The main provisions of the philosophy of Plato. The ideal state of Plato The last years of his life

The name of Plato, a philosopher who lived in ancient Greece, is known not only to students of history and philosophy. His teachings and works are famous all over the world thanks to the efforts made by the supporters and students of the Platonic school immediately during his lifetime. As a result, Plato's ideas spread and spread quickly throughout Greece, and then across Ancient Rome, and from there to its numerous colonies.

The life and work of the philosopher was diverse, which is associated with the peculiarities of Greek society of the 5-4 centuries. BC.

Formation of Plato's worldview

The philosopher's teachings were greatly influenced by the origin, family, education, and the political system of Hellas. Plato's biographers believe that he was born either in 428 or 427 BC, and died in 348 or 347 BC.

At the time of the birth of Plato in Greece, there was a war between Athens and Sparta, which was called the Peloponnesian. The reason for the internecine struggle was the establishment of influence over the whole of Hellas and the colonies.

The name Plato was invented either by the teacher of wrestling or by the students of the philosopher in his youth, but at birth he was named Aristocles. Translated from the ancient Greek language "Plato" means broad or broad-shouldered. According to one version, Aristocles was engaged in wrestling, had a large and strong physique, for which the teacher called him Plato. Another version says that the nickname arose because of the ideas and views of the philosopher. There is a third option, according to which Plato had a fairly wide forehead.

Aristocles was born in Athens. His family was considered quite noble and aristocratic, related to the king of Kodru. Almost nothing is known about the boy's father, most likely his name was Ariston. Mother - Periktion - took an active part in the life of Athens. Among the relatives of the future philosopher were the outstanding political figure Solon, the ancient Greek playwright Critias, the orator Andokides.

Plato had one sister and three brothers - two relatives and one half-brother, and none of them was fond of politics. And Aristocles himself preferred to read books, write poetry, talk with philosophers. His brothers did this too.

The boy received a very good education at that time, which consisted of attending music, gymnastics, literacy, drawing, and literature lessons. In his youth, he began to compose his own tragedies, epigrams, which were dedicated to the gods. Passion for literature did not prevent Plato from taking part in various games, competitions, wrestling tournaments.

Plato's philosophy was greatly influenced by:

• Socrates, who turned the life and worldview of the young man. It was Socrates who gave Plato the confidence that there is truth and high values ​​in life that can give benefits and beauty. These privileges can only be obtained through hard work, self-knowledge and improvement.
• The teachings of the Sophists, who argued that there is social inequality, and morality is an invention of the weak, and an aristocratic form of government is best suited for Greece.
• Euclid, around whom the disciples of Socrates gathered. For some time they remembered the teacher, experienced his death. It was after moving to Megara that Plato had the idea of ​​traveling around the world, who believed, like his teacher, that wisdom is passed on from other people. And for this you need to travel and communicate.

Travel

Historians have not fully established where Plato first went. It is possible that it was Babylon or Assyria. The sages from these countries gave him knowledge of magic and astronomy. Where the wandering Greek followed, biographers can only speculate. Among the versions - Phenicia, Judea, Egypt, several cities in North Africa, where he met with the greatest mathematicians of that time - Theodore and Aristippus. The philosopher took lessons in mathematics from the first, and gradually began to draw closer to the Pythagoreans. Their influence on Plato's philosophy is evidenced by the fact that Plato studied various symbols of the Cosmos and human existence. The Pythagoreans helped make the philosopher's teachings clearer, more rigorous, harmonious, consistent and comprehensive. He then used these principles to examine each subject and create his own theories.

Plato was accompanied on the journey by Eudoxus, who glorified Hellas in the field of astronomy and geography. Together they visited the above countries, and then stopped for a long time in Sicily. From here he followed to Syracuse, where he met the tyrant Dionysius. The trip lasted until 387 BC.

From Syracuse, Plato was forced to flee, fearing the tyrant's persecution. But the Greek did not get home. He was sold into slavery on the island of Aegina, where he was bought by one of the local residents. Plato was immediately released.

After long wanderings, the philosopher again ended up in Athens, where he bought a house with a garden. Previously, there was a pagan sanctuary dedicated to the goddess Athena. According to legend, the area was donated by Theseus to the hero Academ for special merits. He ordered to plant olives here and equip the sanctuary.

Platonic Academy

The inhabitants of Athens quickly began to call the place where Plato lived, the Academy. This name covered gardens, gymnasiums, and groves. In 385 BC, a philosophical school was formed, which existed until the 5th century. AD, i.e. until the end of antiquity.

The academy was shaped like an association of sages who served Apollo and various muses.

The academy was also called the museion, and its founder was called the scholarch. Interestingly, during his lifetime, a successor to Plato was appointed, whom he made his own nephew.

Above the entrance to the Academy there was an inscription "Let the negeometer not enter", which meant that the entrance to the school was closed to everyone who did not respect mathematics and geometry.

The main subjects at the school were astronomy and mathematics, classes took place according to a general and individual system. The first type of study was suitable for the general public, and the second - only for a rather narrow circle of people who wanted to study philosophy.

The students of the Academy lived in the gymnasium, so they had to follow a strict daily routine established by Plato himself. In the mornings, the students were woken up by the ringing of an alarm clock, which the philosopher made himself. The students lived quite austerely, as the Pythagoreans preached, they all ate together, spent a lot of time in silence, thought, purified their own thoughts.

Classes at the Academy were conducted by Plato, and his students, and graduates of the philosophical school, who successfully completed the course of study. The conversations took place in a garden or a grove, a house where a special exedra was equipped.

Pupils of the Platonic Academy paid special attention to the study of the following sciences:

• Philosophy;
• Mathematics;
• Astronomy;
• Literature;
• Botany;
• Law (including legislation, structure of states);
• Natural science.

Among the disciples of Plato were Lycurgus, Hyperilus, Philip of Opuntus, Demosthenes.

last years of life

When Plato was over 60 years old, he was again invited to Syracuse, where Dionysius the Younger ruled. According to Dion's assurances, the ruler strove to gain new knowledge. Plato managed to convince the tyrant that tyranny was an ineffective form of government. This was recognized by Dionysius the Younger rather quickly.

Because of the gossip and machinations of enemies, Dion was expelled by his ruler from Syracuse, and therefore moved to live in Athens, in the Academy of Plato. An elderly philosopher followed his friend home.

Once again, Plato visited Syracuse, but finally became disillusioned with Dionysius, seeing his treachery towards others. Dion, who died in 353 BC, remained in Sicily. The news of the death of a friend severely knocked down the philosopher, he began to be constantly ill and be alone. The year and day of Plato's death have not been precisely determined. It is believed that he died on his birthday. Before his death, he gave freedom to his slave, ordered to draw up a will, according to which a small property of the philosopher was distributed to friends.

The great Greek was buried in the Academy, where the inhabitants of Athens erected a monument to Plato.

Plato's works

Unlike many ancient authors, whose works have reached modern readers in a fragmentary state, Plato's works have been completely preserved. The authenticity of some of them is questioned by biographers, as a result of which the "Platonic question" arose in historiography. The general list of works of the philosopher is:

• 13 letters;
• Apology for Socrates;
• 34 dialogues.

It is because of the dialogues that researchers constantly argue. The best and most famous works in a dialogue form are:

• Phaedo;
• Parmenides;
• Sophist;
• Timaeus;
• State;
• Phaedrus;
• Parmenides.

One of the Pythagoreans, whose name was Thrasillus, who served as an astrologer at the court of the Roman emperor Tiberius, collected and published the works of Plato. The philosopher decided to break all creations into tetralogies, resulting in the appearance of Alcibiades the First and Second, Rivals, Protagoras, Gorgias, Lysides, Cratylus, Apology, Crito, Minos, Laws, Post-law, Letters, the State and others.

There are dialogues that were published under the name of Plato.

The study of the works and works of Plato began as early as the 17th century. The so-called "corpus of Plato's texts" began to be critically studied by scientists who tried to arrange the works according to the chronological principle. Then the suspicion arose that not all works belong to the philosopher.

Most of Plato's works are written in the form of a dialogue, in which court hearings and proceedings were held in Ancient Greece. This form, as the Greeks believed, helped to adequately and correctly reflect the emotions, the living speech of a person. Dialogues were best suited to the principles of objective idealism, the concept of which was developed by Plato. Idealism was based on principles such as:

• The primacy of consciousness.
• The predominance of ideas over being.

Plato did not specifically study dialectics, being and cognition, but his reflections on these problems of philosophy are set forth in numerous works. For example, in the "letters of Plato" or in the "State".

Features of the teachings of Plato

• The philosopher studied being based on three basic substances - the soul, the mind and the one. However, he did not give a clear definition of these concepts, so the researchers found that in some places he contradicts himself in the definitions. This is also manifested in the fact that Plato tried to interpret these substances from different points of view. The same was true of the properties that were attributed to concepts - often the properties not only contradicted each other, but were also mutually exclusive, incompatible. Plato interpreted the "One" as the basis of being and reality, considering the substance to be the primary. One has no signs, as well as properties, which prevents, according to Plato, from finding its essence. One is one, without parts, does not relate to being, therefore, it can be attributed to such categories as "nothing", "infinity", "many". As a result, it is difficult to understand what one is, it cannot be understood, felt, thought about and interpreted.
• The mind was understood by Plato from the point of view of ontology and epistemology. The philosopher believed that this is one of the root causes of everything that happens in the Universe, in heaven or on earth. The mind, according to Plato, should bring order, understanding of the Universe by people who should, from a reasonable point of view, interpret phenomena, stars, the firmament, celestial bodies, living and inanimate. The mind is a rationality that lives its own life, having the ability to live.
• Plato divides the soul into two parts - the world and the individual. The world soul is a real substance, which Plato also did not understand unambiguously. He believed that the substance consists of elements - an eternal and temporary essence. The functions of the soul are the unification of the corporeal and ideas, therefore it arises only when the demiurge wants, i.e. the God.

Thus, Plato's ontology is based on the combination of three ideal substances that exist objectively. They are not at all related to what a person thinks and does.

Cognition occupied a special place in the philosophy of the scientist. Plato believed that you need to know the world through your own knowledge, love the idea, so he rejected feelings. The source of the present, i.e. true cognition can become cognition, and feelings stimulate the process. Knowing ideas can only be through the mind, mind.

The dialectical concept of Plato was constantly changing, which depended on the environment and the views that the Greek professed. The scientist considered dialectics a separate science, on which other scientific fields and methods are based. If we consider dialectics as a method, then there will be a division of the one into separate parts, which can then be brought together into a whole. This understanding of the single proves once again the inconsistency of Plato's ontological knowledge.

Traveling to different countries had a special influence on the formation of the social philosophy of Plato, who for the first time in all of Greece systematically presented knowledge about human society and the state. Researchers believe that the philosopher identified these concepts.

Among the main ideas that Plato put forward regarding the state, it is worth noting such as:

• People created countries because it was a natural need to unite. The purpose of this form of organization of society was to facilitate the conditions of life, existence, economic activity.
• People sought to fully satisfy their own needs, and therefore began to involve others in solving their own problems.
• The desire to get rid of want is one of the main tools for why people began to create states.
• There is an invisible connection between the human soul, the state and the cosmos, since they have common principles. In the state, you can find three principles that correspond to the principles in the human soul. It is intelligent, lustful, furious, which correlated with deliberative, business and defensive. From the business beginning, three estates arose - philosophers who were rulers, warriors who became defenders, artisans and farmers who played the role of producers.
• If each of the estates correctly performs its functions, then the state can be interpreted as just.

Plato recognized the existence of only three forms of government - democracy, aristocracy and monarchy. The first he discarded, because the democratic regime of Athens killed Socrates, who was the teacher of the philosopher.

Because of this, Plato until the end of his life tried to develop a concept of what the state and political system should be. He built his reflections in the form of dialogues with Socrates, with which the "Laws" were written. These works were never completed by Plato.

At the same time, the philosopher tried to find the image of a just person who, due to democracy, will have perverted ideas and mind. You can get rid of democracy only with the help of philosophers, whom the scientist considered to be true and right-thinking people. Therefore, he believed that philosophers are required to occupy only the highest positions in the state, to govern others.

Consideration of issues related to the state, the structure of the country, the development of the political system, Plato devoted his large work "State". Some ideas can be found in The Politician and The Gorgias. It also outlines the concept of how you can educate a real citizen. This can be done only if the society is of a class, which will create the correct system for the distribution of material wealth. The state should be taken care of by its residents, who are not engaged in commerce and do not own private property.

But the cosmological teachings of Plato, who understood the Cosmos and the Universe as a ball, deserve special attention. It was created, therefore it is finite. The cosmos was created by the demiurge, who brought order to the world. The world has its own soul, because is a living being. The disposition of the soul is interesting. It is not inside the world, but envelops it. The world soul is made up of such important elements as air, earth, water and fire. Plato considered these elements to be the main ones in the creation of a world in which there is both harmony and relationships expressed in numbers. Such a soul has its own knowledge. The world created by the creator contributes to the appearance of many circles - stars (they are not fixed) and planets.

Plato thought of the structure of the world as follows:

• At the very top was the mind, i.e. demiurge.
• Under it was the world soul and the world body, which is commonly called the Cosmos.

All living things are the creation of God, who creates people with souls. The latter, after the death of their owners, move into new bodies. The soul is immaterial, immortal, and therefore will exist forever. Each soul creates a demiurge only once. As soon as she leaves the body, she enters the so-called world of ideas, where the soul is carried by a chariot with horses. One of them is a symbol of evil, and the second is purity and clarity. Due to the fact that evil pulls the chariot down, it falls, and the soul again falls into the physical body.

Plato's soul, like everything else, has a certain structure. In particular, it consists of lust, judgment and fervor. This allows a person to think, especially in the process of comprehending and knowing the truth. The consequence of this is that a person gradually, through internal dialogues, solves his own problems, contradictions, finds the truth. Objectivity cannot be found without such a logical connection. Plato's philosophy says that human thinking has its own dialectic, which allows you to comprehend the essence of things.

The ideas of the ancient Greek philosopher were able to develop further only the thinkers of the 19th century, who brought dialectics to a new level. But its foundations were laid in ancient Greece.

Ideas and philosophy of Plato developed after his death, penetrating into medieval and Muslim philosophical thought.

1

Among the famous works of Plato, the dialogue "State" is one of the most famous. The content, the skill of presentation, and the closeness - though sometimes only seemingly - of his other ideas to the ideas that excite our modernity made him so.

"State" is a multifaceted construction of philosophical thought. Its theme is definition justice, one of the concepts ethics. But in the course of considering this concept, the study expands, covering almost all the main - as Plato understands them - questions of philosophy. Moreover, those of them, the solution of which is necessary to clarify the concept of justice, are not limited to the sphere ethics and politicians. These are questions about the truly existing reasons for the existence of all things ("ideas"), about the highest of them - the idea of ​​"good", about the nature of man (soul, cognitive powers of the soul, the relationship of the soul and body, the soul settling into the body and its fate after the death of a person ), about the social connection between people, about the origin of the state and the ranks of its citizens, finally, about what an exemplary state should be, by whom and how it should be governed, what should be the most suitable system of education and training for its citizens, what should be be art approved by its authorities, etc.

Due to the versatility of the philosophical and scientific task developed in the "State", this dialogue can be considered an exposition the whole systems of Plato of the mature period of his life and work, with the exception of cosmology, set forth in Timaeus, a late work by Plato, and dialectics, set forth in "Parmenides" and "Sophist".

The title of the work "The State" (or "On the State System") might seem too narrow in relation to its content. However, it is quite understandable. First, in the era of Plato in Greek philosophy there was still no concept and, accordingly, a term expressing the later concept systems. And the composition of the dialogue does not correspond to the form of the system: the transition from question to question is conditioned not so much by a strictly logical and systematic construction and presentation of the content, as by the free movement of thought during the conversation.

Secondly, and this is much more important, the name of the dialogue is determined by an extremely essential feature of ancient Greek thinking and worldview, inherent not only to Plato. This feature is the complete opposite of the individualism of Western European thinking in modern times. It consists in the conviction that a free member of society is inseparable from the state whole to which it belongs, and that, depending on this connection and according to its model, all the main questions of philosophy should be resolved. Hence the striking correspondences characterizing the "State". The structure and division of the estates (classes) of people that make up the state (polis) correspond to the structure and division of the human soul. It passes through both of these spheres and both are characterized by triplicity dismemberment. For the free part of society, these are estates (or classes) rulers states, warriors or guardians, and artisans. For the human soul, these are its "parts": reasonable, furious, or affective, and lustful. There is also some correspondence, although incomplete, between the structure of these spheres and the structure of the big world, or space, generally. And here a certain trinity of articulation is outlined: upper world intelligible ideas- causes, or "prototypes", of all things, crowned with the transcendent, ineffable, on the verge of comprehension of the idea of ​​good; soul of the world embracing the world of sensible things; bodily world sensually perceived of things.

Especially important is the analogy established by Plato in The State between the structure of an exemplary society imagined by the philosopher and the structure of the human soul. Here the indicated correspondences determine the peculiarities and originality of Plato's doctrine as a doctrine of objective idealism not only in theories of being (ontology) and the theory of knowledge (epistemology), but also in theory of society (sociology).

The extraordinary richness of the treatise on the state with its philosophical content, its philosophical versatility are in close connection with the fact that, according to Plato, the founders, organizers and rulers of a perfect state should be philosophers, and only they.

But why? According to Plato's explanation, philosophers are "people who are able to comprehend that which is eternally identical with itself" (VI 484b). On the contrary, the one who, by his incapacity, wanders in the midst of many different things, is no longer a philosopher (ibid.). Such people "are not able, like artists, to perceive the highest truth and, without losing sight of it, constantly reproduce it with all possible care, and therefore it is not given to them, when it is required, to establish here new laws about beauty, justice and welfare, or to preserve it already existing "(VI 484cd).

On the contrary, philosophers are distinguished from all other people by a passionate attraction to knowledge, "which reveals to them the eternally existing and unchanged existence and destruction" (VI 485b). Philosophers strive for this existence "as a whole, not losing sight of how much it depends on them, not a single part of it, neither small, nor large, nor less, nor more valuable" (ibid.). In addition to these properties, philosophers are distinguished by "truthfulness, resolute rejection of any lie, hatred of it and love of truth" (VI 485c).

The fundamental ability of philosophical nature is the ability to contemplate, covering all time and all being. This ability also determines the moral traits of a true philosopher: such a person "will not even consider death something terrible" (VI 486b), he in no way can "become quarrelsome and unjust" (ibid.). He is highly capable of learning, has a good memory, and the proportionality and subtlety of his innate spiritual makeup makes him "receptive to the idea of ​​all things" (VI 486d). The philosopher does not stop at a multitude of individual phenomena that only seem to exist, but continuously goes further, and his passion "does not subside until he touches the very essence of every thing" (VI 490b). He touches this essence with the principle of his soul, which is akin to these things themselves. Having approached by means of this principle and having united with genuine being, having given birth to reason and truth, "he will both cognize and truly live and eat" (VI 490b).

If the natural inclinations and qualities of a philosopher are properly educated and developed, they will certainly achieve "every virtue" (VI 492a). But if they are sown and planted in the wrong soil, the opposite will be the case. It is a mistake to believe that major crimes and extreme depravity "are the result of mediocrity" (VI 491e), they are the result of an ardent nature spoiled by upbringing. It is the most gifted souls "who become especially bad with bad upbringing" (ibid.).

But those who have escaped the dangers of bad upbringing and come closer to the nature of a true philosopher usually do not find recognition for themselves under a perverted state structure. "... It is not inherent in a crowd to be a philosopher" (VI 494a). It is impossible that the crowd "admits and recognizes the existence of beauty in itself, and not of many beautiful things or the very essence of each thing, and not of many separate things" (VI 493e - 494a). It is not surprising, therefore, that all those who are engaged in philosophy will inevitably evoke the censure of both the crowd and individuals who, "communicating with the mob, seek to please her" (VI 494a).

And yet, it is the philosophers who should be placed in the capacity of the best and "most thorough" guards in an exemplary state. Only a small number of citizens may be eligible for this appointment. These are the ones who all the qualities necessary for a better guardian and ruler are found together. Here, to determine the suitability of a person for what he has to do, the highest, most stringent criteria are needed, since nothing "imperfect can serve as a measure of anything" (VI 504c); indifference to the tested and the subject is least of all permissible in this case.

