Final Research Paper

Jordan Harper

Ancient Greek Philosophy: Plato

May 2, 2016

Final Research Paper

The true value of perfection

            “If you strive to be good, you will be poor; if you strive to be great, you will be good; if you strive to be excellent, you will be great; and if you strive to be perfect, you will be excellent” (author unknown). Perfection is a constant theme when discussing “Plato’s Republic”; whether or not it is achievable or maybe just an abstract concept. One of the more commonly accepted understandings of perfection is that perfection is not achievable but instead is something that you should try to strive for but never actually reach; this is appealing because although perfection can never be reached, on the way to trying to reach it improvement can be had, much like how the quote at the beginning describes. Aristotle describes perfection as completion or when a goal is reached; you obtain fulfillment, “Aristotle speaks of the perfect as the lack-nothing, the fulfilled, the complete, what has reached its goal, teleios: ‘Things are complete in virtue of having attained their end….And excellence is completion; for each thing is complete and every substance is complete, when in respect of its proper kind of excellence it lacks no part of its natural magnitude’” (Tsanoff 25). This goes along with the idea that by trying to reach the goal of perfection, the reward will be that you reach excellence. Plato seems to have a fascination with the various ideas of perfection and presents numerous images of these ideas in his republic; where the argument can even be made that the entire book is all one big image of perfection. With the concept of perfection clearly an important topic, the question must be asked, what is the true value or reason for perfection or images of perfection? As stated above, I understand that striving for perfection to reach your best version of yourself is important, but Plato seems to go above simply striving to be the best he can be and actually creates images that by many measures are perfect. An obvious example of these detailed, perfect images are the three waves to create a perfect city presented in Book 5 of the republic. As humans we are fascinated with the concept of perfection as this theme has been prevalent in artwork, films, and other sources throughout history, yet we cannot actually know what perfection would look like since it is unattainable. In the rest of this paper I will be looking at how Plato uses his three waves for a perfect city image to create something of value, and ultimately say what I believe to be the importance and value of these impossible images of perfection; I will state now that some may find my conclusion rather polarizing.

            The model of a community that Plato proposes in Book 5 is a very unique creation. I will not discuss the individual waves in detail, but I will describe each one and then analyze the community that they form together. The first wave is Plato says women and men should be educated together, “If, then, we use the women for the same things as the men, they must also be taught the same things…Then these two arts (music and gymnastics), and what has to do with war must be assigned to the women also, and they must be used in the same ways” (5.451e-452a). The second wave is that there will be no families as we know them, instead the whole community will be a family and the children will belong to everyone, “And the children, in their turn, will be in common, and neither will a parent know his own offspring, nor a child his parent” (5.457d). The third and final wave is that the community should be ruled by a philosopher king, “the philosophers rule as kings or those now called kings and chiefs genuinely and adequately philosophize, and political power and philosophy coincide in the same place” (5.473c-d). Each one of this waves could fuel a research paper on their own, but I want to focus on the picture that they create when combined together.

The ultimate goal for Plato is to structure a city that focusses on and emphasizes the qualities of the community that he believes to be the most important; this community is his version of a perfect image. Plato was a man who had dedicated his entire life to his city, his loyalty was for his community only. It only makes since that his ideal community would be restructured in such a way that individuals would have their loyalties shifted from their families to the city as a whole. Plato realized that no matter how a much a person was dedicated to their city and their people, the one thing that always has the potential to make a that same person to not act in the best interest of their community is their love for their family. Kingdoms have been destroyed because of this superior loyalty to family. Plato sees the only way to fix the problem of family by changing how woman and children fit into the society, ultimately make the entire city one big family so that when someone acts in the best interest of their family it is the same as acting for their community. When discussing Plato’s idea for a city using the three waves, most people I have encountered have the opinion that this city is a version of a perfect city, but ultimately they think the three waves are too extreme and too many things are lost for this to be a good model; I disagree on this point. I actually believe this city is not only a good model for a perfect society, but is also a model we could learn a lot from. I am not saying that this model of the city will ever actually be created in reality, but I do believe that, much like communism, when certain variables are hold constant this model works and sounds amazing on paper. Things that are lost such as the love of wives and children only seem important to us because our current community says they are important; if we lived in Plato’s community we would not think that loyalty and love to individuals would be a good thing. Many people could not imagine giving up the idea of having a family you care about, but if you can look the proposal objectively it becomes apparent that many problems could be avoided if the problems of a personal family were eliminated.

