Andy Howe
Reflection Paper: “Do our leaders behave like guardians today?”
9/14/03
According to Plato, in order for a city to achieve justice it is imperative that the perfect guardians or leaders administer it. Plato focuses on the specifics of these guardians’ upbringings as something that is excessively important and pertinent to their duties and lives as adults. A system is created to first identify possible guardians, and then after observation and various tests; the guardians are split into two categories.
The first category is that of the auxiliaries, who serve as protectors of the city through both the military and through guarding morals, beliefs, laws, controlling propaganda and filtering information that reaches the public, and the virtues of the city maintaining these aspects of the city. All who are auxiliaries and those of the second category, the ultimate rulers of the city, are forbidden to accumulate wealth, or to engage or satisfy the desire to induce and have pleasures such as drunkenness, possession of women, marriage, and any wrong doings. Every guardian has to pass tests showing that they are free of greed and persuasions; everything that they do is for the best of the city. Specifically for the rulers, who pass tests to show their capacity to be untainted rulers of the city, must show wisdom and superiority through age, whereas the auxiliaries differ slightly by showing mainly courage through all of their actions.
Guardians have very specific responsibilities and requirements; both are trained since birth to think only for the good of the city, to practice just acts, speak highly of the gods, never speak of evils and wrong-doings, and to live their lives with a balance of specific values, morals, and goals. The auxiliaries and rulers differ with respect to specific values, the auxiliaries’ value courage and heroism of the city, and the rulers’ practice wisdom.
The comparison of Plato’s guardians to leaders of the present day shows very few similarities. Having set aside the differences between ideas and values of Plato’s polis and those of the current day cities, our leaders are no matches for those of the polis. Our leaders practice unjust acts, have luxuries, accumulate wealth, and they have not been raised for the soul purpose of being a leader, and countless more differences. Leaders of the current time are more apt to have ulterior motives through campaigns and time in office. Political leaders try to appear just but in reality they have different concerns than the general public. Then, when an elected official is in term, he or she meddles with other peoples’ businesses, changes promises that were once made to the population, and lies. A perfect example of a recent leader performing the unjust act of lying to the population,
“I have never had sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky. I've never had an affair with her.” (Interviewed by Jim Lehrer of ‘NewsHour With Jim Lehrer’)
Such lies would not have been committed in the days of Plato’s polis. For the guardians of the polis are not allowed to possess women or have marriage. On the contrary, leaders of the present day are born and raised to contribute in the same ways as any other citizen. They are people of the norm, maybe people of the extreme upper classes but still they are not of the caliber of the guardians of the polis in the sense of purity and soul cleansing.
In conclusion, the leaders of our time do not behave is the same manor as the guardians of the polis would because, our guardians have been brought up differently and our society’s values are very diverse whereas these of the polis were not. The requirements for leaders in reality are nearing non-existent for they do not outline any kind of philosophy or point of view of which they must hold, unlike the polis where people are brought up to honor and take orders from the rulers. Today’s leaders in reality may sometimes lack education, but these imperfects are not as accentuated as one might think, because in the United States of America, the government is organized with checks and balances built in. Thus, through this system not only one person is in control of the state, but instead, many are. This system was created out of the value of diversity in the mind, which is different from the beliefs of the polis.

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