Study On Plato's Economic Thought

Plato was a famous economic thinker in ancient Greece.His economic thoughts were valued by Aristotle,Smith,Marx,Spiegel and others.Academia attaches great importance to studying Plato's idealism,political philosophy,and ethics,and rarely studies its economic thought.Based on "Ideal Country" and "Law",this article takes Plato's ethical order and economic order of building an ideal city-state as research clues,and takes concrete economic thought as the main research content to investigate the actual causes and theoretical sources of Plato's economic thought To clarify Plato's cognition of the economic situation of ancient Athens and reveal the nature,laws and characteristics of Plato's economic thought.This article attempts to use the paradigm of economic philosophy and political economy to elaborate on Plato's economic thoughts,covering justice,division of labor,ownership,circulation,consumption,and city-state,political system,to construct a research system of Plato's economic thoughts.Under the paradigm of economic philosophy,the paper explains the ethical basis and moral norms of Plato's construction of an ideal city-state economic order;under the paradigm of classical political economy,it constructs the ideological system of division,production,ownership,exchange and circulation,and consumer welfare;under the new political economics paradigm,it discusses the economic origin of city-states,the economic order under different city-state political systems,and the city-state economic and social governance under the philosophical king-state system.In terms of research methods,this article uses a combination of historical analysis and logical analysis to explore the impact of the classical human enlightenment on Plato's economic thinking in the middle and late classics;using a combination of elaboration and comparison,Plato's economic thinking is combined with the economics of other thinkers Compare ideas to grasp the theoretical essence and characteristics of Plato's economic thoughts.In addition to the introduction,this article has eight chapters and thirty-three sections.The first chapter mainly introduces Plato's life,works and economic thoughts.The reason why the author introduces Plato's life and works will help us to more objectively understand the theoretical origin,era background and philosophical bias of his overall thinking;and explain his economic thinking from the perspective of ethical philosophy for this article Make empirical materials.The second chapter explains Plato 's economic ethics thoughts.Based on clarifying the influence of former Platon scholars on Plato 's theory of justice,he demonstrates Plato 's criticism of the utilitarian and justice viewpoints prevailing at that time,and explains his ethical basis and justice norms for constructing an ideal city-state economic order And ways to achieve it.On the basis of explaining economic ethics,explain Plato's construction of an ideal city-state economic and social order,focusing on analyzing and summarizing the division of labor,ownership,exchange,consumption,and governance concepts.The third chapter discusses Plato's idea of division of labor,focusing on explaining the division of labor in the ideal city-state.Discusses the connotation of Plato's division of labor,rejects the completely self-sufficient natural division of labor and the economic division of absolute commodity exchange,advocates the limited natural division of labor and the division of commodity economy,and explains the relationship between division of labor and social structure.The fourth chapter studies the thought of Plato's ownership,focusing on the design of ideal city-state ownership.Plato criticized the absolute private property system and the class distribution system,advocated the property ownership system and the practice of the common wives and sons system,and the author revealed the essence of his ownership thought through the "citizen's land sharing" property ownership scheme.The fifth chapter studies Plato's idea of exchange and circulation,and discusses the design of the ideal city-state commodity economic order.It expounds Plato's idea of commercial origin,discusses his criticism of unfair and absolute ideas and behaviors of commodity exchange,and discusses the ideal economic order of commodity states such as currency arrangements,market order,and restrictions on commerce.The sixth chapter studies Plato's thoughts on consumer welfare,and explores the concept and order of life under the guidance of justice.Plato put forward the concept of a purely just life and advocated a modest life;discussed Plato's views and requirements on the material and cultural life of the ideal city-state and the welfare of the people's livelihood,including public meals,stylistics,religion,respect for the elderly and orphans.The seventh chapter studies the origin of Plato's city-state and the thought of economic and social governance,focuses on the relationship between city-state,political system and economy,explains Plato's theory of economic origin and its appearance,discusses the evolution of economic order under the evolution of city-state's political system,and clarifies Economic and social governance under the ideal city-state.The eighth chapters explain the influence of Plato's economic thoughts on western mainstream economic theory,Marx's economic theory and utopian socialist ideas,as well as the scholars of the Republic of China spreading Plato's economic thoughts and New China scholars' research on Plato's economic thoughts.The implications of the problem are explained.The research conclusion of this article is that Plato is an ethical economist,based on justice ethics and speculative rationality as the paradigm of thinking,constructing his ideal city-state ethical order and economic order,and thus forming his economic thought system.Justice ethics is the core of Plato's economic thought,and is the standard for criticizing traditional economic concepts and economic order,and the goal of constructing an ideal city-state economic order.Plato's theory of justice focuses on the harmony of human souls.It is a moral justice concept to realize personal justice and city-state justice through the conduct norms in the soul.Guided by the theory of justice,Plato has discussed the issues of city-state division of labor,exchange,distribution,consumption,and governance.Plato's economic thought of division of labor attaches importance to the division of labor among the philosophers,guardians and producers,and is a theory of social division of labor;his thought of ownership emphasizes the realization of a restricted private system at the working class and the common property system at the ruling class,it's A mixed ownership idea of a hierarchical society;his exchange idea explores monetary media arrangements,mandatory market order,and commodity economic order that restricts commerce,this is a highly concentrated plan exchange idea;his consumer idea advocates a modest life And abandoning private life,this is a collective consumption idea;his welfare concept advocates that city-states provide comprehensive welfare services and is an absolute city-state welfare concept;his governance ideas strongly emphasize city-state legislation and the rule of law,which is a highly controlled The concept of economic and social governance.This article explores,theoretically reveals the ideological and cultural traditions of modern western economic theory,and digs out the beneficial components of Plato's economic thought,so as to provide a reference for China's socialist market economy theory.In practice,by analyzing Plato's failure to promote economic reform,revealing economic reform programs that run counter to the trend of the commodity economy or market economy are limited and provide a reference for the construction of a socialist market economy in China.