Plato On Democracy And Its Significance

As the founder of the western political philosophy, Plato has had a profound effect on thedevelopment of Western political philosophy and politics. In his representative work " TheRepublic", he made a detailed exposition on the theory of justice, political construction,national education theory, in the " laws " and " statesman " has carried beneficial explorationon national legal construction. At present, study of Western Political Science, Plato’s worksbecame the most basic books. There are different positions, however, the supporters, manyproblems can appeal to Plato theory in the process of modernization, and opponents argue that,Plato advocated despotism, totalitarianism. This study is a brief of the Plato’s, politicalphilosophy historical,background and ideological heritage display their thoughts, points outthat many political ideas are not completely out of his own imagination.The structure of this paper is divided into four parts, here is a brief review of this thesis:The first part points out that the emergence of the political thoughts of Plato was heavilyinfluenced by historical background.The second part, I will list the representative criticism on Plato。According to Popperthought that Plato’s theory is the source of modern totalitarianism. This paper thinks that, themethod that Popper uses to is wrong, In fact, what Plato opposed to is extreme individualism,but not for the democratic nature of the negative.The third part thinks that classical justice--the idea of good is the foundation of Plato’sdemocratic political philosophy; Plato thought that purpose of any polis was to achieve publicinterests.The fourth part, point out that we need to discard the first impressions to study ancientphilosophy. Today we still need to pay attention to the value category. Plato’s research onhuman morality, still have very important significance for the contemporary nationalconstruction. In the process of promoting the political modernization, we need to guardagainst defects caused by excessive democracy.