The most important knowledge in deciding the question of the rulers and guards of the state is knowledge good, or ideas of good:"through her justice and everything else become usable and useful" (VI 505a). The good is that which gives the knowable things the truth, and endows the person with the ability to know; it is the cause of knowledge "and the knowability of truth" (VI 508e). No matter how beautiful knowledge and truth are, good is something different and even more beautiful. The relationship between knowledge, truth and good is the same as in the world of the visible between light, sight and the Sun. It is correct to consider light and vision as sun-like, but to recognize them as the Sun itself is wrong. So it is in the world of the intelligible: it is correct to consider knowledge and truth as having the image of good, but it is wrong to recognize any of them as good. All knowable things can be cognized "only thanks to the good ... it gives them both being and existence, although the good itself is not existence, it is beyond existence, exceeding it with dignity and strength" (VI 509b).

The comparison of the good with the Sun, developed in the sixth book of the "States" (see 508e - 509a), is an introduction in the guise of a myth to the doctrine of the difference between two areas, or two worlds, which is basic for Plato's philosophy: the world intelligible and the world visible, those. sensually perceived, or sensual."... Consider," says Plato, "that there are two rulers ... one is above all kinds and regions of the intelligible, the other, on the contrary, is above everything visible ..." (VI 509d).

In turn, each of both spheres - both the area of ​​the sensuously comprehensible and the area of ​​the intelligible - is divided into two areas. For the sphere sensually comprehensible this is, firstly, the area of ​​visual images (shadows, reflections on water and on shiny solid objects, and the like) and, secondly, the area in which living beings, people and in general everything that is grown and even manufactured are placed.

Inside the sphere intelligible also two areas are found. The first of them consists of intelligible objects, which the soul is forced to seek with the help of images obtained in the field of sensually comprehensible. The soul is looking for them, using assumptions ("hypotheses"). But, relying on them, she is not going to the beginning intelligible, but only to his consequences. On the contrary, the soul explores another area of ​​the intelligible, ascending from a premise to an already premiseless beginning.

This distinction between the two areas of the intelligible Plato explains by the example of the studies of geometers. The geometer uses visual drawings and draws conclusions from this. At the same time, however, his thought is directed not at the drawing, but at the most figures, which he serves as a likeness. According to Plato, geometers "draw their conclusions only for the quadrangle itself and its diagonal, and not for the diagonal that they drew" (VI 510d). Since the soul, in its striving for the intelligible, is forced to use assumptions, it is not able to rise beyond the limits of assumptions and uses only figurative similarities of ideas in lower things, in which it finds their more distinct expression. That is why at this stage of research it does not go back to the beginning of the intelligible (see VI 511a).

Another thing is the second area, or "the second section," of the intelligible, as Plato calls it, i.e. the area that our mind reaches through the ability to reason (see VI 511b). Here, the mind does not present its assumptions as something primordial: on the contrary, they are essentially only assumptions for it, i.e. as if approaches and impulses, until he reaches the unprejudiced beginning of everything in general. Having reached this beginning and adhering to everything contained in it, he then descends to the final conclusions. In the course of this descent, he no longer uses anything sensually perceived, but only the ideas themselves in their relationship, and his final conclusions apply only to them (ibid.). Thus, the section of the intelligible (it is also the section of true being), considered through the ability to reason, is more reliable than what is considered through the sciences that proceed from assumptions.

As a result of all this consideration, a complete correspondence is established between the four areas of the comprehended and the four types of cognitive activity of the soul, or, as Plato calls them, the "four states" that arise in the soul. The highest type of this activity is intelligence, second - reason, third - faith and fourth - assimilation. The distinction established by Plato between reason and reason. According to Plato himself, reason "occupies an intermediate position between opinion and mind" (VI 511d). This is the ability "which is found in those engaged in geometry and the like" (ibid.).

All this set forth in Book VI of the "State" and the crowning reason the classification of the cognitive abilities of the soul is an introduction to the doctrine of being, to which this classification strictly corresponds and from which it follows as its necessary consequence. This is the famous Platonic the doctrine of objective idealism, or the theory of "ideas" ("eidos"). Her main view is the already known to us, expressed by Plato at the very beginning of his classification of cognitive abilities, the distinction between two main worlds: the world of the intelligible and the sensible. It is presented not as a theoretical doctrine or a treatise, but in the form of a myth. This is a myth that likens human earthly existence to the dark existence of prisoners, shackled at the bottom of the cave in such a way that they can see only what is right before their eyes. Throughout the length of the cave, there is a wide exit for the access of light. But the people chained in the cave cannot turn to the exit. Their backs are turned towards the exit and towards the light emanating from the fire that burns far above. Between this fire and the prisoners, there is a road at the top, fenced off by a low wall, and along that road behind the wall people walk and carry various utensils, statues and images of living creatures made of stone or wood. At the same time, some of the travelers are silent, while others talk among themselves.

But the prisoners chained in it will not see or hear anything of this. They see only the shadows cast by the fire on the cave wall from themselves and from objects carried by people passing along the road above the cave. They hear not the very speeches of travelers passing along the road, but only the echoes or echoes of their voices, which are heard under the arches of the cave. If the prisoners in the cave were able to reason, then they would give names, not to real things that travelers outside the cave carry past them on the road, but to shadows sliding along its wall. Only these shadows would they take for the present. And they would also attribute the sounds traveling inside the cave to the shadows sliding before their eyes.

This is the position of the prisoners of the cave, or dungeon, as Plato himself immediately calls it. But Plato is not only portraying their present situation. He also draws a possible liberation for them, an ascent from darkness to the light of reason itself and truth itself. This liberation does not happen all of a sudden. If one of the prisoners had been removed from the shackles, and he himself had been forced to stand up, turn his neck and look towards the light, then he would have been unable to look in bright light at things, the shadows of which he had seen earlier in his cave. Such a person would have thought that there was much more truth in what he saw there before than in what he was now shown upstairs. And even if he, who resisted, were forcibly brought into a bright light, his eyes would be so struck by the radiance that he could not see a single object of those whose authenticity is now being proclaimed to him. Long habit and exercise in contemplation are required to see the truth of everything above. It is necessary to start with the easiest. First you have to look at shadows true things, then on reflections them on the water, i.e. on likeness people and various objects, and only then look at the very things. But even in this contemplation, gradualness and habit are necessary. It would be easier to look at things in the sky, and at the sky itself, not during the day, but at night, i.e. look first at the light of the stars and the moon, and not at the sun and sunlight (see VII 515c - 516a). Whoever would have walked this entire path of ascent along the steps of contemplation would already be able to look at the Sun by itself and see its real properties. He would understand that both the seasons and the course of the years depend on the Sun, that it knows everything in the visible world and that it is the cause of everything that he had previously seen in his cave (see VII 516bc). But if the climber returned to his place in the cave, his eyes would again be covered with darkness, and his actions would cause laughter.

Plato himself reveals the philosophical meaning of his cave myth. He explains that a dwelling in a dungeon is like an area covered by sensory vision. On the contrary, the ascent and contemplation of things that are on high is "the ascent of the soul into the realm of the intelligible" (VII 517b). Above all intelligible ideas, or causes of things of the sensible world, the idea good. She is at the extreme limit of cognition and is barely distinguishable. However, it is only necessary to distinguish it there, and immediately it is concluded that it is she who is the cause of everything true and beautiful. "In the realm of the visible, she gives rise to light and its ruler, and in the realm of the intelligible, she herself is the mistress on whom truth and understanding depend ..." (VII 517c). Therefore, it is precisely the idea of ​​the good that "must be looked upon by the one who wants to consciously act both in private and in public life" (ibid.). Potentially in the soul of every person there is an ability for this view. There is also a tool through which everyone learns to him. However, the same thing happens to cognition as happens to vision in the visible world. It is impossible for the eye to turn from darkness to light except with the whole body. Likewise, it is necessary that the whole soul as a whole should turn away from the sensible world of changing phenomena. Then a person's ability to know will be able to endure the contemplation of not only true being, but also that which is brightest in true being: and this is good(see VII 518cd).

Question about education the soul for the correct cognition of the good is, according to Plato, the question of the means by which the easiest and most successful one can turn a person to the contemplation of intelligible things. It doesn't mean the first time at all invest into him the ability to see, which seemed to be absent before. He initially has it, but only "is wrongly directed, and he looks in the wrong place" (VII 518d). Most positive properties souls very close to positive properties body: at first, a person may not have them, they develop later by exercise, gradually become a habit. However, the ability to think, according to Plato, is special and "of a much more divine origin." "It never loses its strength, but depending on the direction it is sometimes useful and suitable, sometimes unsuitable and even harmful" (VII 518e). Even rascals, people with crappy souls, can be smart, and their minds are discerning.

If in childhood one suppresses natural evil inclinations, then, having freed from them, the soul is able to turn to the truth. However, if people who are not enlightened and not versed in the truth are not suitable for managing the state, then those who have been engaged in self-improvement all their lives will not voluntarily interfere in public life. Therefore, in a perfect state, people who have completed the ascent and achieved the contemplation of truth itself will not be allowed to remain at the heights they have reached. For the law of a perfect state sets as its task not the well-being or bliss of one particular segment of the population, but has in mind the whole state as a whole. People who are outstanding cannot be given the right and the opportunity to evade wherever they want: they should be used to govern the state. Such use does not mean that it is unfair to philosophers. In other - imperfect - states, philosophers have the right not to take part in state labors, since there philosophers are formed by themselves, in spite of the state system. They do not owe their food there to the state and do not have to reimburse the costs incurred. Philosophers in a perfect state are another matter. They are brought up as philosophers by this state itself and for its own purposes, as they are brought up in a bee swarm of a queen. They are brought up better and more perfect. Therefore, they have no right to remain at the heights of intelligible contemplation. They must each in their turn descend into the "cave" of the visible world, into the dwelling of other people and get used to looking at the dark visions there. Since they have already seen the very truth about everything beautiful and just, they are a thousand times better than those living in the "cave" to discern what each of the visions there is and what it is.

Only with the establishment of such a procedure for appointing rulers will the state be governed already "in reality", and not "in a dream", as is currently the case in most existing states: after all, in them the ruling parties are at war with each other because of the shadows and strife is going on among them because of power, as if it were some great blessing! On the contrary, in a perfect state, those who are to rule are least aspiring to power, and there are no strife at all in it. He is not in danger that those brought up for government "will not want to work, each in his own turn, together with the citizens, but will prefer to stay with each other in the realm of pure [being] all the time" (VII 520d). So, people become fit to rule the state on the basis of not only the inclinations or abilities for this business, but also of a specially directed education and learning. This turn from the "night" day to the "true day of being" Plato calls the striving for wisdom. But what kind of training could captivate the souls of future philosophers from changeable phenomena to genuine being? The basis of their education, as well as the basis for the education of guard-warriors, should be based on physical exercises and musical art. But for cognition of the highest good they are insufficient. Any art and any skill for this purpose is too crude.

However, there is something in common for all of them, including the art of war. This is what any skill uses, and thinking, and knowledge, something that every person needs to understand in advance: this is science calculations and accounts. This science, by its very nature, leads a person to speculation, but no one uses it correctly, as such a science that attracts us towards true being. A perception that "does not simultaneously evoke the opposite sensation" does not lead to the investigation of true being and is not capable of leading it (VII 523c). On the contrary, if in perception the object is presented as endowed opposite properties, for example, at the same time as soft and hard or heavy and light, then our soul is perplexed and prompted to research. She enlists to help herself check and thinking, since, first of all, she has to figure out: does a sensation tell her about one or two different objects in this or that case? If it turns out that it is two different subject, then each of them does not match with the other, each on his own - one and there will be no opposite in the perceived. In this case, the perceived does not induce thinking, remains with visible and does not direct to intelligible. But if the perceived is perceived together with its opposite, it necessarily prompts the soul to think. In this case, the perceived thing turns out to be a unit no more than the opposite of a unit. This case is significantly different from the previous one. In the previous, sensory perception does not at all require the formulation and solution of the question of entities perceived. On the contrary, in the second case, when during perception in the perceived one can immediately see some of its opposite, some kind of judgment is required - a judgment about the essence. "In this case, the soul is forced to be perplexed, seek, excite thought in itself and ask itself the question: what is it - a unit in itself?" (VII 524e).

Thus, according to Plato, the introduction to the science of true or true being turns out to be check, or arithmetic: the study of a unit refers to activities that turn us to the contemplation of true being (see VII 524e - 525a). The same happens when we identify a single object with ourselves, when we "contemplate the identical: we see the same thing both as one and as an infinite multitude" (VII 525a). Since arithmetic is entirely concerned with number, and since what happens to the unit, happens to any number in general, it follows from this that arithmetic belongs to the sciences necessary in a perfect state for both warriors and philosophers. The science of number is so important for a perfect state that, according to Plato, it is necessary to establish a law on its obligation. Anyone who is going to take top positions in the state must be persuaded to turn to this science. At the same time, they should do it not as ordinary people, not for the sake of buying and selling, which merchants and traders care about, but for military purposes and until they come to contemplate the nature of numbers with the help of thinking itself, until they make it easier for the soul itself. turning from changing phenomena to truth and essence itself (see VII 525c). The science of number is of great benefit only if it is pursued for the sake of knowledge, and not for the sake of huckstering. At the same time, she strenuously attracts the soul upward and forces one to reason about the numbers themselves. In no case is it permissible for anyone to reason in terms of numbers, having a body which can be seen or touched. The numbers that seekers reason about are such that in them every unit is equal to every unit, does not differ in the least from it, and does not have any parts in it (see VII 526a). Such numbers are incorporeal, intelligible, they are only permissible to think, and otherwise they cannot be treated in any way. The science of such numbers should be taught to people with the best natural inclinations.

There is also a second necessary subject closely related to the science of intelligible numbers. This subject - geometry. As in the case of the science of numbers, we are not talking about the geometry that considers the becoming of being in the sensible world: such a geometry is not suitable for the purposes of philosophy. The language of ordinary geometry - the geometry of sensibly perceived objects - seems to Plato amusing and strange, inadequate to the true geometry of the intelligible. From the lips of such geometers you constantly hear: "build" a quadrangle, "draw" a line, "make an overlay", etc. But true geometry cannot be applied. It is practiced "for the sake of knowledge" (VII 527b), and, moreover, "for the sake of the knowledge of eternal being, and not that which arises and perishes" (ibid.). The thinking of ordinary geometry is "base", true geometry "draws the soul to the truth and influences philosophical thought" so that it rushes upward. However, even the side application of geometry in military affairs and in all sciences for their better assimilation is important: always and in everything there is a difference between a person who is involved in geometry and who is not involved.

The third subject necessary for the preparation of future philosophers in a perfect state is astronomy. As in the consideration of the first two sciences - the sciences of number and geometry, Plato rejects its narrowly utilitarian assessment. He sees the importance of astronomy not only in the fact that careful observations of the change of seasons, months and years are suitable for agriculture and navigation, as well as for the leadership of military operations, but also in the fact that in mathematics and astronomy the "instrument of the soul is purified and revived. "which other occupations destroy and make blind. Keeping it intact is more valuable than having thousands of eyes, because only through it can you see the truth. The premise of astronomy is advances in the development of that part of geometry that must follow planimetry and that studies geometric body with their three dimensions. This is the stereometry of rotating bodies. With its study, the situation, according to Plato, is "ridiculously bad" (VII 528d). However, this science will become obligatory if the state takes care of it. But in the transition to astronomy, it is necessary to part with the illusion of naive people. These people believe the dignity of astronomy is that it "makes the soul look up and leads it there, away from everything here" (VII 529a). But Plato cannot agree that it is some other science that compels us to gaze upward than that which "studies being and the invisible" (VII 529b). Whoever tries to comprehend at least something on the basis of sensibly perceived things will never comprehend this, since such things do not give knowledge. And although the luminaries and constellations, visible with the eyes in the sky, "must be recognized as the most beautiful and perfect of this kind of things ... nevertheless they are much inferior to true things with their movements relative to each other, occurring with genuine speed and slowness, in true quantity and all kinds of true forms "(VII 529d). Therefore, observations of the configurations of stars and planets should be used only as a "tool for the study of true being", but it would be ridiculous to seriously consider them as a source of true knowledge, equality, doubling or any other relationship (VII 529e - 530a). There is another science that must be considered as belonging to propaedeutics, or to the introduction to the doctrine of true being. This science - music, precisely speaking, the doctrine of musical harmony. And in it, its true nature is revealed only after the elimination of the same error that was clarified regarding astronomy. Ordinary researchers of harmony labor fruitlessly, measuring and comparing the consonances and sounds perceived by ordinary sense ears. Even the Pythagoreans act in relation to the science of harmony in exactly the same way as astronomers usually do: they, however, look for numbers in consonances perceived by ear, but "do not rise to consider general questions and do not find out which numbers are consonant and which are not and why "(VII 531c). A true tune, introduced by the study of musical harmony, we comprehend. Whoever makes an attempt to reason, “bypassing sensations, by means of reason alone, rushes to the essence of any object and does not retreat until, with the help of thinking itself, he comprehends the essence of good” (VII 532ab). It is in this way that he finds himself at the final goal of all that is visible.

Taken as a whole, the study of the four considered sciences leads the most valuable beginning of our soul upward, to the contemplation of the most perfect in true being. Contemplation does not apply to image truth, but to the very truth.“You would see,” says Plato, “no longer the image of what we are talking about, but the truth itself” (VII 533a). But to show this truth to a person versed in the sciences discussed above, only the ability to reason, or dialectics in the ancient sense of the word, can. All other methods of study either refer to human opinions and wishes, or are aimed at the origin and combination of things, or at the maintenance of arising and combined things. Even those sciences that, like geometry and the sciences adjoining it, are trying to comprehend at least something of true being, it only dreams. In reality, it is impossible for them to see him as long as they continue to use their assumptions, not realizing them to themselves (VII 533bс). Only reasoning is on the right track: discarding assumptions, it touches the original position itself in order to substantiate it. It "slowly releases, as if from some barbaric filth, the gaze of our soul buried there and directs it upward, using the arts that we have disassembled as assistants and companions. Out of habit, we have repeatedly called them sciences, but something else would be required here. name, because these devices are not as obvious as science, although they are more distinct than opinion "(VII 533d). However, the point is not what word to call each of the types or methods of knowledge leading to truth. There is no point in arguing about this. The following designations of the sections of knowledge can be accepted as satisfactory and sufficiently clear: first - the science, second - thinking, third - faith, fourth - assimilation. Of these, the last two, taken together, make up opinion, the first two - understanding. Opinion concerns becoming understanding - entities. As essence is related to becoming, so understanding is related to opinion. And just as understanding refers to opinion, so science refers to faith, and reflection refers to assimilation. The ability to reason leads to knowledge. The one who comprehends the basis of the essence of every thing knows how to reason. So it is with cognition good. Who is not able to determine the idea of ​​the good by means of analysis, to single it out from everything else; who does not seek to verify the good according to his entities, but not opinion about him; whoever does not advance with unshakable conviction through all obstacles, we have to say that he knows neither good in itself, nor any good at all, and if he somehow touches the ghost of good, he will touch him through opinions, but not knowledge. Thus, ability to reason is like the cornice of all knowledge, its completion, and it would be a mistake to put any other knowledge above it (VII 534e).

The education and training of the rulers of a perfect state should be based on these principles and in view of these goals. The crown of this learning is philosophy. But it should be taken not by "vile" people, but by "noble" (VII 535c). Education should begin not on the advice of Solon, not in old age, but from an early age: great and numerous works are the work of young men. Therefore, the study of computation, geometry, all kinds of preliminary knowledge that should precede dialectics, must be taught to guards as early as childhood. The form of education, however, should not be forced, since a free-born person should not study any science in a "slave" way: knowledge forcibly implanted into the soul is fragile. Therefore, children must be fed with the sciences, not forcibly, but as if playfully. This way of teaching makes it easier for the elders to observe the inclinations and success of the trainees, and, therefore, the subsequent selection of the most capable and best.

