Utopia｜Volume 8 and 9: Government and Personality

Volume 8 mainly reviews four flawed political systems one by one.

There are as many different types of personalities as there are different types of political systems. Political systems arise from the habits of city-state citizens, and the tendency of habits determines the direction of everything else.

Socrates proposed four flawed national systems, which are:

The first one is called the Spartan and Cretan political system and is widely praised. Its main characteristics are competitiveness and love of honor; the second type is called oligarchy, the rule of a few people, taking second place in honor. It uses property as the criterion and worships money, which has a lot of harm; the third type is called oligarchy. Democracy comes after oligarchy, and is opposite to it. Its biggest feature is the diversity of characters in the city-state, and they can do whatever they want; finally, the fourth type is tyranny, which comes from Extreme freedom, it is the last scourge of the city-state.

The ninth volume mainly talks about who is the happiest, the just and the unjust.

The order of happiness of five types of characters - king, fame-seeker, oligarch, democrat and tyrant - is from high to low. The kindest and most just people (king type) are the happiest people because they have the most kingly temperament and are the most self-controlled. The evilest and most unjust people (tyrant type) are the most unfortunate people because they have the most tyrant temperament. , tyrannizing not only himself but his country

Just as the city-state is divided into three estates, so the mind of each man can be divided into three parts - reason, passion and desire, which correspond to each other. There are three kinds of happiness, three kinds of desires and three kinds of rule. Reason is used by people to learn, and its desire is "love of wisdom"; passion is used to get angry, and its desire is "love of victory"; desire is about people. All kinds of desires need to be satisfied through money, so it can be called "love of money". In everyone, one of the three is always dominant. Because of this, we say that there are three basic types of people: philosophers or those who love wisdom; soldiers or those who love victory; and craftsmen or those who love money. Correspondingly, these three types of people also have three kinds of happiness, and each type of person has his own. The kind of life that is happiest. Businessmen assert that knowledge and honor are inferior to money. Soldiers despise money and learning. Philosophers regard other pleasures as far inferior to the true happiness - the happiness of eternal study of truth, judging from experience, knowledge and reason. The philosopher has the most experience of these three kinds of happiness, so he is the happiest and the happiest. For the philosopher, the happiness of the soul obtained by those who pursue wisdom and knowledge is the real happiness. There is happiness inherent in justice and goodness, and the pleasures of the body are really but shadows and pictures of true happiness.