Plato on the Law, Political Rule, and Philosophical Knowledge

The Republic ’s primary justification for philosophers’ rule is their epistemic superiority. I examine several possible cases of such superiority. One important conclusion is that the philosopher-rulers are not greatly epistemically superior to the auxiliaries on matters of ordinary ethics, that is, questions about avoiding force and fraud in one’s relations with others. The philosopher-rulers’ great epistemic superiority is rather with respect to the good and is grounded in their knowledge of the Form of the Good. I consider three examples of how the philosopher-rulers’ knowledge of the Forms, especially that of the Good, might be applied in ruling and argue that such application faces problems that are hard to resolve. I close by pointing to Plato’s possible response to these worries in the Myth of Er and the Phaedrus .