For those who reach the age of twenty, there must be an organized general review of all sciences. Its purpose is to show the affinity of sciences "between themselves and with the nature of [true] being" (VII 537c). But the main test is to establish whether a person has a natural ability for dialectics. Whoever is capable of a free survey of all knowledge is also capable of dialectics. Those who are selected are more honored than others, and when the pupils reach thirty years of age, a new selection and a new promotion are made among them. This time, their ability for dialectics is tested, it is observed who is capable, throwing away visual and other sensory perceptions, to walk along with the truth along the path to true being (see VII 537d).

This whole theory of education is directed by Plato against the corrupting influence of fashionable sophistry. After the necessary tests have passed, young people, matured for activities in the state, "are forced to descend into that cave again" (VII 539f): they must be placed in senior positions, as well as in military positions and others appropriate to people of their age. All this is given fifteen years. And when they turn fifty and they endure all temptations, overcome all trials, it will be time to lead them to the final goal: they will have to direct their spiritual gaze upward, “to look at the very thing that gives light to everything, and seeing the good in itself, take it as a model and streamline both the state and individuals, as well as themselves - each in their own turn - for the rest of their lives "(VII 540ab).

Most of all, the rulers will be engaged in philosophy, and when the time comes, they will work on the civil system and hold government positions. But they will do this only for the sake of the state; not because such activities are beautiful in themselves, but because they are so necessary (see VII 540b).

Plato admits that the project for the construction of a perfect state indicated by him is difficult, but does not consider it impracticable. However, it will come true only if true philosophers become the rulers of the state. Such rulers will regard justice as the greatest and most necessary virtue. It is by serving it and realizing it that they will build their state.

Plato is clearly aware that the state depicted in his dialogue is not an image of any state, Greek or otherwise, that exists in reality. This is a model of an "ideal" state, i.e. one that should have existed in Plato's conviction, but which has not yet existed and does not exist anywhere in reality. Thus, the dialogue "State" is included in the literary genre, or genre, of the so-called utopias.

Plato's utopia, like any other utopia, is composed of various elements. This is, firstly, the element critical, negative. To paint pictures the best state system, it is necessary to clearly understand the shortcomings of the state existing, modern. It is necessary to imagine what features of the existing state should be eliminated, what should be abandoned, what should be changed in them, replaced by another, corresponding to the idea of ​​the best and perfect. Without denial and without criticism of the existing, the construction of a utopia is impossible.

Second, utopia necessarily contains an element constructive, positive. It speaks of what does not yet exist, but what, according to the author of the utopia, must certainly arise instead of the existing one. Since utopia replaces the existing imaginary those. something unprecedented in fantasy, transferred into reality from representation, then in every utopia there is an element fiction, something imaginative.

However, the fantastic element of utopia cannot be completely divorced from reality. The construction of a utopia is impossible not only without criticism of reality, it is impossible without correlating with reality. No matter how different the appearance, the image, the form of the perfect society represented in utopia from the real features of the society that actually exists, these appearance, image, form cannot be built on the basis of pure imagination. Utopia is and negation the present reality of the existing society, and reflection some of its real features and characteristics. The basis of the imaginary remains reality, the support of fiction is reality.

Element denials, criticisms strongly represented in the Platonic state. Plato does not just describe or portray his ideal, exemplary type of state, he opposes it negative types of government. In all negative forms of the state, instead of like-mindedness, there is discord, instead of a fair distribution of responsibilities - violence and coercion, instead of striving for the highest goals of community - striving for power for the sake of low goals, instead of renouncing material interests and their limitation - greed, the pursuit of money, acquisitiveness. In all negative types of state, a common feature and the main engine of behavior and actions of people turn out to be material concerns and incentives. According to Plato, all currently existing states belong to this negative type, in all of them the opposition between the rich and the poor is clearly manifested, so that in essence every state seems to double, it always "contains two hostile states: one - the poor, the other - the rich "(IV 422e - 423a). The existing - imperfect - forms of government were preceded, according to Plato, in the times of deep antiquity, during the reign of Kronos, a perfect form of community. In characterizing this form, Plato gives free rein to his imagination. In those days, he assures, the gods themselves ruled individual areas, and in the lives of people there was a sufficiency of everything necessary for life, there were no wars, robberies and strife. People then were born not from people, but directly from the earth, did not need dwellings and beds. They spent considerable hours of leisure in pursuing philosophy. At this stage of their existence, they were free from the need to struggle with nature and they were united by bonds of friendship.

However, it is impossible to take this system, which existed in the distant past, as an example of the best possible arrangement, according to Plato; material conditions of life do not allow this - the need for self-preservation, the struggle against nature and hostile peoples. However, an unattainable example of an irretrievably past "golden age" sheds light on the conditions in which modern man has to live: peering into this bypassed and irrevocable system, we see what it consists of. evil, preventing the correct structure of the state, is an evil generated by economic needs, family relations, interstate struggle. The original type of hostel, as the best type in comparison with the modern one, was drawn by Plato not only in "The State", but also in the later work of "Laws", where he depicted not so idyllic as in the era of the mythical Kronos, the living conditions of people who had survived on the heights mountains during the flood.

States belonging to the negative type have, according to Plato, differences that give rise to different forms, or types, of the state. The negative type of state appears, according to Plato, in four varieties. This is 1) timocracy, 2) oligarchy, 3) democracy and 4) tyranny. These four forms are not just coexisting varieties of the negative type. In comparison with the perfect state, each of the four forms is a stage of some transformation, a successive deterioration or perversion, a "degeneration" of the perfect form. The first of the negative forms to be considered, according to Plato, timocracy. This is power based on domination ambitious. The timocracy initially retained the features of the ancient perfect system: in a state of this type, rulers are honored, soldiers are free from agricultural and handicraft work and from all material concerns, meals are common, constant exercises in military affairs and gymnastics flourish. The first signs of incipient decline are the passion for enrichment and the desire to acquire. Over time, hunters for precious metals begin to secretly collect and store gold and silver within the walls of their homes, and with considerable participation in this business of their wives, the former modest lifestyle changes to a luxurious one. This is how the transition from timocracy to oligarchies(the rule of the few over the majority: ολίγοι - "few"). This is a state structure and government, participation in which is based on property qualification- census and property appraisal; it is ruled by the rich, "I. the poor do not participate in government (see VIII 550c). In an oligarchic state, the fate of its rulers is deplorable. The wealthy wasteful, like drones in a bee hive, eventually turn into poor people. However, unlike bees." drones, many of these two-legged drones are armed with a sting: they are criminals, villains, thieves who cut wallets, blasphemers, masters of all kinds of evil deeds. so that each member of society "does his own thing", and "only his own ", not taking over the affairs that lie on the responsibilities of other members. In the oligarchy, part of the members of society are engaged in a variety of matters: agriculture, and crafts, and war. Secondly, in the oligarchy there is a person's right to a complete sale of the property accumulated by him. This right leads to the fact that such a person turns into a completely useless member of society: not being part of the state, he is only a poor and helpless person in it.

The further development of the oligarchy leads, according to Plato, to a consistent development, more precisely, to its degeneration into an even worse form of state structure - democracy. Formally, this is the power and rule of the free citizens of society (i.e., non-slaves). But in a democratic state, the opposition between rich and poor becomes even more acute than under an oligarchy. The development of a luxurious lifestyle, which began in the oligarchy, the irrepressible need for money lead young people into the clutches of usurers, and the rapid ruin and transformation of the rich into poor people contribute to the emergence of envy, anger of the poor against the rich and malicious actions against the entire state system, which ensures the rich domination over the poor. ... At the same time, the very conditions of a democratic society make it inevitable not only frequent meetings of the poor with the rich, but even joint actions: in games, in competitions, in war. The growing resentment of the poor against the rich leads to rebellion. If the uprising ends with the victory of the poor, then they destroy part of the rich, the other part is expelled, and state power and management functions are shared among all the remaining members of society.

But the worst form of deviation from the perfect political system Plato declared tyranny. This is the power one above all. This form of power arises as a degeneration of the previous - democratic - form of government. The same disease that infected and destroyed the oligarchy and which is born from self-will, even more and more strongly infects and enslaves democracy (see VIII 563e). According to Plato, everything that is done too much or oversteps the measure is accompanied, as it were, in the form of retribution or retribution, by a great change in the opposite direction. This happens with the changing seasons, in plants, in bodies. This is no less the case in the fate of governments: an excess of freedom should lead an individual, as well as the entire polis (city-state), to nothing but slavery (see VIII 563e - 564a). Therefore, tyranny comes precisely from democracy, as the strongest and most cruel slavery - from the greatest freedom. According to Plato, the tyrant asserts himself through representation. In the first days and the first time of his reign, he "smiles at everyone whoever he meets, and claims about himself that he is not a tyrant at all; he makes many promises to individuals and society; he frees people from debts and distributes land to the people and his retinue. So he pretends to be merciful to all and meek "(VIII 566de). But the tyrant needs to constantly start a war so that the common people feel the need for a leader. Since the constant war arouses general hatred against the tyrant, and since the citizens who once contributed to his rise, over time begin to courageously condemn the turn that events took, the tyrant, if he wants to retain power, is forced to consistently destroy his detractors until he remains with him " none of friends or enemies, who would be good for something "(VIII 567b).

The classification and characterization of bad, or negative, forms of state and state power developed by Plato is not a speculative construction. It is based on Plato's observations of the types of government that existed in various parts of Greece in various Greek poleis. Only outstanding political observation and considerable awareness acquired during his stay in various states of Greece and beyond could enable Plato in this way to characterize the negative aspects of various types of government and government.

In the "State" Plato opposes all the bad forms of the structure and organization of society with his project of the best, most reasonable state and government. As in the oligarchy, few govern Plato's state. But unlike the oligarchy, these few can only be individuals really capable to manage the state well, firstly, because of their natural inclinations and giftedness, and, secondly, because of many years of preparation. Plato considers the main condition and principle of a perfect state structure Justice. It consists in the fact that every citizen of the state is assigned some special occupation and special position. Where this has been achieved, the state brings together diverse and even heterogeneous parts into a whole, imprinted with unity and harmony.

The best state system should, according to Plato, possess a number of features of political organization and moral virtue, which would be able to ensure the solution of the most important tasks. Such a state, firstly, must have the means of protection sufficient to deter and successfully repel the enemy's encirclement. Secondly, it must systematically supply all members of society with the material goods necessary for life. Third, it should guide and guide the development of spiritual activity. Completing all of these tasks would mean accomplishing ideas of good as the highest idea that rules the world.

In Plato's state, the functions and types of work necessary for society as a whole are divided between special estates, or classes, of its citizens, but on the whole form a harmonious combination. What is the principle of this division? It is heterogeneous, it combines two principle - moral (ethical) and economic (economic). Plato took the differences between individual groups of people according to their moral inclinations and properties. This is the principle ethical. However, Plato considers these differences by analogy with the division of economic labor. This is the principle economic. It is in the division of labor that Plato sees the foundation of the entire social and state system of his day. He explores and origin existing specialization in society, and composition of industries the division of labor thus obtained. Marx highly praised Plato's analysis of the division of labor depicted in The State. He directly calls (in the 10th chapter, written by him for "Anti-Dühring" by Engels) a genius "for his time, the portrayal of the division of labor by Plato, as the natural basis of the city (which the Greeks were identical with the state)" (K. Marx, F. Op. T. 20.P. 239). The main idea of ​​Plato is in the statement that the needs of citizens who make up society, varied, but the ability of each individual member of society to meet these needs limited. Hence, Plato deduces the need for the emergence of a hostel, or "city" in which "each person attracts one or the other to satisfy this or that need. Feeling in need in many ways, many people gather together to live together and help each other: such joint settlement and receives the name of the state with us "(State II 369s).

It is extremely characteristic of Plato that he considers the significance of the division of labor for society not from the point of view of the worker who produces the product, but exclusively from the point of view consumers of this product. According to Marx's explanation, Plato's basic proposition "is that the worker must adapt to the work, not the work to the worker." (K. Marx, F. Op. T. 23.P. 378). Each thing, according to Plato, is made easier, better and in greater quantity, "if you do one work in accordance with your natural inclinations, and moreover on time, without being distracted by other work" (State II 370c). This point of view, which Marx calls "the point of view of use value" (K. Marx, F. Op. Vol. 23, p. 378), leads Plato to the fact that in the division of labor he sees not only "the basis for the disintegration of society into estates", but also "the basic principle of the structure of the state" (ibid. P. 379). According to Marx, the source of such an understanding of the state could have become for Plato his observations of the social system and the state structure of his contemporary Egypt; in the words of Marx, Plato's republic in essence "is only the Athenian idealization of the Egyptian caste system; Egypt and for other authors, Plato's contemporaries ... was a model of an industrial country ..." (ibid.).

In accordance with the above, the rational structure of a perfect state, according to Plato, should be based primarily on needs: the state is created, Plato explains, as you can see, our needs (II 369c). The enumeration of needs proves that numerous branches of the social division of labor must exist in the city-state. There should be not only workers who procure food supplies, builders of dwellings, manufacturers of clothing, but also workers who make for all these specialists the tools and implements of their labor necessary for them. In addition to them, specialized manufacturers of all kinds of auxiliary work are also needed. Such are, for example, the pastoralists: they, first, deliver the means of transporting people and goods; secondly, wool and leather are mined. The need to import necessary products and other goods from other countries and cities requires production surplus to trade them, as well as to increase the number of workers who manufacture goods. In turn, developed trade requires special activities intermediaries for buying and selling, for import and export. Thus, to the already considered categories of the social division of labor, an extensive category is added. merchants, or merchants. However, the complication of specialization is not limited to this either: sea trade gives rise to the need for various categories of persons participating in their activities and labor in transportation. Trade, exchange of goods and products is necessary for the state not only for external relations. They are also necessary due to the division of labor between citizens within the state. From this need, Plato deduces the need market and minting lunettes as units of exchange. The emergence of the market, in turn, gives rise to a new class of specialists in market operations: small traders and intermediaries, buyers and resellers. For the full implementation of the economic life of the state, Plato also considers a special category of service hired workers, selling their labor for a fee. Such "mercenaries" Plato calls people who "sell out their strength and call a salary the price for this hiring" (II 371e).

The listed categories of specialized social labor exhaust the workers who produce things and products necessary for the state, or in one way or another contribute to this production and the realization of consumer values ​​generated by it. it lower class(or discharge) citizens in the hierarchy of the state. Above him are Plato upper classes of warriors("guards") and rulers. Plato singles them out as a special branch of the social division of labor. The need for them is due to the need for specialists, which is very important for society. military affairs. Highlighting them as well rulers in a special category in the system of division of labor is necessary, according to Plato, not only because of the importance of this profession for the state, but also because of its special difficulty, which requires special education, technical skills, and special knowledge. In the transition from the class of workers of productive labor to the class of warrior-guards and especially to the class of rulers, it is striking that Plato changes the principle of division. He characterizes the differences between certain types of the class of producing workers according to the differences in their professional functions. Apparently, he believes that with regard to moral hell, all these species are on the same level: farmers, artisans, and merchants. Warrior-guards and rulers are another matter. For them, the need to separate from the groups of workers serving the farm is no longer justified by their professional features, and their moral qualities. Namely, the moral traits of farm workers Plato puts below the moral qualities of the warriors-guards and especially below the moral qualities of the third and highest class of citizens - the class rulers states (they are philosophers). However, the moral discrimination of workers employed in the economy is mitigated by Plato's clause, according to which in a perfect state all three categories of its citizens are equally necessary for the state and all, taken together, are great and beautiful.

But Plato also has another reservation that softens the harshness and arrogance of the aristocratic point of view on labor. This reservation consists in the recognition that there is no necessary, immutable connection between origin from a particular class and moral properties and virtues: people endowed with higher moral inclinations can be born in a lower social class, and, conversely, those born of citizens of both upper classes can to be with low souls. The possibility of such a discrepancy threatens the harmony of the state system. Therefore, among the duties of the class of rulers of the state, according to Plato, is the duty to investigate and determine the moral inclinations of children born in all classes, and also to distribute them among the three classes of free citizens in accordance with these innate inclinations. If in the soul of the newly born, Plato teaches, there will be "copper" or "iron", then, in whatever class he was born, he should be driven without any regret to the farmers and artisans. But if a child is born to parents-craftsmen (or farmers) with an admixture of "gold" or "silver", then, depending on the merits in his soul, the newly born should be ranked among the class of philosopher rulers or the class of warrior-guards.

Plato is a philosopher of the aristocratic-minded part of the ancient Greek slave society. That is why it is typical for him consumer look at productive work. In turn, this view leads Plato to a striking gap in his analysis of the question of the state. For Plato, it seemed necessary and important to distinguish with a sharp line the higher ranks of citizens - warriors and rulers - from the lower ranks - workers of productive labor. Having shown that for the emergence of the state, a clear division of labor into specialized sectors is necessary, Plato does not delve into the question of how the workers of this specialized labor should be prepared for the perfect and useful performance of their duties and tasks for the whole society. All his attention and all interest is focused on the education of the guardian warriors and on determining the appropriate conditions for their activities and way of life. The lack of interest in the study of the conditions necessary for the education of perfection in the activities of workers of specialized labor did not prevent, however, Plato from sufficiently fully characterizing the structure of the division of this labor itself. This happened due to the importance that Plato attached to the principle of the division of labor, i.e. the strict fulfillment by each category of workers of one - and only one - function assigned to it in the economy.

Labor as such does not interest Plato. The main task of Plato's treatise on the state is to answer the question about the good and perfect life of society as a whole. What an individual gains (or loses) as a result of division, or specialization necessary for an entire society, Plato does not at all care about. Personalities with its unique fate, with its need for many-sided activity, Plato does not know and does not want to know. His attention is directed only to the state and society as a whole. Plato does not even think about the negative results of the rigid division of social labor for an individual - a question that in modern times, in the era of the development of capitalist society, will begin to occupy the thought of Rousseau, Schiller and many others. The problem of "alienation" of a person cannot arise in the minds of a thinker belonging to the upper class of the ancient slave-owning society.

The most perfect state in its structure and therefore a good state possesses, according to Plato, four main virtues. These are 1) wisdom, 2) courage, 3) prudence and 4) justice. Under wisdom Plato understands not any technical skill or ordinary knowledge, but higher knowledge, or the ability to give good advice on questions about the state as a whole - about the way of directing and conducting its internal affairs and about guiding it in its external relations. Such knowledge is protective, and the rulers possessing this knowledge are "perfect guards". Wisdom is a virtue that belongs not to a multitude of artisans, but to a very few citizens who make up a special estate, or class, in the state - the class of philosophers; in the closest way, it is not so much even a specialty in government as the contemplation of the heavenly realm of higher, eternal and perfect ideas, in other words, virtue is fundamentally moral (IV 428b - 429a). Only philosophers can be rulers, and only under the rulers-philosophers the state can prosper and will not know the evil existing in it at the present time. "Until philosophers reign in states," says Plato, or the so-called current kings and masters do not begin to philosophize nobly and thoroughly, and this does not merge into one - state power and philosophy ..., states cannot get rid of evils "(V 473d) ... But to achieve prosperity, rulers must not be imaginary, but true philosophers; by them Plato means only those who "love to see the truth" (V 475e).

The second virtue of the best state in terms of structure is courage. Just like wisdom, it is characteristic of a small circle of citizens, although in comparison with the wise there are more such citizens. At the same time, Plato gives an important explanation: for the state, for example, to be wise, it is not at all required, he says, that all without exception, its members. The same is with courage: in order to characterize the state as possessing the virtue of courage, it is enough that the state has at least some part of the citizens who are able to constantly keep in themselves the correct and legal opinion about what is scary and what is not (see IV 429a - 430c; 428e).

The third virtue of a perfect state is prudence. In contrast to wisdom and courage, discretion is a quality no longer of a special class, but belongs to to all members of the best state. Where this virtue is present all members of society recognize the law adopted in a perfect state and the government existing in this state, which restrains the bad impulses of individuals. Prudence leads to harmonious agreement between the best sides of a person and curbs the worst (see IV 430d - 432a).

