosopher to pronounce upon
what is good in the everyday world, and to recognize the
type of conduct in individuals and the institutions and
laws in States which manifest and embody the general
principles of goodness which his insight has revealed.
Not only, that is to say, does the philosopher realize that
this particular action or this particular social regulation
is good, but he also realizes why it is good. Since in his
capacity of framcr and administrator of the laws and
prescriber of the principles of education, the philosopher
embodies in *
the State the vision of the* Good which he
has enjoyed in virtue of his insight into reality, we may
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