The Utopian Ideal

Making a climb down, how the great political philosopher Plato concluded sovereignty of law can alone be a realistic foundation of a well-governed state, analyses Ramesh Misra

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WE live in cynical times. Ideals are for us dreams of the distant past. For someone who is young ideals are not even dreams, they could be wild imaginations of a schizoid mind. It may therefore seem ludicrous to talk about Plato's ideal State during these times. But ideal is an essential part of human mind which is so wired that the actual in spite of its physical presence is not good enough to fire the imagination. Moral disgust against things that are unethical is also part of human nature even when it remain unexpressed in an unfavourable social environment.