Why Does Plato Argue That Rulers Must Be Philosophers?

Within this essay I Intend to examine Plates reasoning and justification for his belief in philosopher rulers and question whether they are, in fact, the best people to govern society. The current democratic method of organization of the â€Å"polis† was not suitable for Plato as he considered ruling far too vital a role in society to be left to the untrained. Instead, it should be left to those who have the knowledge and more crucially, the wisdom required to comprehend such a task.It Is, however, at this point, we should consider that a significant factor In Plat's opposition to democracy was that the Athenian democracy had condemned Socrates o death. It is important to remember that the liberal democracy which we currently experience is very recent and not at all the concept of democracy that Plato speaks. In fact, the idea of all adults over the age of 18 being able to vote would indeed be absurd to someone such as Plato.The democracy, of which he speaks, would be of great er equivalence to a modern day referendum, In which all those eligible to vote gather to debate and eventually vote. Plato thus set out to craft a new structural form for the polls, in simple, an Ideal society. This constituted three general social lasses and indirectly three separate polio's within the whole Solipsism. At the lowest end of this, was the â€Å"producers†, although Plato pays little attention to this class, it compromises people who were engaged in economic activities, such as, farmers and manufacturers.Although of no political importance, they served the crucial function of providing the economic and material requirements of the community. Primarily, Plato places them as obedient workers under the control of the axillaries. This constitutes the first polls, â€Å"one In which money lovers, and only money lovers are made as happy as possible† (Reeve C. D. C IPPP 1984), and thus becomes a â€Å"luxurious polis† (Plato The Republic IPPP e). The sec ond level on Plates ideal society was that of the auxiliaries.It was the auxiliaries who, in current times, would complete the actions of the military civil service and public offices I. E. Police. Consequently, it was their occupation to enact the decisions made by the ruling class. It would be from the elite of the auxiliaries that a philosopher guardian would emerge, as they had worked their way through the education and training. Therefore, this emerges as the second polis in which â€Å"unnecessary appetites† (Reeve C. D. C IPPP 1984) are removed this is the part of the Solipsism in which honor-lovers are made as happy as possible. (Reeve C. D. C IPPP 1984) However, it must be pointed out that the auxiliaries also shared this second polis with the guardians who were not chosen as â€Å"pensioner Kilns. † Hymnal, It was ten Guardians won were let at ten top AT ten society, as the rulers. This was the elite group above the rest of society, only those who completed a ll the statutes laid out during their training would be able to become a recognized philosopher guardian at the age of 50. These would be the people who had a true understanding of the forms and ultimately, of what is good ND Just.With this Plato has set out his â€Å"dodos† for the ideal society and his belief that those most suited to govern this society were his â€Å"Philosopher Kings† who were chosen from this Guardian class. It is at this point, that I believe we must further engage with what in fact it means to be a philosopher, and how you reach such a position. Plato sets an initial screening process, â€Å"the one who is willing to taste every kind if learning with gusto, and who turns to learning with enthusiasm, and cannot get enough of it, he is the one we shall rightly call a philosopher. (Plato The Republic 474 c) â€Å"Those who have reached that goal are philosopher kings at last. The polis over which they rule, and which contains the elaborate educa tional apparatus necessary to reliably produce them, is the third polis. † (Reeve C. D. C. P 195, 1984). During Plat's explanation of his philosopher-king, he uses three analogies, the sun, the line and finally the cave, in order to depict the reason for the philosopher's irreplaceable role in politics.The central element in each of these is the concept of the forms. In my opinion, Plato most aptly explains the transition to a philosopher with his simile of the cave. Plato classes this as â€Å"the enlightenment or ignorance of our human condition† (Plato The Republic IPPP a). The allegory of the cave is to illustrate that the philosopher is the one who sees things as they really are. The philosopher is able to see the truth, whereas, the masses see, merely, shadows.The arduous process of education which draws the philosopher from the state of ignorance and belief to the enlightened state of knowledge and wisdom is comparable with the difficult Journey from a dark cave up a long path to the open light of the sun. Whilst explaining the Journey of the philosopher's education he also attempts to show why it is that the masses reject the philosopher once their knowledge has been gained. Primarily, Plato says that the philosopher is misunderstood by the ignorant masses and that the knowledge which they attempt to impart threatens the beliefs of their UN-enlightened minds.It is clear upon examination of Plat's society, that it is indubitably a totalitarian regime; however, this point must be critically examined as it is clear that there are distinct