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Outline Plato's Simile of the Ship and Two of It's Possible Purposes (15 Marks)

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Outline Plato’s simile of the ship and two of its possible purposes (15 Marks)
Plato’s simile of the ship is used as a retort to Adeimantus’ assertions that philosophers are “very odd birds, not to say thoroughly vicious”, and even their best qualities prove to be completely useless to society. In the simile, each feature represents an element of Athenian society. The ship itself represents the Athenian democratic state. The captain of the ship, who is large and strong, is also deaf and short-sighted, as he cannot what is good for society in the long run, thus represents the currently democratically elected ruler. The crew of the ship represent the politicians. They quarrel amongst themselves, with a desire to seize power of the captain. …show more content…

However, there was only a specific criteria of people who would be able to attend such meetings - the young and the rich, as they were the only people who could afford to take time off to attend. Thirdly, sophists, trained in the Arts of public speaking, were asked to deliver speeches. However, as they were only interested in wealth and power, they were somewhat easily bribed into speaking and voting in certain ways - subjecting themselves to popular opinion. The voters themselves were also often bribed, and in some cases, threatened. From this, we can infer that Assembly meetings were not ordered events, but instead chaotic and corrupt, with bribery, use of threat, and sophists “smooth-talking” their way to influence the voters decisions. The simile of the ship illustrates this through the crew members (representing the politicians) vying amongst one another to gain power, and alike the sophists, not having any interest in what is good for the state, but instead, just an egotistic interest in wealth and power.

Another personal purpose of the Simile of the Ship, following on from the first purpose, is to illustrate how true philosophers are ignored (alike the Navigator is ignored on the ship) or held in contempt in democratic society when they should be in charge. The Philosopher should be in charge, Plato purports, as the philosopher has true, justified knowledge of the state and also

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