Ameritopia_ The Unmaking of America - Mark R. Levin [14]
With the City’s construction completed, Plato explains his program for educating the Guardians and developing from their ranks the wisest and most just “philosopher” kings.
Underlying Plato’s ruling philosophers and the Ideal City is the notion of “Forms” and “the Good.” The Theory of the Forms guides Plato’s search for the Good. Forms are by their nature independent from the sensible and physical world and are a sort of ultimate, perfect example of a thing or being.3 The idea of “the Good” is similar to the biblical concept of God or ultimate truth. It is the cause of knowledge and truth, but is beyond them both (508e). The Good is not being but is beyond being. In Plato’s Republic, the Good governs all aspects of life. In his view, however, contemplating the Good and understanding the Good are far beyond the capabilities of the vast majority of people. Consequently, the City must be ruled by philosophers for they are the only people who are able to discern the Good. Only the philosopher can make judgments about what constitutes a “good person,” a “good life,” or a “good death.” Good is synonymous with quality and is measured by an individual’s contribution to the City. “Philosophers because of their love of the Forms, become lovers of proper order in the sensible world as well. They wish to imitate the harmony of the Forms, and so in their relations with others they are loathe to do anything that violates the proper order among people.”4
Identifying and training philosophers from the Guardian class is a decades-long process. For the first twenty years of life, all ruling-class children are educated in “gymnastics” (training the body) and “music” (training the mind in art and literature). At age twenty, the most accomplished students are chosen for “higher honor”—additional educational training in mathematics (plane geometry, solid geometry, harmonics, theoretical astronomy, and the introduction into the study of philosophy). (526c, 528b, 529, and 537c)
After ten years of intense training, the finest of these thirty-year-old students are selected for additional honor, training, and position. Those not selected are sent to careers in the military and government. Plato warns that the rulers must be especially careful to weed out entirely artistic students who are “filled with lawlessness” and are a great threat to the City (537e).
This select group is the most elite of all and is given five years to undertake the great honor of studying philosophy (539c). Then, for fifteen years, they become involved in the practical study of government, immersing themselves in the ways of the world. “[A]t the end of the time they must be sent down again into the den and compelled to hold any military or other office which young men are qualified to hold: in this way they will get their experience of life, and there will be an opportunity of trying whether, when they are drawn all manner of ways by temptation, they will stand firm or flinch” (540a). At the age of fifty, those who have distinguished themselves in every “action of their lives, and in every branch of knowledge” are ready to devote their lives to philosophy for the purpose of determining how best to rule the City (540a). From this group is chosen the leader, who rules not because he desires power, but because he knows it is his duty