Little Johnny Plato Analysis

Little Johnny runs up to his parents going a hundred miles an hour. He rambles off a variety of questions as his curiosity of the world overcomes him. He wants to know how things work and why they function that way. In a way, little Johnny could be compared to Plato. However, Plato goes beyond the superficial questions into deep, philosophical thinking. Plato craves wisdom, and his questions of humanity are never ending. Beauty, justice, true philosophy, belief, truth, form of good, and so many more are some of the virtues that he writes about. Plato spends a fair amount of his writing developing the masses opinion on the virtues, and how they contradict what his worldview is. He writes in Symposium, The Republic, Apology, and Phaedo of questions

Plato takes the virtue of true beauty and displays what this virtue is like for a philosopher. He claims that when one knows true beauty, they will learn beautiful things and become beautiful themselves (Symposium 211b-211c). Through the evaluation of justice, it is easy to see Plato’s doubts about the gods. He displays his feeling when he writes about how the gods will not punish the just or unjust, but the just actions will lose the benefit of the unjust actions (Republic 365d-365e). It is plain to see that Plato doesn’t understand the logic behind this belief, shaping his worldview. Plato really emphasizes the greatness of philosophers in “Book VI” as he describes why they are the most ideal choice as a ruler. He writes that “when someone’s appetites are strongly inclined in one direction, we surely know that they become more weakly inclined in the others” (Republic 485d). This statement says that since philosophers are focused on wisdom, they care less about materialistic interests. Plato encourages a philosophic leader and rejects the idea of democracy. Plato and many other philosophers view democratic freedom as a chaotic mess. He describes a man that lives with this mentality and says that “there is neither order nor necessity in his life, yet he calls it pleasant, pleasant, free, and blessedly happy, and follows it throughout his entire life” (Republic 561d). Plato finds that philosophers are superior because of their knowledge of the form of good. He writes in Republic “the masses believe pleasure to be the good, while the more refined believe it to be knowledge” (505b). This is another example where Plato displays the importance of knowledge to the philosophers. However, knowledge frightens the masses. Plato tells the story about prisoners to explain the interaction made between the masses and philosophers. He explains how