Page 20 - DPOL201_WESTERN_POLITICAL_THOUGHT_ENGLISH

Western Political Thought Rosy Hastir, Lovely Professional University

Notes Unit 2: Plato’s Communism and Theory of Education

CONTENTS
Objectives
Introduction
2.1 Theory of Education
2.2 Communism (Community of Wives and Property)
2.3 Regeneration of the Ideal
2.4 Plato’s Second-Best State
2.5 Summary
2.6 Key-Words
2.7 Review Questions
2.8 Further Readings

Objectives

After studying this unit students will be able to:
• Know Theory of Education
• Discuss the Concept of Communism
• Understand Plato’s Second best state.

Introduction
Platonic justice demands for its realization proper intellectual and material environment. A man
must in a spirit of devotion to the state give his best to the state in his own particular station in life.
Plato believed that a state-regulated system of education could best create that spirit of devotion
and that excellence in the performance of public duty which was demanded of every citizen.
Public education was therefore a direct corollary of Platonic Justice. To Plato, education did not
mean the storing up of external knowledge but the bringing of the soul into proper environment
for its development. The eye must be turned to the light. Education, whose object is to create right
surroundings and environment, is a life-long process. Plato believed in the perfectibility and
plasticity of human nature.
Plato believes that the true life of an ideal citizen is a life of discipline a life of contemplation of
fundamental things of life, one of loving truth for its own sake. He is refreshingly first modern in
some of his views. He is a true and possibly the first feminist because he lays down emphatically
that the qualities of citizenship which he has enumerated would cover women too. He makes
mention of women supervisors for his ideal city-state. Here he was in diametric opposition to the
other Greek thinkers.
Plato believed the functions of the state to be very positive. The state could promote justice and
right action and prevent crime by providing mens sana in corpore xano, which could be done by
a proper system of education, intellectual and physical. To Plato, therefore, education was the
most important function of the state and the department of education the most important of state
departments. Plato attached more importance to education than either Aristotle or any other
Greek thinker did. First among human things, i.e., reckon education of Antiphon would as soon
have come out o Plato’s lips. In outlining his system of education, Plato took his inspiration from
Sparta rather than his own city-state, Athens. He disliked the lack of organization in Athens and

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