He then proceeds to eliminate the body and the senses from being without doubt, until he comes up with the one verifiable truth: Sensing? There can be no sensing in the absence of body; and besides I have seemed during sleep to apprehend things which does belong to me: it alone cannot be separated from me. I am, I exist. This is certain. How often? As often as I think. For it might indeed be that if I entirely ceased to think, I should thereupon altogether cease to exist. I am not at present admitting anything, that is to say, a mind an understanding or reason--terms the significance of which has hitherto been unknown to me. I am, then, a real thing, and really existent. What thing? I have said it a thinking thing. (Descartes, Rene, "Meditations," Struhl, Paula Rothenberg, and Struhl Karsten J., editors, Philosophy Now. Random House: 1980)
Two of Socrates' students attempted coups and failed. According to I.F. Stone, in his book Gadfly's Guilt: The Trial of Socrates, "Bloody political coups led by two of his best-known students, Alcibiades and Critias, overthrew democratic government in Athens in 411 and 404 B.C. the threat of a third coup in 401, triggered Socrates' trial, which took place two years later"(Stone, I.F. Qtd. in Elson, John. Books: Gadfly's Guilt: The Trial of Socrates. Time, 01-25-98, p.66). Stone, however, also argues that Socrates was "in reality a coldhearted, elitist, pro-Spartan snob who was openly contemptuous of Athens' Democracy and favored totalitarian rule by a philosopher-king"(Stone, I. F. Qtd. in Elson, John). That is not the intent of the paper. Plato's goal could not have been a Philosophical Monarchy, because the teachings of Socrates require the intellectual participation of many, or a Democracy. Plato's goal is a political philosophical change in the way the future rulers of the government think, not to over throw the government by force.
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