The fourth virtue of a perfect state is Justice. Its presence in the state is prepared and conditioned by prudence. It is thanks to justice that every estate (class) in the state and every individual citizen, endowed with a certain ability, receive a special, and moreover, only one, task for execution and implementation. "We have established ... - says Plato, - that each individual person must do something one of what is needed in the state, and moreover exactly what he, by his natural inclinations, is most capable of" (IV 433a) ... This is justice (see IV 433b). In the Platonic sense justice got a vivid expression class point of view - social and political aristocracy, refracted through the prism of ideas about the Egyptian caste social system, about the stability of caste attachment. With all his might, Plato wants to protect his perfect state from the confusion of the classes that make up it, from the fulfillment by citizens of one class of the duties and functions of citizens of other classes. He directly characterizes justice as a virtue that does not allow this kind of confusion. The least trouble would be, according to Plato, if the confusion of functions took place only within the lower class - the class of workers in productive labor: if, for example, a carpenter would do the work of a shoemaker, and a shoemaker - the work of a carpenter, or if one of them wants to do both and other. But it would be, according to Plato, completely disastrous for the state, if, for example, any artisan, proud of his wealth or power, would like to engage in military affairs, and a warrior, who is not able to be an advisor and leader of the state, would encroach on the function of government or if anyone wanted to do all these things at the same time (see IV 434ab). Even in the presence of the first three types of virtue, doing too much and the mutual exchange of special occupations cause the greatest harm to the state and therefore can rightfully be considered a "supreme crime" against their own state (IV 434c).

But Plato's state is not the only sphere of manifestation of justice. Above, at the beginning, it was indicated that Plato is trying to establish correspondences that seem to exist between different areas of being. For him, the state - macrocosm. It corresponds to microworld- each individual person, in particular his soul. According to Plato, in the human soul there exist and require a harmonious combination three element: 1) start reasonable, 2) start affective (violent) and 3) start unreasonable (lustful)- "friend of satisfaction and pleasure". This classification of the elements of the soul gives Plato the opportunity to develop the doctrine of the existence of correspondences between the three categories of citizens of the state and the three constituent parts, or principles, of the soul.

In a perfect state, the three categories of its citizens - the rulers-philosophers, the guards-warriors and workers of productive labor - constitute a harmonious whole under the control of the most reasonable class. But the same happens in the soul of the individual. If each of the three constituent parts of the soul performs its work under the control of an intelligent principle, then the harmony of the soul will not be disturbed. With such a harmonious structure of the soul reasonable the beginning will dominate, affective- to fulfill the duties of protection, and longing- to obey and tame their evil tendencies (see IV 442a). A person is protected from evil deeds and injustice precisely by the fact that in his soul each part of it performs only one function intended for it in the matter of both domination and subordination.

However, Plato does not consider the outlined project of the best organization of society and the state to be suitable for of all peoples. It is feasible only for Hellenes. For the peoples surrounding Hellas, it is inapplicable due to their alleged complete inability to organize a social order based on the principles of reason. This is the "barbaric" world in the original sense of the word, meaning everything non-greek peoples regardless of the degree of their civilization and political structure. According to Plato, the difference between the Hellenes and "barbarians" is so significant that even the norms of waging war will be different, depending on whether the war is between Greek tribes and states or between Greeks and "barbarians". In the first case, the principles of philanthropy must be strictly observed and the sale or delivery of prisoners into slavery is not allowed; in the second, the war is waged with all ruthlessness, and the defeated and captured are turned into slaves. In the first case of armed struggle, the term “discord” (στάσις) is suitable for it, in the second - “war” (πόλεμος). Therefore, Plato concludes, when the Greeks fight the "barbarians" and the "barbarians" with the Hellenes, we will call them enemies. by nature and such enmity should be called war; when the Greeks do something similar against the Hellenes, we will say that by nature they are friends, only in this case Hellas is sick and in discord, and such enmity should be called discord.

In Plato's utopia, as, incidentally, in any utopia, not only are the philosopher's ideas about the perfect ("ideal") state order desired for him expressed: it also captures the real features of a real ancient polis. These devils are far from the perfect state outlined by the philosopher. Through the outlines of the harmony drawn in Plato's fantasy between specialized economic work and the discharge of higher duties, government and military, involving a higher mental development, the opposition of the upper and lower classes of ancient slave society, gleaned from actual observations, clearly emerges. Thus, the state, depicted as "ideal", strays into the condemned by Plato himself negative a type of society driven by material interests and divided into classes hostile to each other. The essence of this hostility and this division does not change because for his fictional exemplary state, Plato posits complete unity of mind among his classes and citizens. He substantiates this postulate by referring to the origin of all people from a common mother - the earth. That is why warriors must consider all other citizens as their brothers. In fact, however, the workers of economic labor referred to as "brothers" are treated by Plato as people inferior breed. If they too should be guarded by the guards of the state, it is not at all for their own sake, but solely so that they can, without prejudice and without hindrance, perform their duties and work necessary for the state as a whole.

But the distinction between the lowest and highest ranks of citizens of the state goes even further. The estates of the guard-warriors and the rulers-philosophers not only fulfill their functions, which distinguish them from the class of farm workers. As employed in administration and military affairs, philosophers dominate, demand obedience and do not mix with the managed. They get the warriors-guards to help them, like dogs help shepherds, to graze the "herd" of farm workers. The rulers have a vigilant concern - to ensure that the warriors do not turn into wolves, attacking and devouring sheep. The isolation of the caste classes of the Platonic imaginary state is reflected even in the external conditions of their existence. So, the guard-warriors should not live in places where artisans, workers of productive labor live. The seat of the soldiers is a camp located in such a way that, acting from it, it would be convenient to return the rebels against the established order to obedience, as well as to easily repel an enemy attack. Warriors are not only citizens, or members of a special class in the state, capable of performing their special function in society. They are endowed with the ability to improve in their work, to rise to a higher level of moral virtue. Some of them may, after the necessary education and sufficient training, move to the upper class of rulers-philosophers. But for this, just as for the perfect fulfillment of their duties by soldiers, correct education is not enough. People are imperfect creatures, subject to temptation, temptations and all kinds of corruption. Avoiding these dangers requires a specific, firmly established and enforced regimen. Only philosopher rulers can define, indicate and prescribe it.

All these considerations determine the attention that Plato pays to the question of the way of life of people in a perfect state, and above all about the way and routine of life. guard warriors. The appearance of the state projected by Plato depends in the closest way on the nature and results of their upbringing and on the way of their external existence. In the developed Platonic project-utopia, moral principle. Moreover, in the theory of Plato's state, morality corresponds not only to philosophical idealism Plato's system: being idealistic, it also turns out to be ascetic.

Already from research negative types of state - timocracy, oligarchy, democracy and tyranny - Plato drew an idealistic conclusion that the main reason for the deterioration of human societies and state structures in domination selfish interests, in their influence on the behavior of people. Therefore, the organizers of the best state (that is, the rulers-philosophers) must take care not only of the correct education of the guard-warriors. In addition, they must establish an order in the state in which the very structure of community life and the very rights to property benefits could not become an obstacle either to the high morality of the soldiers, or to the performance of their military service, or to their proper attitude towards their people and others. estates of society. The main feature of this order is the deprivation of soldiers of the right to their own property. Soldiers have the right to use only what is minimally necessary for life, for health and for the best performance of their functions in the state. They can have neither their own dwelling place, nor property, nor places to store property or valuables. Everything that soldiers need to meet the minimum needs of life and to fulfill their duties, they must receive from the workers of productive labor who manufacture products, tools and household items, moreover, in an amount that is not too small and not too large. The food for the warriors takes place exclusively in the common canteens. The entire routine, the entire charter and all the living conditions of the guard-warriors are aimed at protecting them from the destructive influence of personal property, and primarily from the evil, pernicious influence of money and gold. Plato is convinced that if the guard-warriors embarked on money-grubbing, in the acquisition of money and valuables, they could no longer fulfill their duty to protect the citizens of the state, they would turn into farmers and masters hostile to other citizens.

Plato's original view of the role women in the protection of the state. According to Plato, not only men, but also women are capable of the functions of warrior-guards, if only they had the necessary inclinations to perform these functions and if only women received the necessary education. For the defender of the state, claims

Plato, gender is just as irrelevant as it does not matter which shoemaker - bald or curly - sews boots (see V 454bc). But, having embarked on the path of preparation for the function of guards, women must, on an equal basis with men, undergo all the necessary training and share all the hardships of their vocation on an equal basis with them. Natural properties are the same "in living beings of both sexes, and by their nature, both woman and man can take part in all affairs, but a woman is in everything weaker than a man" (V 455d). But in this weakness it is impossible, according to Plato, to see the basis for "entrusting everything to men, and women - nothing" (V, 455e). Consequently, in relation to the protection of the state, men and women have the same natural inclinations, only they are less pronounced in women, and stronger in men (see V 456a). From the ability of women, along with men, to be in the estate, or class, of the guards, Plato deduces that for male guards, it is precisely the female guards that will be the best wives. Due to the constant meetings of male guards and female guards for general gymnastic and military exercises, as well as meetings at common meals between men and women, a completely natural mutual attraction will constantly arise. In a military camp, which turns out to be the model state of Plato, it is not a family in the former sense that is possible, but only a transient union of a man with a woman for the birth of children. In a sense, this is also a marriage, but a kind, not capable of leading to the formation of an ordinary family. In Plato's state, these marriages, secretly from the spouses themselves, are prepared and directed by the rulers of the state, who strive to combine the best with the best, and the worst with the worst. As soon as women give birth to children, babies are taken from their mothers and handed over to the discretion of the rulers, who send the best of the newborns to the nurses, and the worst - the defective - are doomed to death in a secret place (the example for Plato here was the customs that existed in Sparta). After some time, young mothers are allowed to feed their babies, but at this time they no longer know which children were born by them and which ones by other women. All male guardians are considered the fathers of all children, and all female guardians are the common wives of all male guardians (see V 460c - 461e).

In Plato's doctrine of the state, the postulate of the community of wives and children plays an extremely important role. For Plato, the implementation of this postulate means the achievement of the highest form unity citizens of the state. The community of wives and children in the class of state guards completes what was begun by the community of property, and therefore there is a reason for its highest good for the state: "Could there be, in our opinion, a greater evil for the state than that which leads to the loss of its unity and disintegration into many parts? And can there be more good than that which binds and promotes its unity? " (V 462ab). Any difference of feelings in citizens destroys the unity of the state. This happens when in the state some say: "This is mine", while others: "This is not mine" (see V 462c). On the contrary, in a perfect state, most people in relation to one and the same say in the same way: "This is mine", and in another case: "This is not mine" (ibid.). The common property, the absence of personal property, the impossibility of its emergence, preservation and increase make it impossible for the emergence of judicial property disputes and litigations, as well as mutual accusations, while in the existing Greek state all discord is usually generated by disputes over property, due to children and relatives. In turn, the absence of strife within the warrior-guard class will make it impossible both for strife within the lower class of artisans and their rebellion against both upper classes.

At the end of the description of the state he was designing, Plato in the most rosy colors depicts the blessed life of the estates of this state, especially the warrior-guards. Their lives are more beautiful than the lives of Olympic winners. The content that they receive as payment for their labors and activities for the protection of the state is given to themselves and their children. Revered by all while still alive, they are honored with an honorable burial after death.

The "state" is a utopia that arose in the ancient slave-owning society as an attempt to overcome (of course, only in thought, in the imagination) its obvious shortcomings and difficulties. But the greatest contradiction and the greatest difficulty of this society was the question of slaves and slavery. How is this question solved by Plato? Where did slaves and slavery relationships find their place in Plato's portrayal of the exemplary state?

The answer to this question may seem startling at first glance. The draft "State" does not envisage the class of slaves as one of the main classes of an exemplary state, it is not indicated, it is not named. There are only a few, rare mentions of slaves in the text of the "State", and they are made somehow in passing, dull and indistinct. Political order and living conditions are discussed only free citizens of the state. For Plato's imaginary state, the existence and labor of slaves is not an indispensable condition. It is maintained by the productive labor of artisans. However, the "State" here and there speaks of the right to turn the defeated in the war into slaves. But this right is limited: only "barbarians" taken prisoner during their war against the Greeks (Hellenes) are allowed to be turned into slaves. On the contrary, the conversion into slavery of the Greeks in the war that the Greeks are waging against the Greeks, as we said above, is prohibited. The insignificance of slavery in the utopia of the "State" is emphasized by one more circumstance. Because the only one, According to the "State", the source of slavery permissible in the state is the enslavement of prisoners of war from the "barbarians", then the number of slaves should obviously depend on the intensity and frequency of wars waged by the state. But, according to Plato, war is evil, and in a well-organized state this evil should be avoided. "All wars," says Plato in Phaedo, "are kindled for the sake of acquiring property" (Phaedo 66c). Only such a society, which wants to live in luxury, soon becomes cramped on its land, and it is forced to strive for the violent seizure of land from its neighbors. And only to protect the state from violence from people inflamed with a passion for material acquisitions, it has to keep a large and well-trained army.

Apparently, later Plato's view of slavery changed. At least in "Laws" - the last work of Plato, written in extreme old age - in contrast to "State" the productive economic activity necessary for the existence of the polis is assigned to slaves or foreigners. But in the "Laws" Plato asserts that the organizer of a perfect state and its legislator should not establish laws concerning peace "for the sake of military action", but, on the contrary, "laws concerning war, for the sake of peace" (628e).

For all the utopianism of the project developed in Plato's "State", it bears a glimpse of the time when Athens coveted the right to a leading role among the Greek city-states.

In Plato's "State" there are a number of features and teachings that at first glance may seem close to the modern theories of socialism and communism. This is the denial of personal property for the class of guard-warriors, the organization of their hostel, supply and nutrition, a sharp criticism of the passion for acquiring and accumulating money, gold and valuables in general, as well as trade and commercial speculation, the idea of ​​the need for an indestructible unity of society, complete unanimity of all of its members and education in citizens of moral qualities that can lead them to this unity and like-mindedness, etc. Considering these features, some foreign historians of ancient society and ancient social thought began to assert that the project of a perfect society outlined by Plato in the "State" is a theory that really coincides with the teachings and tendencies of modern socialism and communism. Such, for example, are the views of Robert von Pöllmann.

Historians of socialism like Pölmann do not simply characterize Plato's teachings as a kind of (ancient) form of socialist utopia. Pöhlmann draws far-reaching parallels between Plato's theory and the theories of socialism and communism of the utopian socialists of modern times, and even the theory of Marx. Here is one of those parallels. "As the latest socialist criticism of interest on capital," writes Pölman, "he contrasts the so-called theory of productivity with the theory of exploitation, according to which a part of society - the capitalists - appropriates, like drones, a part of the value of the product, the only producer of which is another part of society - the workers, exactly in the same way, ancient socialism - at least in relation to money capital and interest on loans - opposes the productivity of capital with the concept operation "(Robert von Pöhlmann. Geschichte der sozialen Frage und des Sozialismus in der antiken Welt. Bd I. 3. Aufl. München, 1925, S. 479). Pölman emphasizes that the whole tendency of Plato's (and not only Plato's) attacks on the monetary system, on intermediary trade and free competition, aversion to the development of society in the direction of a monetary oligarchy, as well as aversion to the concentration of property and values ​​coincide with the main anti-capitalist views of the modern socialism. And in a footnote on the same page, Pölmann brings together Plato's attacks on money-grubbing and trade with the views of not only the utopian Charles Fourier, but even Marx: "In the same way, Marx talks about the modern world of profit."

However, Plato's ascription of the theory of socialism and communism, which is similar, if not with the theory of Marxism, then at least with the theories of utopian socialism of modern times, is erroneous theoretically, since it is incorrect from a historical point of view, and in its political tendency, moreover, it is completely reactionary. Theoretically and historically, it is erroneous primarily for the following reasons. Unlike all utopias, including the ancient ones, the Marxist theory of socialism and communism deduces the necessity and inevitability of the onset of the era of socialism and communism not from abstract ideas about the best and perfect structure of society, but only from precisely defined historical conditions in the development of the material mode of production and related social relations. The social basis of socialism is the working class, the producing class of a highly developed industrial society. There is nothing of the kind (and, of course, could not have been) in Plato's theory of "communism". The social structure depicted in Plato's utopia is not at all conditioned by the relations of material production. That. what Pölmann calls Platonic communism is communism of consumption, and not production: the upper classes of the Platonic state - the rulers-philosophers and the guard-warriors - live a common life, eat together, etc., but produce nothing; they only consume what the people of the lower class, ruled by philosophers, produce - artisans, in whose hands are the tools of labor.

In this regard, Plato is not at all interested in questions of the structure of life and the working conditions of the producing class - neither artisans, let alone slaves, about whom, as we have already said, in the "State" there is almost no speech at all; finally, Plato is not interested in questions of the life of this class and its moral and intellectual condition. Plato leaves the property belonging to the employees and only stipulates the use of this property. He limits it to conditions that are not dictated at all by concern for the life and well-being of slaves and artisans, but only by considerations of what is required for a good and sufficient production of everything necessary for the two upper classes of the state. These conditions are formulated only in general form, without details and development. First, about which we have already spoken, is that labor should be divided and that the functions of each worker, as well as each class, should be limited to one kind of labor. This is the kind to which the worker is most capable of his natural inclinations, his upbringing, his training and education. This type of labor is not determined by the worker himself, but is indicated and prescribed to him by the philosophers - the rulers of the state. Second the condition is to eliminate from the life of workers the main, according to Plato, sources of moral damage - wealth and poverty. The rich artisans cease to care about their work, the poor themselves are not able to work well due to the lack of the necessary tools and cannot teach their students the work well (State IV 421de). Third the condition is perfect obedience. It is determined by the entire structure of the employee's convictions and directly follows from the basic virtue for him - prudence.

It is not surprising, after what has been said, that Plato's attitude to work itself as such is not only indifferent, but even dismissive. The inevitability of productive labor for the existence and well-being of society does not make this work attractive or worthy of veneration in Plato's eyes. Labor has a degrading effect on the soul. After all, productive labor is the lot of those with scarce ability and no better choice. In the third book of "States" there is a discourse (see 396ab), where Plato places blacksmiths, artisans, carriers on oared ships and their leaders next to "bad people" - drunkards, madmen and obscenely behaving themselves. All such people, according to Plato, not only should not be imitated, but also should not be paid attention to (ibid., 396b).

Neglecting the most important features of Plato's utopia, Robert Pöhlman comes to the assertion that Plato seeks to extend the principles of the communist order also to the productive - lower - class of his state. From the fact that philosopher rulers govern everything in the state and direct everything for the good of the whole, Pölman draws an unreasonable conclusion that the activities of rulers extend to the entire labor schedule of an ideal state. But this is absolutely not the case. The leadership of the Platonic rulers is limited only to the requirement that each worker do his job. Plato is out of the question of any socialization of the means of production. What Pölmann irresponsibly calls Plato's communism presupposes the complete self-elimination of both upper classes of the state from participation in economic life: the members of these classes are completely absorbed in the issues of protecting the state from revolution and external attack, as well as the higher tasks and functions of government. In relation to the lower class of the Platonic state, one cannot even speak of consumer communism. "Sissitii" (general meals) are provided for the upper classes only. And if in the "State" the productive class turns out to be not slaves (as in the "Laws"), then this is explained, as K. Hildenbrand rightly noted in his time, solely by the fact that the rulers should not have personal property, and not at all by Plato's concern for so that a person cannot become someone else's property (Hildenbrand K. Geschichte und System der Rechts und Staatsphilosophie. Bd I. Leipzig, 1860. S. 137). The "communism" of Plato's utopia is the myth of an anti-historically thinking historian. But this myth, moreover, reactionary fabrication. Its reactionary essence consists in the assertion that communism is not a doctrine reflecting the modern and most progressive form of the development of society, but a doctrine that is ancient, like antiquity itself, and, in addition, refuted as if by life even during its inception. Even the statement of Eduard Zeller, who mistakenly believed that Plato's utopia is not visible no thoughts and no caring for the lower class of workers is closer to understanding the true tendencies of the "State" than Pölman's fabrications. And already quite close to the truth was Theodor Gompertz, who pointed out in his famous work "Griechische Denker" that the attitude of the Platonic class of workers to the class of philosophers-rulers is very similar to the attitude of slaves to masters.

