The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the Greater Philosophers

Of all ancient Greek city-states, Athens had the easiest access to the outside world, from which it acquired great wealth and knowledge of natural phenomena. Many of the same debates still shaping philosophic inquiry were formed in this day, such as the relationship of the individual to civilization.

Athens’s defeat against Sparta in the Peloponnesian War helped fuel a profound sense of skepticism toward the democratic government. The greatest philosopher of this time was Socrates, whose itinerant lifestyle and constant questioning of conventional wisdom won him a devoted following of students. His two principal questions, “what is the meaning of virtue? And what is the best state?” (13) provide the basis for political philosophy, by asking how good men could rule a good state and how good rule could produce good men. The Athenian democracy rejected Socrates’s teaching and ordered his execution for corrupting the youth, and so our knowledge of Socrates comes largely from the writings of his student Plato, who wrote many dialogues featuring Socrates and his students.

The most famous and comprehensive dialogue is the Republic, which begins with a discussion on the nature of justice. One participant, Thrasymachus, becomes impatient and insists that justice is nothing but the appeal of the weak against the strong, a claim later echoed by Nietzsche. Socrates admits the role of greed and power-seeking in political life, but that the ruler must look to the advantage of the ruled or else society itself will collapse. The ideal city must strike a balance between the different characters and appetites of its citizens, but this leaves the question of who has the power to set the balance. Socrates determines that knowledge is the key virtue for governance, and so the rulers of the city must be philosophers, the most knowledgeable members of the community.

Philosopher-kings will train children for lives of labor, military service, or—for a small handful—philosophical inquiry. Exercise will help reveal the extent of the child’s physical skill, while their reaction to musical education will provide the clearest indication of their emotional and psychological character. Regardless of their eventual station, all should learn to believe in a kind of god and immortal soul, so as to have “a personified ideal of our love and our hope” (35) as well as the courage to endure death if necessary, and the belief that their own social order is eternal because heaven ordains it.

For the eventual philosophers, the most important part of this education is the notion of “Ideas,” or idealized versions of all matter, which show that all of matter is part of a general pattern and therefore liable to study. The guardians, those trained for defense of the state, must hold all possessions (and their wives) in common, so that they learn to fight for the honor of the city rather than personal benefit. Private property will prevail among the artisans and laborers, but a contingent of guardians will watch over them to prevent any excessive concentrations of wealth. Plato’s contemplation of justice ends with its being “the having and doing what is one’s own” (47), where the needs and interests of all fit together with complete harmony.

Plato’s vision of society had a significant impact upon medieval Europe, where Catholicism taught fear of hell as a source of good conduct on earth, and a small class of hereditary warriors held unchallengeable power over the peasants and tradesmen. However, most of Plato’s readers find his plan impractical at best and monstrous at worst, with some arguing that it ignores basic facts of human nature and would destroy a community while trying to perfect it. For Durant, such critiques “destroy a straw man” (52), as Plato’s city left the majority alone while seeking to cultivate an elite.

Durant finds a stronger critique in Plato’s relative lack of attention to the relationship between politics and economic forces, which are far too dynamic for his static society to withstand. Utopias are meant to illustrate ideas, and do not necessarily need to demonstrate how to achieve them. Durant finds strong reasoning behind Plato’s central claim that the wisest should rule, and that this principle need not be irreconcilable with democracy.