and separate ways to critique this point. Naturally, there are those who would say that the restriction of freedom from a dictatorial power is inherently wrong. Conversely, though it must be considered that restriction of freedom for the good of people is no bad thing. In theory a system which imposes â€Å"The Good† on all people, would be one which benefits all and enhances the chance of maximum hum an development and freedom from evil. Until philosophers rule as kings, or those who are now called kings and leading men genuinely and adequately philosophies, that is, until political power, authority and philosophy entirely coincide, while the many natures who at present pursue either one exclusively are forcibly prevented from doing so, cities will eve no rest from evils,†¦ Nor, I think, will the human race. † (Simon Blackburn IPPP c- D 2006) Obviously the counter argument to that and the very basis of Plat's critics, is that whether human nature being as it is, would ever allow it in reality?Especially when compared Walt previous totalitarian regimes, experience Allocates Tanat teen have rarely brought good to the majority, and predominantly have indeed brought the opposite. In reality, it could be argued that there has been a historical dominance of state dictatorships in comparison with the relatively recent liberal democracies. Citizens who are raised within the l iberal western tradition are taught to be convinced of the faultlessness of democracy and thus find it challenging to comprehend that any other system could be better, or even to see the weaknesses in democracy.Due to the inability to acknowledge the failings of democracy, Plato creates two illustrations to depict them; these are the similes of the beast and the ship. Plato utterly rejects two common modes of thought in democratic societies, Just because everyone believes it to be true and good does not make it so, and that Just cause someone is a convincing speaker and persuades the masses to his view – it does not mean he is speaking the truth or that his ideas are good. The foundation of these illustrations is that the Philosophers simply know â€Å"The Good†.Plat's debate is clearly rejecting some of the foundational ideas within Democracy. Within the simile of the beast, the large and powerful animal in this story is the general population who make up the democrac y. In this tale, Plato is depicting a clear division between, what the majority like and think is good, what pleases them, and unbeknown to them, what actually is â€Å"The Good†. The Good (I. E. The dodos or form of the good) is good whether people think it is good or not. The Good is the predetermined standard against which the pleasures and desires of the masses must be Judged to determine whether they are good or bad.Plato is saying that the Sophists of his time were merely concerned with remaining in power and thus would bow to the appeasement of the masses that were ill educated. Fiscal and devoid of the knowledge of what is truly important in life and were subsequently unfit to rule the polis. They were no more than manipulators and responders to popular opinion without any standard tit which to work. The Sophists were relativists. For them ‘good' meant no more than what the people want, what will keep them happy, and what society thinks are good.This approach to politics is recognizable within the contemporary use of opinion polls and pressure groups. â€Å"All those individuals who make their living by teaching, and whom the public call â€Å"Sophists† and new for their skill, in fact teach nothing but the conventional views held and expressed by the mass of the people, when they meet; and this they call a science† (Plato The Republic IPPP a-b) This forever, does not entirely show why Plato is convinced that it is philosophers who should rule.Socrates proposes the notion that the study of philosophy results in the unearthing of objective truths about what is good, from this grounding this knowledge can be used as an unique;coal platform for policy-making. Plato believes that in contrast with his idea of the world of matter, the world of sense , which he classes as a mere world of shadows, is in fact â€Å"world of final, immutable, changeless, objects of contemplation, at the summit of which stands the ultimate object of a facial kind of knowledge independent of sense experience.This is ultimately a real and ultimately fitting object of love and desire, a constantly radiant eternal source of light, the form of good itself. † (Blackburn S. Pop, 2006). Subsequently, it has the natural progression that the people most suited to rule, are the people who have the wisdom of this higher realm, so Justifiably this would be the philosophers. â€Å"If pensioners nave ten capacity to grasp ten eternal Ana Immutable, Wendell tense won have no such capacity are not philosophers and are lost in multiplicity and change, which of the two should be in charge of a state? (Plato The Republic p 484 b). At no point, has it ever been empirically verified that those who have studied philosophy will all agree on that which is good and right. Even those who do agree that there are moral facts do not agree on exactly what they are – nor do they agree on what is the best way to act in the light of those facts. Eve n if we do agree with Plato and accept that a true understanding of goodness and Justice is both possible and agreement can be reached between philosophers, it still leaves the question whether this is all that a politician needs.