Indeed, the shadow of ancient slavery fell on the ever-large canvas on which Plato depicted the arrangement of his best state. In Plato's polis, not only do workers resemble slaves, but members of the two upper classes do not know complete and true freedom. For Plato, the subject of freedom and the highest perfection turns out to be not an individual person or even a class, but only the entire society, the entire state as a whole. Plato's utopia is not a theory individual freedom of citizens, and theory total freedom - freedom of the state in its totality, integrity, indivisibility. According to the correct observation of F.Yu. Stahl, Plato "sacrifices a person to his state, his happiness, his freedom and even his moral perfection ... this state exists for itself, for its external splendor: as for a citizen, its purpose only to contribute to the beauty of this state in the role of an official member "( Stahl F.Ju. Die Philosophie des Rechts. Bd I. Geschichte der Rechtsphilosophie. 5 Aufl. Tübingen, 1879, S. 17). And Hegel was right when he pointed out that in the "State" of Plato, all the aspects in which the singularity as such asserts itself, dissolve in the universal - all are recognized only as universal people " (Hegel. Op. T. 10. Lectures on the history of philosophy. Book two. M., 1932.S. 217). Plato himself speaks of the same in the most clear way: "... the law sets as its goal not the welfare of one particular stratum of the population, but the welfare of the entire state. Either by conviction, now by force, it ensures the cohesion of all citizens ... It includes outstanding people in the state is not in order to give them the opportunity to evade wherever anyone wants, but to use them to strengthen the state "(VII 519e - 520a).

Developing the question of the education of warrior guards and philosopher rulers, Plato considers not only positive the principles of this upbringing. He also carefully considers the measures necessary to eliminate possible negative influences and influences on them. Concern about the elimination of negative influences and obstacles leads Plato to a broad consideration of the question of art and about artistic education. The attention that Plato pays to this issue is not surprising. It feeds on various sources. The first of them is the meaning that in Ancient Greece, and especially in Athens of the heyday, i.e. in the 5th century, acquired art and its educational effect on society. During this time, Greek society lived under the ever-expanding and growing influence of epic and lyric poetry, theater, and music. The donation of theater tickets - one of the most important achievements of democracy - made this art accessible to a wide range of demos. Theatrical performances attracted, delighted and deeply influenced the minds, feelings and imaginations of the audience. Aristophanes in his "Frogs" left us with a vivid image of passionate interest and serious competence with which the Attic spectator discussed the merits and demerits of theatrical works presented on the Athenian stage. Aristophanes' focus is on the educational power and direction of dramatic works. Plato devoted extensive research to this issue in the second and tenth books of The State. Like Aristophanes, he brings into the discussion of the issue not only the interest of a theoretician, sociologist and politician, but also all the passion of an artist, an outstanding writer, a master of the dialogic genre.

Here is the second source of interest and close attention of Plato to the question of art. Plato is not only a genius philosopher, he is also a genius artist. His works belong not only to the history of ancient philosophy, the history of ancient science, but also to the history of ancient literature. Dialogues such as Phaedrus, Feast, Protagoras are masterpieces of ancient Greek fiction. Plato's retellings of philosophical conversations turn into dramatic scenes, into vivid artistic depictions of the seething intellectual life of Athens; the dialogue in them is inseparable from the artistic characteristics of its participants. Communicating in them and arguing Socrates, his students, sophists, orators, poets are endowed, like their living prototypes, with bright characters, habits, and peculiarities of language. Therefore, there is nothing surprising or paradoxical in the fact that art is an important theme of the "State". Her central question is the question of aesthetic pedagogy. Plato's judgments on this issue are very interesting. Despite all the "enormous distance" that separates our modern society from the ancient city-state of Plato's epoch, there is a moment in his teaching that retains its significance to this day. Plato's shrewd mind revealed to him the truth of paramount importance: in art there is a powerful force that educates a person. Acting on the structure of feelings, art acts on behavior. Depending on what this action will be, art contributes to the education of either civil - military, political - virtues, or, on the contrary, vices. It either strengthens in people experiencing its spell such qualities as courage, courage, discipline, obedience to elders, restraint, endurance, or, on the contrary, acts in a relaxing way, condones the development of cowardice, weakness, relaxation and licentiousness of all kinds.

Therefore, the rulers of a perfect state cannot be indifferent to the fact that which art exists and develops in the city-state, which direction and with what result it affects its citizens. The rulers-philosophers of the Platonic polis not only keep art in the field of their vigilant attention, they exercise strict and uncompromising tutelage, control over everything that has social significance in art. The educational action of art requires this constant and unremitting control by the rulers. They must protect citizens from the possible harmful influence of bad works of art, they can only admit to the state works that agree with the correct, highly moral principles. Art should serve the tasks of civic education, the goals of art policy coincide with the goals of state pedagogy. However, in substantiating this idea, Plato makes an eminently important clarification that limits the power and competence of the state guardianship over art. According to this explanation, the state's tutelage over art can only be negative. This means that the state does not have the right to interfere and does not delve into the question of what methods, techniques, methods should be used to create a work of art. The government does not teach and is not called upon to teach the artist the method of creativity. She judges not about this method, but only about what the effect of this method is, what is the influence of the work already created by the artist on the structure of feelings, the way of thinking and the behavior of those who perceive his work. The question of the quality of a work of art as a work of art, its aesthetic merits, the strength of its artistic action, Plato proposes to strictly distinguish it from the question of the result of its action, its educational power and the direction of this force.

Plato was far from thinking that an immoral work must thus necessarily be bad, weak, untenable, and like a work of art. The educational and artistic merit of a work may coincide, but they may diverge far: a work that is bad in its moral effect can be excellent in its artistic performance. Such, according to Plato, are the works of Homer, the works of the great tragedians Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides. As artists, all these poets are excellent. The art with which they paint what they depict makes the images of gods and heroes created by them embedded in the souls of spectators, listeners, readers with a truly conquering power. They make one believe that the gods are in their moral qualities exactly what Homer portrayed them: full of all sorts of weaknesses, shortcomings and even direct moral vices. At the same time, poetic images of the gods are deceitful, do not correspond to the virtue and perfection of the gods and are harmful in their influence on the morality of those who perceive. It is the possibility of a discrepancy between the moral effect of a work and its artistic appeal that makes, according to Plato, inexorable control over art absolutely inevitable. This control is based on observations of the moral influence of art. The more captivating and fascinating the work, the more dangerous it is for the state if it turns out that its images are false, and its moral influence is pernicious and contradicts the tasks of education.

So, the rulers of the state consider the works submitted to their court - lyrical and dramatic - according to two signs: on degree of truth available images and software the result of their actions to listeners or viewers. Question about truth images Plato decides on the basis of his philosophical teachings about knowledge and about the relationship of art to knowledge. True knowledge can be, according to Plato, only the knowledge of the transcendent ideas. Ideas are supersensible reasons. They are intelligible, inaccessible sensory perception or opinion. They cannot be adequately comprehended in images that are always imperfect, far from authenticity. However, art is not even directed at the ideas themselves. In art, it is not the supersensible true causes, or prototypes, of things that are depicted, but the individual things of the sensible world generated by them. Art is imitation, but it does not imitate the ideas themselves, but only things which, in relation to ideas, are imitations. In short, works of art are imitation imitation, display display.

This teaching determines the Platonic assessment of artistic images. Ontology and the theory of knowledge of Plato define and admit only one assessment of artistic images, and this assessment can only be negative. Plato - denier, critic, persecutor of all fine arts. Images of art, according to Plato, are not able to reflect the truth itself. Fine art is not an area reality, but only deceptive visibility. Already sensual things, the images of which are works of art, are not reality itself, but only its semblance. The images of art - imitations of imitations - are even further removed from reality. Therefore, in its very essence, the visual arts are deceitful. The artist only pretends that he knows how things made by artisans are created and should be created, in fact even artisans do not know this, only those who use these things know. What the best flute should be is not known to the instrumental master who makes the flute, only the musician who plays the flute knows this. And in the same way, the artist only pretends to know the art of a commander and the art of warriors when he depicts a battle, or the art of sailing when he depicts a helmsman. And this is the case with all art, with all craft. Poets instill illusions, not truths. "The one who creates ghosts, the imitator, as we assert, does not at all understand the true being, but knows only one appearance" (X 601b).

Images of art are especially harmful when artists and poets try to paint gods. While in reality the gods are models and should always remain models of virtue and all kinds of perfection in the images of art, they appear as cunning, evil, vindictive, vindictive, insidious, treacherous, licentious and deceitful creatures. Whoever looks into their images, painted by epic or tragic poets, and is imbued with their inspiring power, moves away from true worship. That is why, in a perfect state, the works of poets are subject to the strictest assessment and selection. "First of all ... - says Plato, - we must look after the creators of myths: if their work is good, we will allow it, but if not, we will reject it. We will persuade educators and mothers to tell children only recognized myths in order to form the souls of children with their help. rather than their bodies - with their hands "(II 377c). For it is impossible to allow “children to listen, I perceived with my soul whatever fictional myths were made up, for the most part, contradicting the opinions that we think they should have when they grow up” (II 377b). Most of all, it is necessary to strive "so that the first myths heard by children are in the most solicitous way directed towards virtue" (II 378f).

In putting forward these "protective" and negative principles of control, Plato, as already mentioned, carefully avoids any positive recommendations regarding the desired creative method in art. When Adimant, one of Socrates' interlocutors in the "State", tries to find out exactly what the legends allowed in his policy should be, Socrates replies: "Adimant ... you and I are not poets now, but founders of the state. It is not the business of the founders to create themselves. myths, it is enough for them to know what the main features of poetic creativity should be, and not to allow their distortion "(II 379a).

In relation to the works of the non-visual arts - lyric poetry and music - the task of the rulers of a perfect state is no longer in indiscriminate denial or non-admission of these works, but in the production of a strict and firm selection among them. This selection should be carried out from the point of view of influencing feelings in the direction of the development of virtues - courage, fortitude, self-control and fortitude, endurance in suffering, readiness to fulfill military and civic duty. As for the visual arts, if the works of epic poetry are for the most part unacceptable due to the fact that their images are false, far from the actual nature of what is depicted, distant from the truth, then bad works of tragic art are harmful in their effect on the structure of feelings and behavior. Tragic poets depict people undergoing great suffering, experiencing sorrow. At the same time, the best of these poets portray the suffering of their tragic heroes in such a way that the listeners, contemplating what is happening on the stage, themselves experience great suffering, become infected with it. This compassion, involvement in the tragic hero's disasters gives the audience pleasure. And if the work has such an effect, then it is considered good. The experiences of others are inevitably infectious to us. But if at the same time strong pity develops, then it is not easy to refrain from it even with one's own suffering. Meanwhile, virtue commands us in all such cases to restrain ourselves, to show complete self-control. Therefore, Plato rejects the pleasure that artistic portrayal of the suffering of tragic heroes derives from. “In this case,” he says, “the origin of our soul, which, with our own misfortunes, we with all our strength we restrain with all our might, feels pleasure and is satisfied by the poets” (X 606a). This beginning "longs to cry, to grieve at will and to get enough of it - such are its natural aspirations. The best side of our soul ... then weakens its supervision over this crying beginning and, at the sight of other people's passions, believes that it does not disgrace it in the least when the other person, although he claims to be a virtue, nevertheless expresses his grief in an inappropriate manner "(X 606ab).

This is the case with tragic images and their effect on the audience. But the situation is no different with comedy. A person who, in everyday life, would be ashamed to make people laugh for fear of being branded as a jester, hears such things with great pleasure at a comedy performance in the theater.

The area of ​​the senses to which the action of art extends is very wide. Love joys, passion, all sorts of impulses of the soul, its sorrows and delights that accompany any of our actions - all this is influenced by poetic reproduction, it "nourishes all this, irrigates what should have dried up, and establishes its power over us. "(X 606d). Therefore, let poetry not blame the rulers of the state, established according to Plato's plan, for rigidity and roughness. There can be no other attitude to poetry, and there has never been: "... from time immemorial there was some kind of discord between philosophy and poetry" (X 607b). However, if imitative poetry, aimed only at giving pleasure, can give at least some reason for the fact that it is appropriate in a comfortable state, Plato is ready to "gladly" accept it. “We realize,” he says, “that we ourselves are fascinated by her. But to betray what you recognize as true is impious” (X 607c). And "until it is justified, when we have to listen to it ... we will beware of succumbing again to this childish love characteristic of the majority" (X 608a).

This is Plato's verdict on art. Consistently and adamantly, in his own way, he subordinates art to the task of educating perfect citizens in a perfect state. In the name of this supreme goal, he inexorably suppresses the impressionability of a great artist, such as he himself was. Many centuries later, Rousseau and Leo Tolstoy would follow the same path. Fine and lyrical art they will subject to censorship moralistic criticism from the point of view of the highest, as they hoped, ideals of humanity. For them, Plato, to whom both of them in this connection and in this matter repeatedly referred, turned out to be the ancestor of the tradition they had adopted.

V.F. Asmus

DIALOGUE COMPOSITION

I. Introduction

1

The story of Socrates (327a - 328c) about his stay at the festivities in Piraeus and the invitation to Polemarchus, where the conversation took place. A special part of the introduction is a conversation with Cephalus (328c - 331d) about old age as a time of calming down and liberation from passions on condition of consciousness of a justly lived life. Discussion of justice (330d - 331d). Interlocutors try to define it as honesty and return on borrowed money (331cd).

II. Main part.
A just state as an earthly embodiment of the idea of ​​good

1. The question of fairness (331e - 369b). Refutation in the conversation of Socrates and Polemarch of the definition of justice as a reward to everyone due (331e - 336a). Phrasimachus enters into a conversation (336b - 338b) with the statement (338c) that it is justly suitable for the strongest. Socrates objects that the strongest does not always correctly understand his own benefit (339e), and any art, including the art of management, has in mind not his own benefit, but the benefit of the object he serves (342с-e). Thrasimachus make a speech (343b - 344s.) In defense of injustice and an unjust person who alone can be called happy. The interlocutors consider power (345b - 347e) and whose benefit is served by the possessor - his own or subordinates: a true ruler aims at the benefit of the subordinate (347d). Justice is compared (347e - 352d) with injustice: virtue is justice, and injustice is depravity (348c); a just person is wise, and an unjust person is an ignoramus (350c); perfect injustice makes a person incapable of action (352a); the gods are hostile to the unjust and favor the just (352b). There follows (352a - 354c) a discussion of the question of the happiness of a person who is just and unjust. Phrasimachus agrees that since justice is the dignity of the soul and injustice is a disadvantage, the former will be happy and the latter unhappy (353e - 354a).

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   Glavkon raises the question (357a - 358b) about what kind of good justice can be attributed to, and then (358c - 362c) clearly formulates the point of view of Frasimakh's like-minded people: justice is an invention of weak people who are incapable of doing injustice (359b), and injustice always beneficial (360d), and it is possible to compare how happy a just person and an unjust person are, only considering them at their limit (361d - 362c). Adimant complements (362d - 367e): justice is not approved by people by itself, but because of the good glory and favor of the gods that it carries (363a-c), as well as because of the afterlife retribution (s-e). Therefore, feigned decency combined with injustice is the best model of life for a person (366b). Adimant demands (367b - 368e) that Socrates show the advantages of justice in itself over injustice. Socrates suggests (368a - 369b) to first consider the justice not of an individual person, but of the state, which is also inherent in it (368e - 369a).

2. The emergence of the state (369b - 374d). Socrates and Adimant discuss how the state arises (369c), in particular the state with a simplified life (369d - 371c) and the rich state (372e - 373d), as well as the wars that a rich state is forced to wage (373e), in connection with which it will be necessary an army of professional military guards (373e - 374d).
3. Guardians in a perfect state (374e - 419a). a) Properties of the guards (374e - 376c). By nature, the guardian must have a desire for wisdom, courage and strength. b) The education of the guards (376c - 415d) will be gymnastic and musical (376e). Understands (376e - 402a) musical art. For educational purposes, everything unworthy of the gods should be removed from myths (378b - 383c).

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   Myths should cultivate courage in guards (386a); myths that cause fear and pity should be removed (386b - 388d) as encouraging excessive gigginess, deceit, intemperance, injustice (388e - 392b). Of the ways of expression (392c - 398b), narration is preferable as it corresponds to the properties that need to be brought up in the guardians, and imitation is acceptable only in the case of imitation of worthy people (398b). Melic poetry and its properties are considered: words, harmony and rhythm, as well as musical modes acceptable in a perfect state, poetic meter and instruments (398c - 402a). A person's appearance must correspond to spiritual qualities (402a - 403c), and the soul determines the state of the body (403d). Gymnastic education, nutrition and lifestyle in general should be simple, meeting the requirements of the art of war (403e - 404e). Medical art (405a - 410a) should be engaged only in bodily full-fledged people, leaving others to die out (410a); the judicial art (405a-c, 409a-e) should destroy unjust people (410a). Musical and gymnastic education should correspond to each other (410b - 412b), the second serves the first, since they are not an end in themselves, but are aimed at creating a perfect soul (411e - 412a). The preservation of the state, especially in relation to education, will be supervised by the rulers (412a), who should be selected from the guards (412b - 414b). The myth of the generation of people by the universal mother earth (414c - 415d) completes the education of citizens. The guards do not have private property and luxury goods, they live and eat together (415d - 417b).

   Adimant asks the question (419a) about the happiness of the guards: the restrictions imposed on them will make them unhappy.

4. Fundamentals of the correct structure of the state (420a - 427c). Socrates objects: it is necessary to create a happy state, and not to make the individual estates happy (420b - 421c). Wealth and poverty, splitting the state, are the main obstacle to its happiness (421c - 423a). In order not to damage the unity, the size of the state should not be excessively increased (423b-d). The guards own everything together (423e); most of all, the educational arts should be protected: gymnastic and musical (424b-e). Elementary norms of behavior must be observed in the state (425ab), and laws must not delve into the little things: life will be built in accordance with the concepts of justice that are rooted in society (425c - 427a); only the laws on the cult need to be regulated (427bс).
5. Justice of the state and the person (427d - 445e). Socrates and Glavkon analyze the basic virtues of a perfect state: wisdom, courage, prudence and justice (427e - 434e). Justice (432b - 434e) is that everyone should mind their own business and not interfere with others (433b). The properties of a perfect state are transferred to a person (434e - 435c), in whose soul (435c - 436b) three principles stand out: knowing, angry and lusting. A detailed analysis of the beginnings of the soul follows (436b - 444a); each beginning corresponds to the same virtues as in the state: wisdom, courage and prudence. Human justice is the orderliness and consistency of the beginnings of the soul (443c - 444a). Human injustice is likened to illness, and justice to health (444a - 445c). As a healthy state of a person is one, and there are many diseases, so among states there is one perfect device and four main types of perverted, which corresponds to five types of soul (445с-e).

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   Adimant demands a more detailed analysis of the question of the commonality of wives and children among the guards (449b - 451b).

6. Women and children in a perfect state (451s - 461s). The responsibilities of women are the same as for men, and their upbringing should be the same (451d - 457c). To obtain the best offspring, the rulers will see to it that the best men mate with the best women and give more offspring, while the women of the guards will be in common, and the children will be raised together so that no one knows their children, and the children do not know their parents (457d - 460d) ... People in their prime can produce children, the offspring of others is destroyed (460d - 461c). All guards will be considered relatives (461de), and the state will be the most united (462a - 466d).
7. War and the perfect state (466e - 471b). Women and children will participate in wars (466e - 467e), those who distinguished themselves in the war should be marked with honor and awards (468a - 469b), and the rules of conduct in the war with the Hellenes and with the barbarians should be different (469b - 471b).
8. The Feasibility of the Perfect State (471c - 541b). This question is posed by Glavkon (471c - 472b), seeing the advantages of a perfect state over others. For a perfect state to be realized, it is necessary to merge power with philosophy (472b - 474c), but first you need to determine who a philosopher is. Philosophers are people who strive to contemplate the beauty and being in themselves and are able to cognize the truth (474c - 480a).

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   Properties of guards from the point of view of philosophy (484a - 486e). It is not true that philosophy is useless to the state (487a - 499a). A perfect state can be realized in the case of the coming to power of philosophers and the establishment by them of the outlined laws (499b - 504c). To become a philosopher, it is necessary to master not an ordinary circle of knowledge, but the most important knowledge - about the good (504d). The good itself is like the Sun: what the Sun is for the visible region, the same is the good for the intelligible region (504e - 509c). The good (unprecedented beginning) is comprehended with the help of the dialectical ability of the mind (509d - 511e).

