/lit/ - Literature

One inevitable criticism of Plato’s Kallipolis, the completely good city, is that the employment of philosophers as the heads of government violates Plato’s principle of specialization. The argument being that: If the very virtue of a philosopher is that his greatest skill lies in the contemplation of the forms, the principle of specialization dictates that said contemplation should occupy the vast majority of his time. That is, ruling people would be a waste of his talents. On its surface, this argument seems sound, following that specialization is simply meant to issue from each individual the products he or she is natured to produce. However, this is actually a pale understanding of the function of the principle of specialization. In this paper I will argue that to leave philosophers to the mere pursuit of the forms rather than engaging them as the rulers of society is an even greater violation of the principle of specialization, when the principle is analyzed in its functional context.