UNIDEAL SOCIETY: A Reflection Paper

A reflection paper about Plato's Analogy of the State to the Individual.

If the definition of ideal society is “wisdom first”, then I would like to have the unideal one. Plato’s Analogy of the State to the Individual, it states that a “society is like an enlarged person” and it consists of the ruler as the wisdom, soldier as the courage, and worker as the appetite. In his analogy, it was clearly stated that the ruler must rule over and dominate the soldier and the worker in order to have a good life because ruler was said to be rational enough to rule them. But one question entered my mind, why does it need to have dominations if they can be equal?

I contradict Plato’s idea that wisdom must come first before courage and appetite because I do believe that wisdom, courage, and appetite can work together as a balanced and harmonic trio. Wisdom won’t work if I don’t have the appetite. Why? Because appetite gives me the goal that I need to achieve and wisdom would be nonsense if I don’t have any goal to be achieved. For example, I want to be successful in life in terms of money so that I can help my family and other people, and because of that “want” in my life, my wisdom will rule me to achieve that goal. However, appetite and wisdom are not enough, and that is where courage comes out. Even if I have the goal to achieve given by appetite and the plan to achieve it given by wisdom, I won’t make it if I don’t have the guts to do it. For example, I want to be successful and my wisdom’s plan is to study hard, if I don’t have the courage and the inspiration to do it, I won’t make it. Therefore, wisdom, courage, and appetite don’t need any dominations because balance and harmony are good enough for them.

Domination creates inequality and inequality creates chaos. If certain things aren’t balanced, ineffectiveness might emerge. For me, ideal society/person is not something imbalanced. Because the real ideal is the ability to be balanced despite of their conflicts and differences.