Western Political Philosophy: Plato's Contribution To Western Politics

Socrates was an Athenian philosopher; he was known to be the founder of Western philosophy. He is known from the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon. We have come to know through Plato’s writing about the contributions of Socrates in the field of ethics. He became famous because of his work related to ethics. Socrates has also worked in the field of epistemology. He has made long lasting and essential contributions in this field. The direction of his ideas and the way remains a strong basis for the western political thought of today.

Plato’s Political thought: Plato helped build areas of philosophy that are epistemology, metaphysics, ethics and aesthetics. He affected and changed the western political thought deeply

Both had something to do with Athenian politics. So he was bound to be involved in it himself as well. Plato was not a supporter of any of the political parties at that time as they were not just. He found himself continuingly opposing it instead of playing an active role in the politics. He was a follower of Socrates and he supported him as he was the most honest and virtuous in his time. Socrates had a very huge effect on philosophy although he did not leave any written form of his work that he had done. His work was totally on politics and moral issues. Socrates was executed by the vote of majority in court and the hearing was unjust. This lead to Plato’s believe in that the politics was bad and hopeless. It could not be recovered. This discouraged Plato and he went back to Athens. He set up his academy to implement his ideas that resulted in succeeding generations. His students later became mentors, leaders and constitutional advisors in Greek state. He worked hard and in his lifetime Athens was not the place with just the military people anymore, it became a place for intellectuals and

The next thing that has to be considered is the evaluation of believes. It has to be sorted out that which idea is right and which one is incorrect. It has to be seen which decisions are correct for the political thought. According to Plato the most important choice of politics is between peace and war. This is a huge decision that cannot be left only on the citizens or the public. Public opinion is important but they don’t have enough insight to take these decisions and the state learns its lessons from the disasters it has to face which history tells us later. So in order to get proper ideas and in order to make good decisions insight is needed which can be taken through the clarification of concepts. Once the concept is clear, the believes will be clearer automatically. This will lead to a better understanding of the political order. Plato’s Republic is a huge example of the best political order.

Plato, Socrates and state: Plato has told in the Apology of Socrates that he was a loyal follower of Socrates. Plato gives a theory taken from the words of Socrates according to Plato, that the class society is divided is castes.

• Productive - This is the working class that is divided in to people like carpenters, farmers, plumbers, merchants, laborers etc. These are known as the ‘appetite’ part of the