Gonna, Gotta, Wanna

Gonna, Gotta, Wanna Gonna, Gotta, Wanna Gonna, Gotta, Wanna By Maeve Maddox Although not hearing impaired, I watch television with captions enabled. I like to see how words are spelled and how the running text differs from what is actually said by the actors and presenters. When I began to notice a frequency of the spelling gonna for â€Å"going to,† I decided to do a little research. I discovered that gonna has an entry in the OED: gonna: colloquial (especially U.S.) or vulgar pronunciation of â€Å"going to.† Not only gonna, but wanna, gotta, and shoulda also have entries in OED, although they do not appear in Merriam-Webster. Gonna, gotta and wanna are not contractions. Contractions are shortenings like aren’t and can’t. The missing letters have been replaced by an apostrophe, and the original words are discernible in the contraction. Contractions are acceptable in all but the most formal writing. Here are a few standard contractions: aren’t = are not can’t = cannot couldn’t =could not didn’t = did not doesn’t = does not don’t = do not hadn’t = had not hasn’t = has not haven’t = have not he’d = he had, he would he’ll = he will, he shall he’s = he is I’d = I had, I would I’ll = I will, I shall I’ve = I have isn’t = is not it’s = it is let’s = let us The spellings gonna, gotta, and wanna, on the other hand, do not preserve the shape of the words they represent. They are not contractions, but reductions. A linguistic reduction is the result of relaxed pronunciation. All speakers of all languages slur sounds and words together. Doing so is a normal part of spoken language. The more informal the situation, the more slurring goes on. Speakers who are sensitive to the needs of others will speak more carefully in some situations than in others. For example, teenagers who barely move their lips when speaking to one another may be expected to enunciate in the classroom. Courteous native speakers will take the trouble to pronounce words carefully when speaking to non-native speakers. Any English speaker who has received a formal education of ten years or more may be expected to speak clearly when being interviewed on television. Reductions are not unknown in print. Novelists have long spelled out whatcha and coulda in dialogue in order to convey a character’s attributes. Until recently, however, such spellings were not commonly seen outside of fiction. Gonna and gotta are not unexpected in song lyrics and on social media like Facebook, but now they are creeping into news coverage. Here are some examples from transcripts and quotations that have appeared on news sites: â€Å"He’s gonna get to the bottom of what happened at the Fort Hood shooting.† â€Å"I have no doubt she’s gonna run,† says Black. â€Å"We’re gonna try to construct a bipartisan bill.† Reductions heard in speech are not particularly jarring, but when they appear in print, they scream â€Å"Ignorant!† Unless a journalist desires to present a senator in a negative light, â€Å"going to† is a better choice than gonna, even in a direct quotation. Professional writers especially might be expected to avoid nonstandard usage and spelling, but the evidence on Amazon is that for many authors, gonna, gotta, wanna, and even whatcha and coulda are acceptable written English. Here’s a sampling of book titles: Dude, You’re Gonna Be a Dad! 10 Things You Gotta Know About Choosing a College I Wanna Iguana (This one is the title of a children’s book.) Whatcha Gonna Do with that Duck? Coulda Been a Cowboy Time will be the judge. An Ngram search shows that the use of gonna in printed books has risen dramatically since the 1960s, and gotta and wanna are making a little progress. It’s possible that these words will become acceptable in standard English one day. Meanwhile, their use does not reflect well on writers who wish to be taken seriously. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Style category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:Wether, Weather, WhetherProbable vs. PossibleUsing "zeitgeist" Coherently

Enchaning level of engagement with data in the allocation anduse in Dissertation