   People are like prisoners in a cave, and a philosopher is a person who came out of a cave into the light (514a - 517a). How to direct a person to the contemplation of eternal essences, so that, guided by them, properly manage the state (517b - 521c)? The sciences (521d - 534e) that help to achieve this are considered: arithmetic (522s - 526s), geometry (526d - 527s), theoretical astronomy (527d - 530s), music (530d - 531s) and the dialectics crowning them (531s - 534s) ... Properties of rulers-philosophers (535a - 536a); how and when to bring them up (536b - 540c). A perfect state structure is feasible in any state: the population over ten years old is expelled, and the rest will be raised by philosophers (540d - 541b).

9. Types of government and the corresponding types of people (543a - 592b). Socrates and Glavkon analyze the main types of states, into which a perfect state is successively reborn, and the people corresponding to them: timocracy (545c - 550b), oligarchy (550c - 556e) and democracy (557a - 561e). Tyranny (562a - 580a) is examined in detail: how it arises from democracy (562a - 565c), where does the tyrant appear from and how does the tyrant (565d - 567d) act, what army he relies on (567d - 568e) and how he turns from a defender into an enslaver people (569a-c).

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   In the soul of a person with tyrannical inclinations, evil desires dominate (571a - 575b), and when there are many such people, a tyrant appears from among them (575c - 576b). The tyrant is the most unfortunate of all people, the focus of all evil (576c - 580a). In which state is the person happiest, and in which - unhappy (580b - 588a)? To answer, it is necessary to distinguish between the types of pleasures, different types of pleasures correspond to different principles of the soul and estates in the state (581d - 583a), while the philosopher is most knowledgeable in all their types. In addition, it is necessary to distinguish between genuine and imaginary pleasures (583b - 587a), and in this respect, the philosopher also takes precedence. The superiority of a person of a perfect state over the rest is calculated (587a - 588a). A person should be just to reconcile the principles of the soul and submit to its rational principle (588b - 589e).

10. Art and the perfect state (595a - 608b). The things in the world that art imitates are the imitation of things in themselves, therefore the artist is the creator of ghosts far removed from reality (595c - 598d). Homer only seemed to be omniscient (598d - 600e). The imitator artist does not know the true properties of the displayed objects (600s - 602a), in his work he relies on the confusion of the perceptions of the soul; art has no criteria of true and false (602b-d). Art deals with the base, easily reproducible principle of the soul, helping it to prevail over the rational (603a - 606d). Therefore, in a perfect state, poetry is allowed only in the form of hymns to the gods and praise to virtuous people (606e - 608b).

III. Conclusion.
Immortality of the soul and afterlife retribution

The reward that a just person can count on is discussed (608bc). Since the soul is immortal (608d - 611a), its existence is not limited to earthly life (611b - 612a). Although the just enjoys all the blessings already on earth (612a - 613e), the main reward awaits people after death (614a - 621d): the souls of the virtuous go to heaven, where they are rewarded tenfold, and the souls of the wicked go underground, where they endure tenfold torments (615ab ), the greatest criminals are thrown into Tartarus (616a). After a thousand years, souls are given the right to choose life again - any person or animal (618a), and the correctness of its choice depends on the soul's past earthly experience, i.e. whether the soul becomes more or less fair as a result of the next life (618b - 619b).

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Plato's doctrine of the state was first expounded by him in a well-known dialogue - "The Politician". This dialogue belongs to the early period of Plato's activity and represents an imperfect development of the same thoughts that later formed the basis of Plato's famous dialogue “The State”. This latter belongs to the more mature era of Plato and contains the doctrine of the state in its most perfect form.

In Plato's worldview, an important place belongs to his views on society and the state. He was extremely interested in the question of what a perfect community should be and what kind of education people should be prepared to organize and maintain such a community.

A number of authors believe that "the reason for the emergence of joint social life and the state, Plato considers the presence of innate social needs in people, which each individual cannot satisfy by his own efforts and therefore needs help from other individuals." Thus, each person attracts one or the other to satisfy this or that need. In need of many things, many people come together to live together and help each other: such a joint settlement is what we call a state. In addition, the state is created in order to ensure the well-being and security of its members. "The variety of human needs in the state should correspond to the specialization of labor, because only on its basis it is possible to ensure high quality and productivity." K. Marx pointed out that "in Plato's republic, the division of labor is the basic principle of the structure of the state, it is only the Athenian idealization of the Egyptian caste system." Whole classes of people carry out functions vital for society in the state; "This is facilitated by the skills of the craft, sophisticated by professional training and experience, multiplied by hereditary transmission, their assimilation from childhood in their own family and the immediate environment." Therefore, the city should be composed of landowners, artisans, merchants, sailors, workers, poets, actors, cooks, teachers, doctors, etc. Plato is sure that the one who works best is the one who owns one thing, to which he is more capable, and does only that. "Therefore, you can do everything in large quantities, better and easier, if you do one job in accordance with your natural inclinations, and moreover on time, without being distracted by other work." All human abilities belong to the state, which freely disposes of them at its discretion.

According to Plato, the state should also fulfill moral functions - "educate citizens in fidelity to the established order and religion of the fathers."

In the dialogue "State" Plato considers the ideal state system by analogy with the human soul. The three principles of the human soul - reasonable, furious and lustful - are analogous to the three basic principles of the state (since there is mutual similarity between the state and the person) - deliberative, protective and business. The latter correspond to three estates - rulers-philosophers, warriors (guards) and producers (artisans and landowners). Plato declares the social division of society to be a condition for the strength of the state. The unauthorized transition from the lower class to the higher is the greatest crime, because each person must do the business that he is naturally intended to do: “Do your own business and not interfere with others - this is justice”.

Since the above classes fully correspond to the three sides of the human soul, then the virtues inherent in the latter are transferred in Plato in the same way to the former. Thus, wisdom is the virtue of rulers; courage is most characteristic of the class of soldiers who guard public safety and prosperity; prudence is seen in the subordination of the popular crowd to the will of the rulers and in the mutual consent of citizens; and justice lies in the fact that not only citizens agree with each other, but their entire estates strictly fulfill their duties and, thus, each of them is increasingly asserted in its inherent virtue10.

To substantiate the introduced hierarchy of estates, Plato attached great importance to the spread among the population of an ideal state of a "noble fiction" that although they are all brothers, but the god who fashioned them, in those of them who are able to rule, mixed gold at birth, in their helpers are silver, and the landowners and artisans are iron and copper. Only in those cases when silver progeny is born from gold, and gold offspring from silver, etc., are members of one class transferring to another possible. The myth ends with a warning that the state will perish when it is guarded by an iron or copper guard. According to V.S. Nersesyants, the above myth aims to substantiate obedience, like-mindedness and brotherhood of citizens and, at the same time, their inequality in the structure of an ideal state.

In Plato's "State" the third estate (landowners and artisans) is the lowest, hardly worthy of the title of citizens; it is immersed in material work and assigned to meet the lower needs of man. "The third estate should, by the products of its occupations - agriculture, crafts and trade, provide funds for the maintenance of other classes." V. Windelband believes that “peasants, artisans and merchants are citizens of the lowest class for Plato; for the state goal, they are nothing more than means and play almost the same role as slaves in ancient society, namely, the role of the toiling masses ”. The third estate, which formally has its share in prosperity, is devoid of virtue in the proper sense of the word, since “wisdom” and “courage” correspond to two external “classes”, while the lower one gets only a system of general prescriptions requiring unconditional obedience from it ...

The way of life of the third estate Plato illuminates from the point of view of the diversity of social needs and the division of labor. Citizens of the third estate were allowed to have private property, money, trade in the markets, etc. The production activity of landowners and artisans was supposed to be maintained at a level that would provide an average income for all members of society and at the same time exclude the possibility of the rich rising above the guards. Questions of the regulation of marriage, life, property, labor, and indeed the whole life of people of the third estate, Plato leaves to the discretion of the authorities of the ideal state. Politically, the third estate is not given any rights: "Plato does not allow a harmful moral influence on the upper classes, strictly delimiting the mutual relations of the estates."

Plato pays much more attention to the estate of rulers than to the other two estates. At the head of the state, Plato argued, it is necessary to put philosophers involved in eternal good and capable of embodying the heavenly world of ideas in earthly life. "Until philosophers reign in the state, or the so-called current kings and lords begin to philosophize nobly and thoroughly, until then the state will not get rid of evils." But the rulers should be true philosophers, who are, in Plato's opinion, those who, looking at the eternal patterns of phenomena, cognize the very truth. to themselves with their deeds, which are rich as much in the knowledge of eternal truth, as well as in experience in the use of things. Special qualities and special upbringing are needed to make a person capable of true management. The philosopher had to possess the following qualities: courage, rationality, prudence, generosity, memory, justice. All these qualities Plato calls in one word - virtue. In addition, it also requires “the ability to protect the laws and customs of the state”. Contemplating the “eternally identical and ordered”, he imitates the divine model and himself becomes ordered and divine, assimilating to it as much as possible for a person. Finally, he achieves perfection in the most important and most necessary knowledge for a philosopher - knowledge of the idea of ​​God. Thus, the ideal state corresponds to the ideal person, the personification of which in Plato is the philosopher.

There are very few citizens capable of public administration, and their abilities depend on natural data. Children with abilities are separated from others and prepared for future state activities: Plato proposes to put them on a special list. When they turn twenty years old, it is necessary to single out in a special, honorable group and continue their education, in the form of a general overview, revealing the internal connection of sciences with each other and with the “nature of being”. At this stage, it is discovered whether there are natural data for engaging in dialectics. When young people turn thirty, those are selected from them who are able, regardless of sensations, to rise to true being. Those who have shown this ability should be surrounded with even greater honor and, after five years of training in dialectics, sent to the service to gain experience in the practical management of the state: for 15 years they are tested in the military and civilian arenas. Those who could not stand the test of practical management were promoted to priests. And when they turn fifty years old, those of them who survived and distinguished themselves in public affairs and in knowledge, it will be time to lead to the "final goal": to make them direct their mental gaze to the ideal sphere, to see there "good in itself." and according to its model, order the entire state, all its constituent citizens, including themselves.

The rest of their lives, these men will spend in philosophizing, in the work on the civil system, in the office, when the time comes, in public service. They will educate citizens like themselves, put them instead of themselves as the guardians of the state, and then they will withdraw to the “Islands of the Blessed”. Philosophers are entrusted with unlimited power in the state they rule, guarding the laws and watching over citizens from birth to death. The power of philosophers in the state is not subject to any restrictions or control.

They should not be ashamed of the written laws and in each individual case are guided by their immediate discretion. First of all, their attention is drawn to the newly emerging generations. Despite the commonality of wives, sexual intercourse is not left to chance, but is placed under the supervision of philosophers. The latter make sure that there are always children in the right quantity, and that a “breed” capable of supporting the state is preserved. For this, mainly men and women with excellent qualities are connected, and children with "bad constitution" are removed or destroyed. Philosophers are also in charge of the education of citizens; they, among other things, assign each a proper place and occupation in the state, “sorting out” the spiritual properties of children and distributing them into estates in connection with the fact that each has his own properties and his own vocation.

The elders and the best should be rulers. The best rulers will be those who know best about the affairs of government. This requires that they be wise and at the same time put the public good above all else. To ensure that the rulers serve the general good of the state, and not their personal interests, Plato considers it necessary to put the rulers and the rest of the guards, who serve as their assistants, in such a position that they cannot have personal interests.

“The guards of the state - the irritating side of the human soul, appointed to protect the rights and fulfill the orders of rational nature, should receive such education and be educated to such an extent that, obeying the wise suggestions of the government, they could easily protect the welfare of society and courageously prevent it as external, and internal dangers.

The guardians of the state should be both educated and experienced people. In addition, good guards should have the same properties as dogs: subtle flair, quickness and agility, strength, courage, anger. But, being angry in relation to the enemy, the warriors must be meek to fellow citizens. This combination can only be achieved by careful education and a special way of life.

The military class should consist of the best citizens, who have no other duties than the duty to protect the state from any danger that threatens it. Therefore, the people chosen for this should be armed and trained to fight not only against external enemies: they should also protect the homeland from internal strife, maintain order and obedience to the laws in it. Citizens who are about to enter the estate must be distinguished by physical and mental dignity. With all the qualities of a skilled warrior, they must combine an understanding of state goals and the internal relations of public life. "The only criterion for the selection and education of guards is the greatest suitability for the protection of the state, requiring such moral qualities that only a few possess."

An ideal state cannot exist without proper preparation of the younger generation. For Plato, the correct organization of upbringing means the systematic development of natural inclinations. The philosopher believes that whoever has them, then thanks to a good upbringing, they become even better. Plato is primarily interested in the military class, and therefore he created a whole theory of the education of warrior-guards.

Military science requires skill and great diligence. "Education should, apparently, first of all, develop in children such qualities as seriousness, observance of external decency and courage." Plato himself says about this: “... an impeccable guardian of the state will, by nature, possess both the desire for wisdom and the desire to learn, and will also be agile and strong (11, 376 p.).

According to Plato, the state structure depends on the morals of people, their mental makeup or character. The state is what its constituent people are. He sees a direct correspondence between the character structure and the form of government.

The philosopher believes that there can be only one structure of a perfect state. All possible difference is reduced only to the number of ruling sages (philosophers): if there is only one sage, this is the kingdom. If there are several - aristocracy. But this difference does not really matter, because if the wisest are in fact ruling, then no matter how many of them there are, they will still rule in exactly the same way50.

Plato contrasted the ideal type with a negative type of social structure, in which material concerns and incentives are the main engine of people's behavior. Plato believes that all existing states belong to the negative type: "Whatever the state, there are always two states hostile to each other: one is the state of the rich, the other is the poor" (IV 423 E).

The negative type of state appears, according to Plato, in four possible forms: as timocracy, oligarchy, democracy and tyranny. Compared with the ideal state, each of the above forms is a successive deterioration or perversion of the ideal form. “In negative forms of the state, instead of like-mindedness, there is discord, instead of a fair distribution of responsibilities - violence and coercion, instead of the striving of rulers and warriors-guards for the highest goals of community - striving for power for the sake of low goals, instead of renouncing material interests - greed, the pursuit of money ...

Plato opposes four erroneous and vicious types to the aristocratic state structure (ie, the ideal state) as a correct and good kind, characterizing the latter in the eighth book of the State in the order of their progressive deterioration and the sequence of transition from one to another. Plato, illuminating this entire cycle of degradation, combines in his presentation a variety of argumentation (philosophical, historical, political, psychological, mythological, mystical, etc., and creates an integral dynamic picture of political life and the change in its forms.

The first form, the closest to the ideal model, is timocracy, that is, power based on the domination of ambitious people. This is a rule similar to the Spartan one. It is formed from the aristocracy or the perfect form, when from the lack of attention of the rulers and due to the decline, which inevitably comprehends everything human, the distribution of citizens according to estates is no longer carried out in accordance with their nature, but gold and silver are mixed with copper and iron. Then harmony is disturbed and enmity arises between the estates. “Initially, the timocracy retained the features of a perfect system: here the rulers are honored, the soldiers are free from agricultural and handicraft work and from all material worries, meals are common, exercises in the art of war and gymnastics flourish. It is the closest to the perfect of the imperfect forms of government, because it is ruled by, though not the wisest, but still the guardians of the state. After long troubles, the strongest and bravest subjugate the rest, allocate land for themselves and turn fellow citizens into workers and slaves. In such a state, strength and courage reign ("fierce spirit"); here military qualities prevail over others, ambition develops, and behind the desire for power, the desire for wealth is born. The latter, however, leads timocracy to ruin. The accumulation of property in the hands of a few produces excessive enrichment for some, along with the impoverishment of others. Money becomes a measure of honor and influence on public affairs; the poor are excluded from participation in political rights, a qualification is introduced, and the government turns from a timocracy into an oligarchy, where the rich rule (VIII, 546-548 D).

Oligarchy is "a state system full of many evils." This government is based on the census and on the valuation of property, so that it is ruled by the rich, and the poor have no participation in the government (VIII, 550 C). In such a city “there would by necessity not be one city, but two: one of the poor people, and the other one of the rich, and both of them, living in the same place, would plot against each other (III, 550 D). “In an oligarchic state, wasteful people - the rich, like drones in a bee hive, eventually turn into poor people, but unlike bee drones with a body: criminals, villains, thieves, wallet cutters, blasphemers, masters of all kinds of evil deeds. In an oligarchic state, the fundamental law of the life of society is not fulfilled, which, according to Plato, is that each member of the society “make his own” mustard gas, “only his own”. On the contrary, in the oligarchy, firstly, some of the members of society are each engaged in a wide variety of activities — agriculture, crafts, and the army; secondly, the right of a person to a complete sale of the property he has accumulated leads to the fact that such a person turns into a completely useless member of society: not being part of the state, he is only a poor and helpless person in it.

The oligarchy is dominated by the already low aspirations of man; greed is everywhere. But there is still some moderation, since the rulers are concerned about the preservation of the acquired and refrain from self-will of the lowly. However, government is not given to people according to merit, but according to wealth; therefore it is always bad. The oligarchy is based on intimidation and the use of military force. With a general striving for acquisitiveness, everyone gets the right to dispose of their property as he pleases; “And as a result of this, the proletariat develops with a whole swarm of idle ambitious people who want to profit from the common expense. The struggle of parties - rich and poor, at war with each other, leads the oligarchy to fall. The poor, being more numerous than their rivals, prevail, and democracy is established instead of the oligarchy.

Democracy is power and rule of the majority, but rule in a society in which the opposition between rich and poor is sharpened more than under the preceding system. The development of a luxurious lifestyle in the oligarchy, the irrepressible and indomitable need for money leads young people to usurers, and the rapid ruin and transformation of the rich into poor people contributes to the emergence of envy, anger of the poor against the rich and malicious actions against the entire state system, which guarantees the rich domination over the poor. The property opposite, steadily developing, becomes noticeable even in the appearance of both. On the other hand, the very conditions of social life make it inevitable not only the frequent meetings of the poor with the rich, but even their joint actions: in games, in competitions, in war. The growing resentment of the poor against the rich leads to rebellion. “Democracy, in my opinion,” writes Plato, “is realized when the poor, having won a victory, will destroy some of their opponents, others will be expelled, and the rest will be by lot (557).

In a democracy, as in an ideal state, all citizens are divided into three classes, which are at enmity with each other. The first class is made up of orators and demagogues, false teachers of wisdom, whom Plato calls drones with a sting. The second class is the rich, representatives of false moderation; these are drones without a sting. The third class - the poor workers, constantly at war under the influence of the first class with the second, whom Plato likens to the worker bees. In a democracy, according to Plato, due to the dominance of false opinions inherent in the crowd, there is a loss of moral guidelines and a reassessment of values: “they will call impudence enlightenment, licentiousness - freedom, debauchery - splendor, shamelessness - courage (561).

Plato describes the democratic system truthfully and colorfully: “Here unlimited freedom reigns. Everyone considers himself to be all allowed; complete disorder is settling in the state. Previously restrained passions and desires appear in all their unbridledness: impudence, anarchy, debauchery, shamelessness dominate society. People who flatter the crowd are elevated to the government; respect for power and the law disappears; children equate themselves to their parents, pupils to mentors, slaves to masters. Finally. The very excess of freedom undermines its foundations, for one extreme causes another. The people persecute anyone who rises above the crowd in wealth, nobility, or ability. Hence new, incessant strife. The rich are conspiracies to protect their wealth, and the people are looking for a leader. The latter, little by little, takes it into his own hands; he surrounds himself with hired bodyguards and finally destroys all popular rights and becomes a tyrant (VIII, 557-562).

