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Philosopher kings are the hypothetical rulers, or Guardians, of Plato
Plato

Plato , was a Classical Greece Greeks philosopher, mathematician, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Platonic Academy in Ancient Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the western world....
's Utopian Kallipolis. If his ideal city-state
City-state

A city-state is an independent country whose territory consists solely of a single major city and the area immediately surrounding it. Examples include the city-states of ancient Greece , the Phoenician cities of Canaan , the Sumerian cities of Mesopotamia , the Mayans of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica , the central Asian cities along the Silk Roa...
 is to ever come into being, "philosophers [must] become kings…or those now called kings [must]…genuinely and adequately philosophize" (The Republic, 5.473d).

o defined a philosopher firstly as its eponymous occupation – wisdom-lover.






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Philosopher kings are the hypothetical rulers, or Guardians, of Plato
Plato

Plato , was a Classical Greece Greeks philosopher, mathematician, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Platonic Academy in Ancient Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the western world....
's Utopian Kallipolis. If his ideal city-state
City-state

A city-state is an independent country whose territory consists solely of a single major city and the area immediately surrounding it. Examples include the city-states of ancient Greece , the Phoenician cities of Canaan , the Sumerian cities of Mesopotamia , the Mayans of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica , the central Asian cities along the Silk Roa...
 is to ever come into being, "philosophers [must] become kings…or those now called kings [must]…genuinely and adequately philosophize" (The Republic, 5.473d).

In Book VII of The Republic

Plato defined a philosopher firstly as its eponymous occupation – wisdom-lover. He then distinguishes between one who loves true knowledge as opposed to simple sights or education by saying that a philosopher is the only man who has access to Forms
Theory of Forms

Plato's Theory of Forms asserts that Forms , and not the material world of change Plato's allegory of the cave, possess the highest and most fundamental kind of reality....
 – the archetypal entities that exist behind all representations of the form (such as Beauty itself as opposed to any one particular instance of beauty). It is next and in support of the idea that philosophers are the best rulers that Plato fashions the ship of state
Ship of state

The ship of state is a famous and oft-cited metaphor put forth by Plato in book VI of ??Plato's Republic??. It likens the governance of a city-state to the command of a naval vessel - and ultimately argues that the only men fit to be Captain of this ship are philosopher kings, benevolent men with absolute power who have access to the Form o...
 metaphor, one of his most often cited ideas (along with his allegory of the cave
Allegory of the cave

The Allegory of the Cave, also commonly known as Myth of the Cave, Metaphor of the Cave or the Parable of the Cave, is an allegory used by the Ancient Greece philosopher Plato in his work The Republic to illustrate "our nature in its education and want of education"....
). "[A] true pilot must of necessity pay attention to the seasons, the heavens, the stars, the winds, and everything proper to the craft if he is really to rule a ship" (The Republic, 6.488d). Plato claims that the sailors (i.e., the people of the city-state over whom the philosopher is the potential ruler) ignore the philosopher's "idle stargazing" because they have never encountered a true philosopher before.

Relationship to the rest of The Republic

The entirety of The Republic can be understood as a treatise on education, political thought, philosophy, or psychology. The entirety of the work is concerned with how to raise the guardians, or ruling class of the Kallipolis, effectively.

Historical philosopher-kings

Several figures in history have been cited as exhibiting key attributes of the Platonic ideal, including:
  • Napoleon Bonaparte
  • Solomon
    Solomon

    Solomon is a figure described in the Hebrew Bible and the Qur'an. The biblical accounts identify Solomon as the son of David. He is also called Jedidiah in the Tanakh , and is described as the third king of the United Monarchy, and the final king before the northern Kingdom of Israel and the southern Kingdom of Judah split; following th...
  • Alexander the Great
    Alexander the Great

    Alexander the Great , also known as Alexander III of Macedon was an ancient Greeks King of Macedon . He was one of the most successful military commanders of all time and is presumed undefeated in battle....
  • Marcus Aurelius
    Marcus Aurelius

    Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus was Roman Emperor from 161 to his death in 180. He was the last of the "Five Good Emperors", and is also considered one of the most important stoicism philosophy....
  • Ashoka
    Ashoka

