What Writers Have Successfully Identified the Principles into Building a Perfect Society

Political philosophy

The main aim of this assignment is to show knowledge and understanding of the writers who have successfully and clearly identified the principles that would enable us to build a perfect society. The philosophers that will be used from personal opinion are Plato and Karl Marx; although very different they had the same idea of building a utopian society, utopian is to mean perfect; a society without flaws, by applying certain principles in order for society to become a utopian one. The assignment will aim to demonstrate both sides of the argument in relation to whether their ideas would work, how there is a possibility they could not work and where their ideas stemmed from. Within the assignment works from Thomas Hobbes will be used as a comparison to show a different side of the argument, as he did not want to perfect society, but provided justification into why we needed to appoint a sovereign, so that society did not return into the state of nature.

It is only important that the argument starts with Plato as he is known for creating the blue print for a utopian society. A blue print being a sketch of what society was and the problems that were present, where in his would be eased. His main focus was to build a perfect society. His idea of creating a utopian society stemmed from the death of his mentor Socrates, who was put to death of allegedly corrupting the young, this deeply hurt Plato, who then began writing dialogues that contained replies that Socrates would say to him. One of these dialogues is known as the republic, where Plato establishes the principles on how to build his perfect society.

In order to build his perfect society, he believed that it was the philosopher kings that should rule in the interests of society. Justification for this was that society is governed by three desires; rational, spirit, and appetite. The one who were govern by reason, were the philosopher kings as they know and have seen the truths, these being the forms, and they have seen the ideal form of government being the philosopher kings and ideal form of society, this being a utopian one. Where every one knows their place and certain evils of society e.g.; poverty and misery are all removed. It has few laws and for him has no democracy. As he quotes from the republic "in the perfect state women and children should be held in common, that men and women should share the same education and the same occupations both in peace and in war, and that they should be governed by those of their number who are best at philosophy and war"(plato.1955:356). He believed people that obtained the truth would knowledge the rest of society and this would make them happy. This was part of Plato's idea of a utopian society, philosopher kings rule the rest of society because they know and have seen the truth.

So that the philosopher kings did not rule in their own interests they were to live in a state of communism, it was that they should posses none of the things other men now do, they were to train for war and act as guardians over the community, in return for which they where to get their keep as their annual wage and devote themselves to the care of their fellow guardians and the whole of the state" (plato.1955:357).

I would like to bring on the assignment and discuss Karl Marx's principles of building a utopian society. Unlike Plato, who wanted a state with no democracy other than the elites, Marx wanted a communist society with dictatorship rather than democracy. Just want to briefly out line the reason why Marx came to the conclusion on why he wanted to build a perfect society.

Marx had attended Berlin University after studying at the