Democracy is drunk with undiluted freedom, and from it grows its continuation and opposite - tyranny (VIII, 522d). Excessive freedom turns into excessive slavery; it is the power of one over all in society. This power arises, like the previous forms, as a degeneration of the previous democratic form of government. The tyrant seeks power as a "protege of the people" (VIII, 565 D). In the early days and at first, he “smiles and hugs everyone he meets, does not call himself a tyrant, promises a lot in private and general, frees people from debts, distributes lands to the people and those close to him and pretends to be merciful and meek towards everyone. (VIII, 566 D-E). He seeks support in slaves and in people of the lowest quality, because only in his own kind does he find devotion. “Tyranny is the worst kind of state system, where lawlessness reigns, the destruction of more or less outstanding people - potential opponents, the constant inspiration of the need for a leader (wars, shortages, etc.), suspicions of free thoughts and numerous executions under a far-fetched pretext of betrayal, "Cleansing" the state of all those who are courageous, generous, reasonable or rich. This is a far from complete list of tyranny atrocities, given at the end of the eighth book of the "State", which contains Plato's criticism of tyrannical rule, which, according to V.S. Nersesyants, is "perhaps the most expressive in all world literature."

According to Plato, people living in conditions of a vicious state system are characterized by erroneous choice of values, an insatiable desire for a falsely understood and incorrectly implemented good (in timocracy - an unrestrained passion for military success, in an oligarchy - for wealth, in a democracy for unlimited freedom , in tyranny - to excessive slavery). This, according to Plato, is what destroys this system. Thus, each form of the state perishes due to the internal contradictions inherent in its own principle, and the abuse of the latter.

Plato sees the way out of the vicious states of society in a return to the original order - the rule of the wise.

We can completely agree with V.N. Safonov, drawing the following conclusions from Plato's dialogue "The State":

• 1 . The state in Plato stands above the citizen, and that is how he understands justice, that is, what is good for the state is good for the citizen.
• 2. Excessive freedom in the state is just as dangerous as the excessive subordination of citizens to one ruler. The first leads to anarchy, and the second to tyranny, and anarchy is fraught with tyranny, since every extreme turns out to be its opposite.
• 3. It is very important that there is unity in the state, which Plato understood in three ways: a) all citizens, without exception, obey the law; b) there should be no contrast between the poorest and the richest; c) no disagreement should be allowed between those who administer the state.
• 4 . The estate (caste) structure of society is best suited to the interests of the state and citizens, since everyone is guaranteed order, prosperity, security and prosperity.
• 5 . The two upper classes - rulers and warriors - are forbidden to have any private property, so that they devote all their strength and time to serving the state, which provides them with everything they need.
• 6. Plato was for the complete equality of women and for the public education of children.
• 7. Platonic democracy is nothing more than anarchy; the flaws of the oligarchy, noticed by Plato, are still relevant, the best forms of government are monarchy and aristocracy, and the worst is tyranny.
• 8. The original forms of government, from which all others came, are monarchy and democracy, elements of which must be present in every state.

For Plato, the subject of freedom and the highest perfection turns out to be not an individual person or even a class, but the whole society, the entire state as a whole. Plato sacrifices a person to his state, his happiness, his freedom and moral perfection. And Hegel was right when he pointed out that in Plato's "State" "all aspects in which unity as such asserts itself dissolve in the universal — all are recognized only as universal people."

The outlined project of the best organization of the state and society, the philosopher considers feasible only for the Greeks: for other peoples, it is inapplicable due to their alleged complete inability to organize a reasonable social order. Moreover, over time, Plato himself cools off to his model of an ideal state after an unsuccessful attempt to put it into practice.

Plato's works belong to the classical period of ancient philosophy. Their peculiarity is in combining problems and solutions that were previously developed by their predecessors. For this, Plato, Democritus and Aristotle are called taxonomists. Plato the philosopher was also the ideological opponent of Democritus and the founder of the objective.

Biography

The boy, known to us as Plato, was born in 427 BC and was named Aristocles. The city of Athens became the birthplace, but scientists are still arguing about the year and city of the philosopher's birth. His father was Ariston, whose roots go back to the king Codra. Mother was a very wise woman and bore the name of Periktion, she was a relative of the philosopher Solon. His relatives were prominent ancient Greek politicians, and the young man could have gone their way, but such activity "for the good of society" hated him. All he took advantage of by birth was the opportunity to get a good education - the best available at that time in Athens.

The youthful period of Plato's life is poorly understood. There is not enough information to understand how its formation went. The life of a philosopher has been studied more since his acquaintance with Socrates. At that time, Plato was nineteen years old. Being a famous teacher and philosopher, he would hardly have taken up teaching an unremarkable young man, similar to his peers, but Plato was already a prominent figure at that time: he took part in the national Pythian and Isthmian sports games, was engaged in gymnastics and power sports, was fond of music and poetry. Plato owns the authorship of epigrams, works related to the heroic epic and dramatic genre.

The biography of the philosopher also contains episodes of his participation in hostilities. He lived during the Peloponnesian War and fought at Corinth and Tanagra, practicing philosophy in between battles.

Plato became the most famous and beloved of Socrates' disciples. Respect for the teacher is imbued with the work "Apology", in which Plato vividly painted the portrait of the teacher. After the death of the latter from the voluntary acceptance of poison, Plato left the city and went to the island of Megara, and then to Cyrene. There he began to take lessons from Theodore, studying the basics of geometry.

After graduating there, the philosopher moved to Egypt to study with the priests of mathematical science and astronomy. In those days, adopting the experience of the Egyptians was popular among philosophers - Herodotus, Solon, Democritus and Pythagoras resorted to this. In this country, Plato's idea of ​​the division of people into estates was formed. Plato was convinced that a person should fall into one or another caste according to his abilities, and not origin.

Returning to Athens, at the age of forty, he opened his own school, which was named the Academy. She belonged to the most influential philosophical educational institutions not only in Greece, but throughout antiquity, where the students were Greeks and Romans.

The peculiarity of Plato's works is that, unlike the teacher, he told thoughts in the form of dialogues. When teaching, he used the method of questions and answers more often than monologues.

Death overtook the philosopher at the age of eighty years. He was buried next to his brainchild - the Academy. Later, the tomb was dismantled and today no one knows where his remains are buried.

Plato's ontology

As a taxonomist, Plato synthesized the achievements made by philosophers before him into a large, holistic system. He became the founder of idealism, and his philosophy touches upon many issues: knowledge, language, education, political system, art. The basic concept is an idea.

According to Plato, the idea should be understood as the true essence of any object, its ideal state. To comprehend an idea, it is necessary to use not the senses, but the intellect. The idea, being the form of a thing, is inaccessible for sensory cognition, it is incorporeal.

The concept of an idea is put at the foundation of anthropology and Plato. The soul has three parts:

1. reasonable ("golden");
2. volitional principle ("silver");
3. the lustful part ("copper").

The proportions in which people are endowed with the listed parts can be different. Plato suggested that they should form the basis of the social structure of society. And society itself, ideally, should have three estates:

1. rulers;
2. guards;
3. breadwinners.

The last class was supposed to include merchants, artisans and peasants. In accordance with this structure, each person, a member of society, would do only what he has a predisposition to. The first two estates do not need to create a family or private property.

Plato's ideas about two types stand apart. According to them, the first kind is the world, which is eternal in its immutability, represented by authentic entities. This world exists regardless of the circumstances of the external, or material world. The second kind of being is the middle between two levels: ideas and matter. In this world, an idea exists by itself, and real things become shadows of such ideas.

In the described worlds there are masculine and feminine principles. The first is active and the second is passive. A thing materialized in the world has matter and idea. It owes the latter its unchanging, eternal part. Sensual things are distorted reflections of their ideas.

The doctrine of the soul

Discussing the human soul in his teaching, Plato gives four proofs in favor of the fact that it is immortal:

1. Cyclicity in which opposites exist. They cannot exist without each other. Since more implies less, the existence of death speaks to the reality of immortality.
2. Knowledge is actually memories from past lives. Those concepts that people are not taught - about beauty, faith, justice - are eternal, immortal and absolute, known to the soul already at the moment of birth. And since the soul has an idea of ​​such concepts, it is immortal.
3. The duality of things leads to the opposition of the immortality of souls and mortality of bodies. The body is part of the natural shell, and the soul is part of the divine in man. The soul develops and learns, the body wants to satisfy base feelings and instincts. Since the body cannot live without the soul, the soul can be separate from the body.
4. Every thing has an unchanging nature, that is, the white color will never turn black, and the even color will never become odd. Therefore, death is always a process of decay, which is not inherent in life. Since the body smolders, its essence is death. As the opposite of death, life is immortal.



These ideas are described in detail in such works of the ancient thinker as "Phaedrus" and "State".

The doctrine of knowledge

The philosopher was convinced that only individual things can be comprehended by the method of feelings, while essences are cognized by reason. Knowledge is neither sensations, nor correct opinions, nor definite meanings. True knowledge is understood as knowledge that has penetrated into the ideological world.

Opinion is part of the things perceived by the senses. Sensory cognition is impermanent, since the things subject to it are variable.

Part of the teaching on cognition is the concept of remembrance. In accordance with her, human souls remember the ideas known to her until the moment of reunification with this physical body. The truth is revealed to those who know how to close their ears and eyes, remember the divine past.

A person who knows something has no need for knowledge. But one who does not know anything will not find what he must look for.

Plato's theory of knowledge is reduced to anamnesis - the theory of remembrance.

Dialectic of Plato

Dialectics in the works of the philosopher has a second name - "the science of existence." Active thought, which is devoid of sensory perception, has two paths:

1. ascending;
2. downward.

The first path involves the transition from one idea to another until the moment the higher idea is discovered. Having touched it, the human mind begins to descend in the opposite direction, moving from general ideas to particular ones.

Dialectics touches upon being and non-being, one and many, rest and movement, identical and different. The study of the latter sphere led Plato to the derivation of the formula of matter and idea.

Political and legal doctrine of Plato

Understanding the structure of society and the state led to the fact that Plato paid them a lot of attention in his teachings and systematized them. The real problems of people were placed at the center of political and legal doctrine, and not natural-philosophical ideas about the nature of the state.

Plato calls the ideal type of state that existed in antiquity. Then people did not feel the need for shelter and devoted themselves to philosophical research. After that, they faced a struggle and began to need funds for self-preservation. At the moment when joint settlements were formed, the state arose as a way to introduce a division of labor to meet the diverse needs of people.

Negative Plato calls such a state, which has one of four forms:

1. timocracy;
2. oligarchy;
3. tyranny;
4. democracy.

In the first case, power is held in the hands of people who have a passion for luxury and personal enrichment. In the second case, democracy develops, but the difference between the rich and poor classes is colossal. In a democracy, the poor revolt against the rule of the rich, and tyranny is a step towards the degeneration of the democratic form of statehood.

The philosophy of politics and law of Plato also identified two main problems of all states:

• incompetence of top officials;
• corruption.

Negative states are based on material interests. For the state to become ideal, moral principles by which citizens live should be at the forefront. Art should be censored, godlessness should be punished with death. State control should be exercised over all spheres of human life in such a utopian society.



Ethical views

The ethical concept of this philosopher is divided into two parts:

1. social ethics;
2. individual or personal ethics.

Individual ethics is inseparable from the improvement of morality and intellect through the harmonization of the soul. The body is opposed to it, as related to the world of feelings. Only the soul allows people to touch the world of immortal ideas.

The human soul has several sides, each of which is characterized by a specific virtue, briefly it can be represented as follows:

• to the reasonable side - wisdom;
• strong-willed - courage;
• affective - moderation.

The listed virtues are innate and are steps on the path to harmony. Plato sees the meaning of human life in the ascent to the ideal world,

Plato's students developed his ideas and passed them on to subsequent philosophers. Touching upon the spheres of public and individual life, Plato formulated many laws of the development of the soul and substantiated the idea of ​​its immortality.

LIFE AND WORK OF PLATO

Plato was a famous wrestler, and the name he is known by today was his name in the ring. "Plato" means "wide" or "flat": in this case, the first meaning probably refers to his shoulders (or, as some sources say, to his forehead). At birth in 428 BC. NS. he received the name Aristocles. He was born in Athens or on the island of Aegina, which is just twelve miles from the Athenian coast in the Saronic Gulf. Plato was born into the family of one of the most famous politicians in Athens. His father Ariston was a descendant of Codrus, the last king of Athens, and his mother was descended from the great Athenian legislator Solon.

Like any prominent member of the family of politicians, Plato's earliest interests lay in other areas. He twice won wrestling matches at the Isthmian Games, but apparently never reached such heights at the Olympics in Olympia. Then he decided to gain fame for himself as the author of tragedies, but could not impress the judges at any famous competition. Desperate to win Olympic gold or win the ancient Greek equivalent of the Nobel Prize, Plato almost decided to be just a statesman, but before that he tried to take up philosophy, and therefore came to listen to Socrates.

It was love at first sight. For the next nine years, Plato sat at the feet of his teacher, absorbing all his ideas that he could assimilate. The Socratic competitive teaching method forced the student to use all his intellectual abilities, while at the same time opening his own unrealized possibilities to his eyes.

Socrates taught by the method of conversation, in which the subject of discussion was gradually analyzed and determined. This method was known as dialectics- from the ancient Greek word meaning "conversation, dispute" (the word "dialect" is derived from the same root). Socrates invited his opponent in conversation (or a student) to present an explanation of a particular issue and then began to ask questions, revealing his strengths and weaknesses, proposing additions, limiting and expanding the scope of the question, and so on.

It is difficult for us to imagine how completely new was the nature of this method, which relied only on the art of reasoning. Philosophy before Socrates had little or no relation to reasoning. A significant part of the pre-Socratics was more interested in such a question as Being - the metaphysical side of what it means to be alive, or the infinite nature of the world itself (thinking, for example, that it can consist of water or atoms). Some of these spontaneous insights have been strangely correct, especially given the way they were received. But it was Socrates who understood that philosophy could not go this way. Philosophers by that time had already been exposed to ridicule, but it had not yet come to the point that someone began to scoff at philosophy itself. If philosophical thought was destined to cease to be just an intellectual joke or reflections on religious topics (from which it arose), then it needed a more rigorous approach. It was given to philosophy by the dialectical method of Socrates. From the height of our more than two thousand years of history, we see that he became the forerunner of logic, which was invented by Plato's student Aristotle a century later.

Due to the fact that Plato was able to perceive the new method proposed by Socrates, philosophy entered a new stage in its development. To appreciate the significance of this innovation, one should simply imagine what a serious scientific discussion would look like if it were devoid of semantic content.

And yet, having found his true calling, Plato still fought the temptation to give up philosophy and go into politics. Fortunately, the behavior of Athenian politicians turned him away from pursuing politics. In the period after the Peloponnesian war, "thirty tyrants" came to power, two of their leaders (Critias and Charmides) were close relatives. The ensuing period of terror might have inspired a young Stalin or Machiavelli, but it did not attract Plato. After the Democrats came to power, Plato's beloved teacher was brought to trial on trumped-up charges against him of disrespect and corruption of youth and was sentenced to death. Plato now became firmly convinced that democracy was guilty of the same crimes as tyranny. Close communication between Plato and Socrates put him in a dangerous position, and he had to leave Athens for his own sake. Thus began his wanderings, which were destined to last for the next twelve years. Before he was trained by his teacher, now life has become his teacher. But in those days the world was not so great, and in the first period of his exile, Plato was very close - in Megara, only twenty miles from Athens, where he continued to study philosophy with his friend Euclid. (This was not the famous geometer, but a former student of Socrates, famous for the subtlety of his dialectics. Euclid loved Socrates so much that he made his way into enemy Athenian territory, disguised as a woman, to be present at the death of his teacher.)

Plato stayed with Euclid in Megara for three years, and then went to North Africa, to Cyrene, to study with the mathematician Theodore. After that, he, in all likelihood, took a trip to Egypt. According to one surviving story, he wanted to visit some magicians in the Levant, and then move east and reach the banks of the Ganges, although this information is not very reliable.

Perhaps during his stay in Megara or on halts during his travels, Plato created his first works known to us. They were written in the form of dialogues in which one can feel the very strong influence of Socrates - both personal and intellectual. And yet it cannot be said that Plato remained entirely in his shadow. These dialogues were created by the mature mind of the thinker and are beautiful literary and philosophical works. In many of them, Socrates is present as the main character, expressing his own ideas. Here we are faced with the image of a bright, energetic and at the same time very charming person who combines the features of a jester and a saint.

Three early dialogues of Plato - "Apology of Socrates", "Crito" and "Euthyphron", as well as the late "Phaedo" - are devoted to the trial, the days of imprisonment and death of Socrates. The real events described in them at one time made a strong impression on Plato, and they can be put on a par with such works of Western literature as Shakespeare's Hamlet and Dante's Inferno. The Apology of Socrates describes the trial of Socrates and his defense speech addressed to the inhabitants of Athens. Socrates treated the accusations with well-deserved contempt, and in his speech he turned to more interesting questions, such as why he is considered wise. He argued that he simply lives according to the lot, which was proclaimed to him by the Delphic oracle, who recognized him as the wisest man on earth. At first, he was suspicious of this prediction, because he knew nothing (a typical statement for Socrates). And he began to ask others, who were called wise, and found that in fact they did not know anything either. This is a classic example of the dialectical method: philosophy is used to disrupt the normal way of thinking. It is remarkably similar to Wittgenstein's linguistic analysis in modern philosophy. In fact, Socrates taught not so much philosophy as a philosophical method: clear thinking. In this he saw not only the path to the attainment of truth, but also the path to correct behavior. He would certainly agree with the statement made in the twentieth century by Wittgenstein: "Philosophy is not a theory, but an activity." This approach leaves a void at the very center of philosophical thinking. After Socrates, it was filled with Plato.

For ten years, Plato wandered, and then went to Sicily, where he visited the crater of Mount Etna. It was a favorite place where tourists flocked in those days, and not only for the sake of seeing it as a tourist attraction. The fact is that, according to the ideas of people of that era, this is how the underworld looked like, and, therefore, a visit to Etna allowed one to get an idea of ​​the conditions of the afterlife. But for Plato, the crater was even more attractive, since it was associated with the name of the philosopher and poet of the 5th century BC. NS. Empedocles. Empedocles was endowed with such a wonderful power of intellect that during his lifetime people recognized him as a god, and to prove that this was so, he threw himself into the boiling lava of Etna.

But it is much more important for us that there Plato established contact with the followers of Pythagoras, who spread to the Greek colonies of Sicily and southern Italy. The Pythagoreans' discovery of the relationship between number and musical harmony led them to believe that numbers hold the key to understanding the universe. Everything could be explained with the help of numbers that existed in an abstract area on the other side of the physical world. This theory had a strong influence on Plato, as a result of which he came to the conviction that true reality is abstract. That which in the philosophy of Pythagoras was a number, in Plato became forms or pure ideas.

The main pivot of Plato's philosophy is his theory of ideas (or forms), which he continued to develop throughout his life. This means that Plato's theory has come down to us in several different versions, thus giving philosophers enough material to debate for centuries. (No philosophical theory can claim to be complete as long as there is room for debate about how it should be interpreted.)

The best explanation of Plato's theory of ideas is his own (which is not always the case in philosophy and in other sciences). Unfortunately, Plato gives his explanation in the form of a metaphor, which makes it more literary than philosophical. According to Plato, most people live as if they were in a dark cave. They are tied up and, he says, are looking at a white wall illuminated by a lantern behind them. They see only shadows swaying on the wall, mistaking them for reality. Only if they guess to turn away from the wall and the shadows and escape the cave can they hope to see the light of true reality.

Using the language of philosophy, we can say the following: Plato believes that everything we perceive - ships and shoes, kings and cabbages, all things of everyday experience - are just appearances. Only the world of ideas or forms that gives rise to this appearance has true reality. Thus, it can be said that a particular black horse derives its appearance from the universal horse shape and from the idea of ​​blackness. The physical world perceived by us with the help of senses is in constant change. The universal world of ideas, perceived by the mind, on the contrary, is unchanging and eternal. Each shape - for example, round, person, color, beauty, and so on - is a model for numerous objects in the world. But individual objects are only imperfect, ever-changing copies of these universal ideas. By using our minds rationally, we can recall our knowledge of these universal ideas and begin to feel them better. In this way, we can comprehend the true reality of daylight, which is outside the dark cave of our everyday world.

This area of ​​ideas is organized hierarchically, ranging from smaller forms to more general abstract ideas, the highest of which is the idea of ​​the good. When we learn to move away from the world of constantly changing things and concentrate on the timeless reality of ideas, our understanding begins to climb this hierarchical ladder to the final mystical comprehension of the ideas of the Beautiful, the Truth and, finally, the Divine.

