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

84 ETHICS AND POLITICS: THE GREEKS
ceived to be capable, it is no hardship that their achievement
of that good should be made to contribute to the realization
of a superior and more individual good by the highest class .
The only comment seems to be that most people today
would, I think, find themselves unable to subscribe to
Plato's initial division of the species into two classes.
Is Plato's State Realisable? It may be asked whether
Plato intended that his State should be realized. Many
commentators have written as if Plato's Rtpublu is an
academic essay in the principles of political theory. To
this interpretation the apparently static character of
Plato's Utopia, to which attention has already been
drawn, lends countenance. Plato certainly writes as if
his State would, once established, function indefinitely
without change, and he gives the same impression when
he treats of the way of life of its citizens. Yet how, it may
well be asked, could Plato suppose that any association
of human beings could continue indefinitely without pro*
gressing or retrogressing.
The question is a pertinent one; nevertheless, it may, I
think, be taken as reasonably certain that Plato really
hoped, even if he did not expect, that his State might one
day actually come into existence upon earth; that he
conceived himself, in other words, to be putting forward
proposals which it was not inconceivable that mankind
might one day be brought to accept. To quote from
Pto&ssor Taylor: "We do Plato the greatest of wrongs
if we forget that the Republic is no mere collection of
theoretical discussions about government and no mere
exercise in. the creation of an impossible Utopia, but a
serious project of practical reform put forward by an
Athenian patriot, set on fire, like Shelley, with a 'passion
for reforming the worldV It is his passion for reform which
gives to Plato's writings their peculiar sense of urgency.
Whether we agree with Plato's proposals or not, it is
impossible to read the Republic without being stirred and
moved, As a recent writer who certainly does not display