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Carl Pobber famously condemned Plato for being a precursor to totalitarianism,

and it's become received wisdom about Plato

that he had anti-democratic instincts. Melissa Lane argues that this is a crude reading of Plato's

writings. In particular, Plato advocated strong restrictions on the rulers. Melissa Lane, welcome to

philosophy bites. Thanks, Nigel, welcome to Philosophy Bites.

Thanks, Nigel.

Great to talk to you.

The topic we're going to focus on today is Plato, rule and office.

Before we get on to rule and office, could you just very briefly say something about Plato

and particularly the Republic, the work that epitomizes his political philosophy?

Plato's Republic is famous for being believed to advocate the rule of philosopher,

kings and queens, and it's believed that that's meant to be an untrammeled absolutist rule.

And one story of Plato's political development in his lifetime is that by the end of his life,

he realized the dangers of that kind of rule and moved to advocating a more constitutionalist, at least second best form of governance.

So what I want to argue about Plato's Republic is that, in fact, built into the Republic is a structured political

constitutional order, where, in fact, far from advocating untrammeled absolutist power,

the whole concern of the Republic is how do you control rulers and office holders to make sure

that they're serving the public good and that they're not in danger

of becoming corrupt and using their power to exploit others for their own ends.

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