This is how we arrive at Plato's ethics. Everything that can be perceived while in this changeable world is only seeming goodness. Only with the help of reason can one comprehend the nature of the great general idea of ​​the Good. Truly moral is, according to Plato, spiritual enlightenment, and not different rules of behavior. His theory of ideas has often been criticized for lack of practicality. In Plato's words, many assumed that everything he described was the idea of ​​the world, and not the world itself. Others argued that the world of Plato's ideas exists only in the mind and has little to do with the world from which these ideas originated. On the other hand, the fundamentally transcendent nature of Plato's philosophy means that most of his thoughts could later be adopted by Christianity.

For example, Plato's theory of creation easily fits into the Judeo-Christian version. According to Plato: "The Father and Creator created a living and mobile being in the form of an eternal god. When he saw him, he was filled with joy and decided to make it even more like the original. Since the pattern was eternal, he strove to create the Universe as eternal as it could be. done. So he created a movable image of eternity. When he completed the creation of heaven, he made this image eternal, but changeable, in accordance with the numbers. This image of eternity is different from another, which is one and is at rest. The movable image of eternity we call time " ...

This text sounds like an abstract echo of the Book of Creation (written about eight hundred years before the Pythagorean concept that underlies this passage). Yet Plato's explanation of the nature of time - the "moving image of eternity" presented here - is more than a profound religious explanation (and much more than a profound and beautiful explanation). In fact, it is deeply philosophical. Plato's description of time seems to unite the numerical world of phenomena in which man lives with the timeless unity of the world of ideas.

Time has always been one of the most mysterious concepts that philosophy has had to deal with. But also one of the least productive: we all know about time, and it flows unchanged, regardless of what they say or think about it. We all think we know what it is, but describe it in words that would not be tautology (for example, "Time is a sequence") or simply a poetic way ("Time is only a stream in which I am going to fish" - Thuro ) is extremely difficult.

Plato's explanation was an excellent philosophical and poetic image, which not only fits perfectly into the theory of ideas, but is also a thread that connects it into a coherent whole. (It might be called "a perfectly fitting screw that makes every part move as a whole" - but this beautiful mechanistic metaphor is imprecise because the world of ideas is stationary and not set in motion by time.)

Since Plato, few have been able to provide an equally compelling explanation of time. Another seven hundred years passed until Augustine proposed an equally satisfactory theory. For him, time was simply our subjective way of seeing the world. In fact, here we see the same theory of Plato, considered from a different point of view. One and a half thousand years later, Kant's theory of time appeared. Here, time is also presented as a subjective entity (while at first glance it seems obvious that time is not like that). Kant believed that time is part of our perception apparatus (like glasses that cannot be removed) and it is with its help that we see the world. Nevertheless, Plato's theory is most consistent with the latest scientific theories about the nature of time. "When he completed the creation of heaven, he made this image eternal, but changeable, in accordance with the numbers." In other words, time and the universe began their existence at the same moment. This statement coincides with the Big Bang theory, according to which we cannot say what happened "before" the Big Bang, because then time did not exist yet.

Science and philosophy are basically two different ways of looking at the world: there are fundamental differences between them. As Bernard de Mandeville states: "One deals with what is, the other wonders why it is." Even so, it is gratifying that science and philosophy sometimes agree.

When Plato was in Sicily, he developed a close friendship with Dion, son-in-law of Dionysius, ruler of Syracuse. Dion introduced his new friend to Dionysius, possibly with the aim of obtaining Plato the position of court philosopher. But, despite Plato's travels around the world, he remained largely an Athenian aristocrat, and he was not impressed by the provincial manners of the Syracuse court. Dionysius was a general and a tyrant, who, in addition, had literary claims. He was convinced that he himself was twice as good as any living person. One day he married two women - Dora and Aristomache - and spent their wedding night with both of them.

When Plato appeared on the scene, everything seemed pretty calm. A rather pleasant picture is formed from his description, despite the fact that he "does not find anything pleasant in the tastes of the society of his sister Italy, where happiness consists in filling your stomach twice a day and never spending the night alone." Obviously, to the forty-year-old Plato, whose Athenian fastidiousness soon began to irritate Dionysius, this seemed an overkill.

Dionysius began his career as a clerk in the city administration, but from the beginning he was noted for his outstanding poetic gift. Then he held several ranks in the army, in parallel with this, he composed several tragedies in verse, which were rated as unsurpassed (which all his subordinate officers readily confirmed). After seizing power, at the cost of several brutal wars, he turned Syracuse into the most powerful city west of Greece. To soften diplomatic relations, the Athenians made sure that his drama "The Ransom of Hector" won a prize at the Lenai Festival.

Dionysius was not the kind of person who could afford to be intimidated by some aristocratic philosopher claiming a place at his court. When he began discussing philosophy with Plato, things soon began to heat up. At one point, Plato was forced to point out an error in the course of Dionysius's reasoning.

You sound like an old fool, ”he exclaimed in anger.

And you speak like a tyrant, - Plato answered him.

At this, Dionysius decided to end the philosophical dialogue and ordered to put Plato in shackles. He was taken to a Spartan ship sailing to Aegina, whose captain was ordered to sell Plato as a slave. "Do not worry, he is so immersed in philosophy that he will not even notice it," Dionysius threw him.

Some sources report that at that moment Plato's life was in danger. But the fact that he was sent to Aegina suggests otherwise, since this city was a more likely place of his birth than Athens. By sending Plato home in chains, Dionysius simply found a way to humiliate the philosopher. Perhaps he was absolutely sure that Plato would be recognized and ransomed by influential friends. This would allow him to avoid serious diplomatic conflicts with Athens.

Dionysius' plan came true exactly. Plato experienced a great fear (the need to work for a piece of bread can scare any true philosopher). Pretty soon he was noticed in the market of slaves of Aegina by Plato's old good friend Annisser Cyrenaic, who bought him out in twenty minutes. Annisser was so pleased with the philosopher acquired at half price that he soon sent him to Athens, providing him with enough money to open a school.

In 386 BC. NS. Plato bought a piece of land in the garden of Akadem, which was about a mile northwest of Athens, outside the gate of Erius in the ancient city wall. It was a parkland with spreading trees, in the shade of which stood statues and temples. Here, among the cool paths and babbling streams, Plato opened the Academy, gathering a group of followers around him, which included (which is very unusual) and several women. Among them was Axiothea, disguised as a man. This garden is recognized as the first university.

The Grove of the Academy, in which Plato founded his Academy and from which the school got its name, was dedicated to its former resident Hecademus, an incomprehensible semi-divine hero of Greek mythology. The main feat of Hecadem was, apparently, the planting in that place of about twenty olive trees, the shoots of the sacred olive tree of Athena on the Acropolis. But since Plato chose this particular place, Hecadem is still remembered throughout the civilized world. A lot is connected with his name - from secretarial colleges to cinemas. The Scottish football team bears his name, as well as an annual award for the same semi-divine people with incomprehensible achievements.

Today, Akadema Grove is a large, unkempt wasteland in the northwestern part of Athens, where the city's outskirts rise in disarray. Under the trees near the bus stop are scattered ancient stones - accidentally preserved remains of houses, in some places covered with graffiti. The place where Plato's Academy was located and the house in which he lived will almost certainly never be found. It is all the more surprising that the house of Hecadem is still there. Under a thin protective roof, erected by archaeologists, one can see a foundation of baked clay and the remains of brick walls, which were already about two thousand years old when Plato settled there. Hecadem seems to have very cleverly achieved immortality.

By the way, right behind the wasteland there is a modern settlement, where now, four thousand years later, you can observe living conditions comparable to those in the prehistoric house of Hecadem. Among puddles of stagnant water and sheds of cardboard boxes, shaven-headed children of immigrants play in the hot sun. Flies hover around them, and their veiled-headed mothers sit side by side, cross-legged, and feed their tanned daughter babies.

"What is justice?" - asked Plato in his most famous work "The State". In this dialogue, he describes a dinner at the house of a retired merchant department, at which Socrates and a number of other characters are present. From time to time, Socrates engages in conversation, and the company agrees that there is no point in discussing the concept of justice without public relations. Then Socrates begins to describe his idea of ​​a just society.

The early dialogues of Plato, in which Socrates is present, usually contain ideas inspired by Socrates. In the middle and later dialogues, some transformation takes place, and in them the ideas pronounced by Socrates already clearly belong to Plato. "The state" is the most beautiful of the dialogues of the middle period, and in describing a just society, Plato expresses his ideas on a variety of issues, such as freedom of speech, feminism, birth control, private and public morality, parent-child relations, psychology, education , public and private property and many others. These are exactly the topics that you want to avoid at any pleasant dinner. But the dialogue "State", as we shall soon see, was not a conversation over a pleasant dinner. And the type of society it offered was also not very pleasant. Plato's point of view on the above issues is so different from that held by modern society that in our time it could only be held by devoted fanatics or partially crazy people.

In Plato's ideal state, there would be no property and marriages (they were allowed only among the lowest estates). Children would be taken away from their mothers shortly after birth to raise them all together. After that, they would consider the state as their only family, and all their fellow citizens as brothers and sisters. Until the age of twenty, they would be taught gymnastics and music supporting morale (Ionian and Lydian music was prohibited, only military marches were allowed to strengthen courage and love for the motherland).

All this allows us to think about the childhood of Plato himself. In Diogenes Laertius, one can read (and this almost certainly corresponds to the actual state of affairs) that Plato's father "madly loved" his mother, but "could not win her heart." Although Plato was born in wedlock, his mother soon married a second husband, and Plato was almost certainly raised by relatives. Therefore, it is not surprising that he devoted little time and attention to family life.

In utopia, the philosopher develops the idea that twenty-year-old boys and girls who have not shown themselves sufficiently skillful in music and gymnastics should be separated from others. He considers them incapable of mental work, so that they will have to maintain the life of society, becoming farmers and merchants. The best students continue to study geometry, arithmetic and astronomy for another ten years. Those who are tired of mathematics - the next batch of rejected ones - are sent to the army. Now only the elite remains. For another five years, until they are thirty-five years old, they are honored with the great honor of studying philosophy, then for fifteen years they will have to study the practical structure of government, plunging into worldly life. By the time they reach the age of fifty, they can be considered scientists enough to run a state.

These philosopher-rulers were supposed to live together in a common home and not have property. They could sleep with whoever they wanted. The full equality of men and women was proclaimed (although in another dialogue Plato writes that "if a person's soul lived a bad life in a man's body, in the next incarnation it will fall into a woman's body"). Living together and without personal interests, the elite would be above bribery; their only concern should have been the implementation of justice and justice in the state. The head of state, the philosopher ruler, was chosen from among them.

Even for the small ideal city-state ("nine miles from the seashore"), where Plato intended to realize his utopia, it looked like a cure for the disease. At best, it would have been unbearably boring for all poets and playwrights, since those who performed the wrong music were expelled, as were the legislators. At its worst, it would be a totalitarian nightmare that would quickly acquire all the usual unpleasant methods needed to maintain such a regime.

From the outside, all these shortcomings seem obvious. Even for Plato, his project of the state was contradictory in some places. He writes that poets should have been banished, while he himself uses many excellent poetic imagery in the course of the narrative. In addition, the worship of gods, mythology and religion were prohibited, although Plato himself included several myths in his work, and the elite of "philosopher-rulers" quite obviously resembles a caste of priests in his descriptions. He also invented his own ideal god, who is irreconcilable and must be worshiped (although his existence cannot be proved).

In fact, the image of Plato's ideal state is a product of his era. Athens was recently conquered by Sparta in the Peloponnesian War. Neither democracy nor tyranny brought peace, and Athens desperately needed a government to establish order (some commentators actually think that when Plato speaks of justice, he often means something more like order). The seemingly correct decision was to create a strictly controlled state, similar to what existed at that time in Sparta. But unlike Athens, Sparta was a harsh, economically undeveloped society, which in order to survive, it was necessary to educate a caste of blindly obedient warriors who could only obey orders and fight to the death. Their task was to terrorize the city's ever-rebellious poor and plunder the more skillful and economically advanced neighbors. Plato either ignored it or didn't want to take it into account.

Continuing Socrates' thought that "only good people are happy", Plato came to the idea that "only the unjust are unhappy." Create a just society and everyone will be fine. But what did he suggest? Just a project that could have been born in the head of an honest, highly educated intellectual who closed in the garden of the Academy. The implementation of such a project was impossible.

But, surprisingly, he nevertheless came true. In any case, something similar has come true. Medieval society, with its lower class, warrior caste and powerful priesthood, existed for almost a millennium, creating a system similar to the state of Plato. More recently, communism and fascism in their basic features strongly resemble the Platonic republic.

For seven years Plato continued to teach at the Academy, making it the best school in Athens. Then in 367 BC. NS. he received word from his friend Dion that the Syracuse tyrant Dionysius had died and his son, Dionysius the Younger, had ascended the throne.

For many children, Dionysius the Younger was under lock and key, as his father sought to stop any desire of his son to prematurely seize power. Having reigned in the palace, Dionysius the Younger spent time with a saw in his hands, making wooden tables and chairs.

For Dion, this was a great opportunity for Plato. Fate provided him with an ideal ruler who could be brought up in the image of a philosopher-ruler. His mind was free from other ideas, and Plato could put into practice his idea of ​​the structure of the state.

For unknown reasons, the proposal seemed unattractive to Plato. Perhaps he feared that, as a philosopher of sixty-one, it would not be so easy for him to get a seat in an ideal republic. What if he too will have to take an extended course of gymnastics and military music in order to join the elite? But in the end, "the fear of losing self-respect and becoming in his own eyes a man who never brings words to deeds" forced Plato to yield to the request of a friend, and he set off on a long journey to Sicily.

Arriving there, he found that the court of Dionysius the Younger was mired in intrigue. Some influential courtiers still remembered him from his first visit and saw in him nothing more than a renowned intellectual thinker, and some believed that Dion was not far from him. A few months later, these enemies of philosophy managed to accuse Dion and Plato of treason (a common obstacle for those who are about to implement a utopia). At first, the carpenter king did not know what to do. Then, fearing the power of Dion, he sent his uncle out of the city, but forbade Plato to leave. He told the old philosopher that he did not want him to tell nasty things about him in Athens.

Fortunately, friends soon managed to organize Plato's escape, and he was able to return to Athens, where his loyal students, including Dion, were waiting for him at the Academy.

As for Dionysius the Younger, he was very upset by Plato's act, because he received great pleasure from philosophical conversations with him, although he did not at all intend to put his advice into practice (Syracuse was hardly suitable for such an experiment. At that time they were the only strong a state capable of resisting the invasion of southern Italy by the rapidly developing Roman Republic).

It seems that Dionysius the Younger soon began to see a father figure in Plato. He was probably jealous of the philosopher for his uncle Dion, for whom Plato had a strong affection. The young tyrant continued to pester Plato with requests to return to Syracuse. Completely distraught, he announced to all his courtiers that his life was not dear to him without the company of his mentor in philosophy. In the end, he sent his fastest trireme to Athens and threatened Dion to confiscate all his property in Syracuse (which was quite large) if Plato did not come to see him.

Contrary to common sense, Plato sailed to Syracuse at the age of seventy-one. Dion, it seems, managed to convince him of the need to do this, although at this age he himself was already occupied by other concerns that have nothing to do with the implementation of Plato's utopia and "proving to the tyrant the superiority of the soul over the body."

Very little time passed, and Plato once again found himself a real prisoner in Syracuse. Undoubtedly, he refused to stuff his stomach with Italian food twice a day, and every night he angrily kicked unwanted girlfriends out of his bed. But fortunately, he was rescued once again, this time he was helped by a sympathetic Pythagoreus from Taranto, who once, under cover of night, brought him to his trireme. Together with the galley slaves, bravely rowing under the blows of the scourge, the aged philosopher once again crossed the sea to once again feel safe in Athens. (A few years later, Dion succeeded in achieving what he most likely longed for: he captured Syracuse, expelled Dionysius the Younger, and began to rule himself. Did he try to create the state of Plato now that he finally had a chance? that no. But tragic justice prevailed where Plato's was not realized. Soon Dion was cruelly betrayed and killed by another former student of Plato :)

On this, Plato's activity in the political sphere ended - the Roman Empire was saved. And yet, as a result of his unrealized plans, the medieval world, which grew up on the ruins of the Roman Empire, received a model of social structure. And later, politicians such as Stalin and Hitler already had before them the classic example of the embodiment of their plans.

Can we assume that all of Plato's doctrine of the state was pure error? He argued that true knowledge and understanding can only be obtained through the intellect, not the senses. Reason must distance itself from the world of experience if it wants to reach the truth. If Plato seriously believed in this, then it is difficult to understand why he first of all tried to create his utopian state? After all, such philosophical ideas are completely incompatible with political practice. And yet, according to Plato: "If a philosopher does not become a ruler or a ruler does not study philosophy, there will be no end to the suffering of people." (In practice, this is not the case. Philosophically-inspired rulers cause people far more trouble than those who are ignorant of philosophy.)

Another part of Plato's philosophy, which was not related to politics, also undoubtedly had a huge influence on culture for several centuries. This was mainly due to the fact that it correlated well with the Christian worldview and, in fact, gave what began as a mere faith a solid philosophical foundation. As a result, it was no longer possible to simply declare one's disbelief in Christian values; now they also needed to be refuted.

Plato believed that the soul consists of three different parts. The rational principle of the soul seeks wisdom, the active spirit seeks to conquer and define, desires crave satisfaction. These elements reflect the three constituent parts of society described by Plato in "The State": philosophers, people of action, or warriors, and the scum who can only do the housework and enjoy. The righteous person is ruled by the mind, but each of the three elements plays an important role. We cannot continue to live without satisfying our own needs, just as the entire state will stop if workers stop working and enjoy, and instead try to become philosophers. The fact is that righteousness can be achieved only when each part of the soul performs its own function, just as justice in the state is achieved only when each of the three elements fulfills its role in society.

A much more pleasant dialogue of Plato is "The Feast", dedicated to the conversation about love in its various manifestations. The ancient Greeks did not hesitate to talk about erotic love, and the part of the text in which Alcibiades describes his homosexual love for Socrates allows us to say with confidence that in later times this book was severely persecuted, becoming a real classic of forbidden literature in medieval monasteries (new edition “ Pira "was placed by the Catholic Church in the" List of Forbidden Books "until 1966).

Plato sees Eros as the soul's striving for good. In its simplest form, it is expressed in a passion for a beautiful person and a desire for immortality, achieved by giving birth to children with this person. However, such a desire is difficult to suspect in Alcibiades, because Socrates was not at all handsome, and it was impossible to have a common offspring with him.

A higher form of love presupposes a spiritual union and a desire for sublimity, the creation of a public good. The highest form of platonic love is love for wisdom, or philosophy, and its peak is the comprehension of the mystical image of the idea of ​​good.

Plato's ideas about love could not but have a strong influence on society. It manifests itself in the concept of sublime love, so popular with the troubadours of the early Middle Ages. Some even tend to see Plato's understanding of eros as an early outline of Freud's shocking sexual fantasies. Today, platonic love has been reduced to a very narrow meaning, meaning an almost disappeared form of attraction between opposite sexes. Even the theory of Plato's ideas, aimed at the mystical comprehension of Beauty, Truth and Good, has now lost most of its etheric greatness. She argues that the world is arranged in the same way as language with its abstractions and concepts, which are based on even higher abstractions. This position may turn out to be controversial, but at the same time it is difficult to refute it. Plato assumed that the real world is not what we perceive and describe through language and experience. And why, in fact, should it be different? Indeed, it does not seem at all that he was different. But will we ever be able to find out?

At the age of eighty-one, Plato died and was buried at the Academy. Despite the originality of his philosophy, many of its provisions are still present in our attitude to the world. And the adjective formed on his behalf continues to define a completely different form of love, reflecting his theory of ideas. Plato's Academy existed in Athens until 529 A.D. e., and then was closed by order of the Emperor Justinian, who tried to suppress the pagan Hellenistic culture for the sake of the prosperity of Christianity. Many historians now believe that this date marks the end of Greco-Roman culture and the beginning of the Dark Ages of the Middle Ages.


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