There are many elements in this plan that are reminiscent of the ancient Spartan society. While husbands and wives were still present, their role in the city was greatly reduced compared to what we are used to. Boys were taken away at the age of seven to be trained as a soldier for twenty-three years where the military became their real family, and the girls were also trained physically and taught to be dedicated to the state (Life). The previously mentioned goal of Plato to turn the citizens’ loyalty and love to the city and not their individual families is one of the most important elements taken from the Spartan model, “Spartan communism in meals and sleeping arrangements for adult males deprived private homes of their titular heads, presumably so that the men would put the public good ahead of their narrow family interests” (Ludwig 212). Although Spartan men were allowed to marry before the age of thirty, they would not be allowed to stay the night with their wife or really create any meaningful connections during this time of training. Instead, for those twenty-three years, they eat, slept, and blead with their military “brothers.” This group became a Spartan’s new family, and because an army is part of the state, by extent the state itself became their family and possessed their real loyalty. While not every aspect of Sparta was adopted by Plato, it is clear that he drew heavily from Sparta’s influence. The fact that a society that was as powerful and successful as Sparta used many of the same elements that Plato used in his model of the city, helps to give more understanding as to why Plato chose certain characteristics. Plato proposed a model that attempted to fix the problem that is the human element, and he actually came up with a great theory to do just that.

Now all of that may have seemed like a long, drawn out explanation of what Plato was trying to accomplish with his three waves, why I believe it could actually work in theory, and even more importantly what does all of that have to do with finding out the true value within an image of perfection? Before I begin to address the hypothetical nature that is inherent whenever discussing the idea of perfection, I needed you to have a clear understanding of what Plato was trying to create. Perfection does not exist and so anytime individuals try to create something that is perfect it is a hypothetical construct that is their ideal version of perfection. So in a sense each person’s idea of a perfect world would be different. Plato says himself that he is not discussing these ideas in order to prove that that could actually work in reality, “We were not seeking them for the sake of proving that it’s possible for these things to come into being” (5.472d). This one passage hits on one of the biggest problems that I have always had with the concept of philosophy, what is the point of going to great lengths to address hypothetical ideals if there is absolutely no chance of these ideals being implemented in real life, why do they matter? In all of my classes and readings on the topic of philosophy no passage has helped me to understand as much as when Plato follows up his confession that he is not discussing his three waves for them to be real, “Do you suppose a painter is any less good who draws a pattern of what the fairest human being would be like and renders everything in the picture adequately, but can’t prove that it’s also possible that such a man come into being?” (5.472d). I am not a particularly strong lover of art, but I can appreciate that something is beautiful and I know that there are people who can learn a great deal from admiring a piece of art that has been deemed perfect. In the same manner Plato is trying get the point across that even though this city will never exist, that should not take away from the value of the idea, much like a work of art, “Then, what about this? Weren’t we, as we assert, also making a pattern in speech of a good city?...Do you suppose that what we say is any less good on account of our not being able to prove it is possible to found a city the same as the one in speech?” (5.472d-e). Plato is an artist who uses not a brush but his mind, and he is able to create amazing works of art and art has value.