Enchaning level of engagement with data in the allocation anduse in Seychelles -would an integrated VFM code be a useful initiat - Dissertation Example This conclusion is that the country is at a point in its economic management where needs to be an urgent intervention to savage it from further deterioration. Presently, the debt to Gross Domestic Product for Seychelles stands at 160% (Advisory Group, 2001). This is an exorbitant value that indicts the possibility of the country to becoming totally classified as economically independent. What is even more disturbing is the fact that Seychelles is a country of barely two million people. The attempts made by international bodies such as the World Bank and United Human Development in consultation with the government to undertake reforms in the public sector to curb the current problems would therefore be described as a step in the right direction. However, the current problem has gone beyond the use of paper work policies. It is therefore high time the country adapted a comprehensive model in savaging the situation other than the value for money code policy currently in use. 5.1.2 Value for Money Code policy for Seychelles 5.1.2.1 Legal dimension As a first step towards the mitigation of massive waste in the public sector, which has led to the existence of the current huge debt to GDP, Seychelles has adapted the use of value for money code policy. ... In Seychelles where this research is being focused on, the President Representative reports of proofs of how several projects that were started have been left to be white elephants. There is therefore a legal mandate for government to ensure that certain red flags that predict ineffectiveness and inefficiencies with the procurement processes are blocked. There must also be review on the mandate of the various ministries in Seychelles. This would ensure that some of the powers and autonomies given to the ministries as members of the executive arm of government in manipulating the flow and assignment of projects are curtailed. In most modern economies, a chunk of the blame of mismanagement is directed at the executive arm of government (Aicken and McCrae, 1992a). It is often thought that the executive arm of government is too powerful and manipulates other arms of government like the judiciary and legislature. Should there be a generalised autonomy of the various arms therefore, some o f these irregularities will be corrected. 5.1.2.2 Political dimension From a political dimension, there cannot be any better conclusion drawn for the government of Seychelles to follow than for it to check its transparency policies. This should apply to both the public and private sectors but with particular emphasis on the public sector. According to the literature review and views from respondents who answered the interview, access to information and freedom to the flow of information is the most viable means of ensuring transparency in the public. In this regard, the media has been identified as very good agents for policing and interrogating all policies and programs carried out in the public sector. From the literature

Marketing questions x 2 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Marketing questions x 2 - Essay Example The manager must try to keep his services memorable to his customers each time he provides it. Though there are no direct considerable benefits from intangible services, manager must give priority to this process as it helps him/her to circulate the brand name. Inseparability of services means the services cannot be separated from the persons or sources that provide them. This feature helps the marketer to maintain a good relationship with his /her customers. Since the services are inseparable from the provider, the manager or his staff should be pleasant and polite enough while providing their services in order to ensure good service experience to the customers. Variability or heterogeneity of services is another important tool to anchor a firm’s sustainability in market. It means services are variable on the ground of individuality of service providers and service delivery time. The customers always like to get the most efficient and consistent service whenever they require it. Hence, in order to meet customers’ needs, managers have to develop well-organized selection and training programs for their staffs. The marketer can also arrange a ‘customer satisfaction monitoring system’ which would help him/her to assess the effects of the services provided. ‘Peishability of services’ also have considerable significance in the development and execution of marketing plans. Perishability of services means, the service is decayed quickly or cannot be stored as it is intangible. In order to overcome the perishability of services, managers must try to maintain a balance between the demand and supply of their com modities (Fisher, Pride and Miller 32-33). The characteristics discussed above can be explained with an example of a service experience I have had as a customer. Once I visited a car showroom to get detailed