    Ashoka was an Indian emperor, of the Maurya Empire who ruled from 273 BCE to 232 BCE. Often cited as one of India's as well as world's greatest emperors, Ashoka reigned over most of present-day India after a number of military conquests....
  • Bhoja
    Bhoja

    Bhoja was a philosopher king and polymath of medieval India. He ruled the kingdom of Malwa in central India from about 1010 to 1060.The name means "bountiful, liberal" and appears as the name of a tribe, the descendants of Mahabhoja, in the Mahabharata....
  • Akbar the Great
    Akbar the Great

    Jalaluddin Muhammad Akbar , also known as Akbar the Great was the son of Nasiruddin Humayun whom he succeeded as ruler of the Mughal Empire from 1556 to 1605....
  • John II Komnenos
    John II Komnenos

    John II Komnenos or Comnenus was Byzantine emperor from 1118 to 1143. Also known as Kalo?oannes , he was the eldest son of emperor Alexios I Komnenos and Irene Doukaina....
     (described as Rome's "Second Marcus Aurelius")
  • Matthias Corvinus of Hungary
    Matthias Corvinus of Hungary

    Matthias I was Kings of Hungary of Kingdom of Hungary ....
  • Frederick the Great
  • Suleiman the Magnificent
    Suleiman the Magnificent

    Suleiman I, His Imperial Majesty , was the tenth and longest-reigning Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, from 1520 to his death in 1566. He is known in Western world as Suleiman the Magnificent and in Eastern world, as the Lawgiver , for his complete reconstruction of the Ottoman legal system....
  • Nezahualcoyotl
    Nezahualcoyotl

    Nezahualcoyotl According to his descendants and biographers, Fernando de Alva Cort?s Ixtlilxochitl and Juan Bautista de Pomar, who lived a century after Nezahualcoyotl, he was something of a monotheist, honoring his god in a 10-level pyramidal temple....
  • Kangxi


Criticism


Karl Popper
Karl Popper

Knight Bachelor Karl Raimund Popper Order of the Companions of Honour, Fellow of the Royal Society, Fellow of the British Academy was an Austrian and British philosopher and a professor at the London School of Economics....
 blamed Plato for the rise of totalitarianism
Totalitarianism

Totalitarianism is a concept used to describe political systems whereby a state regulates nearly every aspect of public and private life. Totalitarian regimes or movements maintain themselves in political power by means of an official all-embracing ideology and propaganda disseminated through the state-controlled mass media, single-party st...
 in the Twentieth Century, seeing Plato's Philosopher-kings, with their dreams of 'social engineering' and 'idealism', as leading directly to Stalin and Hitler (via Marx and Hegel) . In addition, Ayatollah Khomeini is said to have been inspired by the Platonic vision of the philosopher king while in Qum in the 1920s when he became interested in Islamic mysticism and Plato's Republic. As such it has been speculated that he was inspired by Plato's philosopher king and subsequently modeled elements of his "Islamic Republic
Islamic republic

Islamic Republic is the name given to several states in the Muslim world including the Islamic Republics of Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan and Mauritania....
" based on it.

Historical philosopher-queens


  • Ahilyabai Holkar
    Ahilyabai Holkar

    Punyaslok Rajmata Ahilyadevi Holkar, called "Catherine II of Russia, Elizabeth, Margaret I of Denmark of India?, was a Holkar dynasty Queen of the Malwa kingdom, India, The 'Philosopher Queen'....
  • Catherine II of Russia
    Catherine II of Russia

    Catherine II, called Catherine the Great .The Russian empress Catherine II, known as Catherine the Great, reigned from 1762 to 1796. Under her direct auspices the Russian Empire expanded, improved in its administration, and underwent a dramatic policy of Westernization....


See also

  • Enlightened Absolutism
    Enlightened absolutism

    Enlightened absolutism is a form of absolute monarchy or despotism in which rulers were influenced by the Age of Enlightenment. Enlightened monarchs embraced the principles of the Enlightenment, especially its emphasis upon rationality, and applied them to their territories....


External links

  • .