There is one big issue related to the idea of striving for perfection that I have not touched upon, and I feel it must be addressed in order to give a full and accurate account of the value of perfection. Like every concept in the world, striving for perfection has positive theories and negative ones. While this paper so far has focused with the side I agree with, that striving for perfection is the best possible way to live your life, the other side of the argument also has merits and it would be unfair to ignore them. This side says that striving for perfection and not achieving it is worse than not even trying to begin with. What if someone is trying to change something to be perfect, but their image is different than everyone else’s in the world? In theory this means that by trying to change the way something works to conform to their individual image of perfection, a person could make things so much worse than they were before. Because perfection is not attainable, we know that whatever someone choices to strive for will never be fully achieved so the possibility that the final result could be terrible is a possibility. This idea seems loosely related to the phrase by Voltaire “The perfect is the enemy of the good,” which basically means that trying to be just good and not perfect is the best option because if perfection is the goal, people will stop trying to do the important task because perfection is an impossible end goal, but if the goal is simply to be good a person will be more willing to attempt task because they are able to accept a few mistakes. In the end I simply believe the idea of striving for perfection is entirely up to the point of view of the individual, and not some random old philosopher telling you how to think. I have presented this paper to show how I believe the idea of perfection should be applied in your life, but by no means is this the definitive solution. If you agree with the quote that began this paper, then you will most likely agree with the idea of striving for perfection to reach excellence; however, if you agree with the idea that striving for something that is unattainable and achieving something worse, then you will most likely agree with the side that says striving for perfection is a bad way to live your life. Ultimately we must remember that perfection is an abstract concept and is purely a tool to help focus our thoughts and views, and so facts and conclusions about perfection cannot be drawn.

This has all been one big analysis of only one particular example of an image of perfection and all the different parts that make it up; now for the true value in all of this. Plato says, “So, next, as it seems, we must try to seek out and demonstrate what is badly done in cities today, and thereby keeps them from being governed in this way, and what with smallest change—preferably one, two, if not, the fewest in number and the smallest in power—a city would come to this manner of regime” (5.473b). I believe Plato is using this model of a perfect city, not to actually create it, but instead to show the weaknesses of models in use currently. A quick example is that by pointing out how to fix the problem of split loyalties between family and city, it is easy to see that this issue does exist. I think this idea could be applied to the entire republic; Plato is presenting a model of a perfect soul not to teach people how to be perfect, but to show them were they are weak. Taking this a step farther, you could apply this idea to all images of perfection; because we do not have any idea of what actual perfection would look like, in order to attempt to show it the parts of something that are deemed bad by society are improved upon as much as possible and displayed on the only medium which sustains hypothetical concepts, art. We should take the lessons that we learn from seeing our flaws transformed into something beautiful as an opportunity to strive to reach the best version of ourselves. “If you strive to be perfect, you will be excellent.”

When I said in the beginning that my conclusion could be polarizing, it was because not many will make the claim that creating an image of perfection has nothing to do with reaching that idea of perfection, but has everything to do with exposing the flaws that actually exist in the world whether it be flaws in a government or flaws in a personality. By exposing these flaws, an individual will be given a real chance to improve upon them, because how can you improve if you do not know something is wrong. The idea of a utopia or perfect society keeps popping up in recent entertainment, and I can only hope that people are able to see the flaws exposed in these models and learn from them.

Works cited

1.     “Life in Sparta." Sparta.net. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 May 2016.

2.     Ludwig, Paul W. "Eros in the Republic." The Cambridge Companion to Plato's Republic. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007. 202-231. Print.

3.     Plato, and Allan Bloom. The Republic of Plato. New York: Basic, 1991. Print.

4.     Tsanoff, Radoslav A. "The Notion of Perfection." The Philosophical Review 49.1 (1940): 25-36. JSTOR. Web. 02 May 2016.

5.     Yunis, Harvey. "The Protreptic Rhetoric of the Republic." The Cambridge Companion to Plato's Republic. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007. 1-26. Print.

***Unless otherwise noted, all quotes come from Plato’s Republic***