Clarifying this postulate, Hegel wrote that Plato belonged to personalities of world-historic importance and his philosophy was one of those creations of worldwide significance that since its emergence “had been exerting the greatest influence on spiritual culture and the course of its development during all the following epochs”.

In Plato’s view, the aim of philosophy is to enable just mutual cohabitation of people in the State, created in conformity with the laws of justice. The aim of justice is to harmonize these different virtues in such a way that not only the citizens would be just, but the State as well, and vice versa. What is needed, is to harmonize functions of different citizens’ strata that correspond to three parts of soul, the stratum of philosophers, corresponding to rational soul with wisdom as its virtue, the stratum of warriors, whose virtue is courage, the stratum of craftsmen, the desiring part of soul, with abstinence as its primary virtue, conforming to it. Such a division of aims detracts nothing from the principle of justice,

Along with that, Aristotle writes about the necessity of “generosity”, making people support the poor and calls “friendship”, defined as a mutual solidarity of free people, the highest political virtue. Further on, Aristotle points to means and conditions of State formation that contribute to the greatest extent to harmonization of interests for common good and benefit. He considered those forms of State to be good political forms, in which government exercised its powers for the common benefit.

The notion of “justice” as applied until now in law, matches better Plato’s concept than the notion of “justice”, as used in political speculations. Under the impact of democratic theory we started associating justice with equality, however, it didn’t have such a meaning for Plato. In the sense, in which “justice” is almost the synonym of law, if for instance, we are speaking about “court”, justice concerns, primarily, the rights of property, which have no relation to equality. The first definition of “justice”, offered in the starting pages of “Res publica”, says that it consists in paying debts. Rather soon, this definition is left aside as inappropriate, however certain part of it is referred to at the end. One should express several considerations concerning Plato’s definition. Firstly, it does not allow an opportunity for inequality in power, and privileges without justice. The guards should possess all the power as soon as they are the wisest members of the community; according to Plato, injustice would take place only if the people belonging to other strata would excel some of the guardsmen in wisdom. That’s why Plato envisages promotion and demotion of citizens, although he assumes that in most cases double privilege of birth and education would lead to superiority of guards’ children over the children from other strata. If there were a more adequate science of administration, and if there were more confidence that the people would follow its guidelines, there would be much in favour of Plato’s system.

State is the embodiment of justice, which can’t be embodied through separate individuals and their virtues, it can exist only in the connexion that leads to the universal. Only that State can be just that acts as a mirror of individual.

Making use of an ancient myth, in fact, Plato argued that people differed one from another by their natural gifts, depending on what matter their soul is made of: gold, silver or bronze. Hence Plato drew an unexpected conclusion that has allowed thinkers of other epochs to call him the first ideologist of totalitarianism. Plato pointed out that to realize better this rigid criterion of equality, as applied from the very start to all citizens, none of them should know, whose son he was, and the parents shouldn’t even know who their children were. In Plato’s view, such a principle would ensure a good operation of State, if supplemented by some other principles: commonality of property, women, rulers and warriors. This would help to evade avidity and competition, as well as domination of private interests over the social ones. The territory of an ideal state should not be too vast and over-populated, to escape the emergence of expansionist tendencies, being the source of external wars and internal clashes.

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