What Is Plato’s Argument For The Conclusion That Philosophers Should Rule?

What is Plato’s argument for the conclusion that philosophers should rule?  Is it persuasive?
 
 
Abstract
 
Plato’s political theory has always remained controversial through history.  Scholars have labelled him as totalitarian or even racialist, others have just agreed that, from a different point of view, his theory could be useful, although at same time, it turns out to be too utopian.Therefore, through this essay, I will discuss whether this theory of political organization would be effective or if it is just a perfect example of the problems arisen by totalitarianisms through the 20th century.
 
Introduction
 
In his book, The Republic, Plato presents a revolutionary idea that not only shocked his contemporaries, but also several scholars during history.
Through anelaborated theory, based on the education of the community, Plato presents a political structure totally opposed to the establish Athenian democracy. By doing so, he tried to correct the mistakes democracy had back then to create a “perfect” society where people would be specialized in three different kinds of social statements. They have been attributed different names, but for the purpose of thisessay, I would use the following division: producers,  guardians and philosopher kings (Reeve 2009).
Thus, with the theory of forms and the tripartite soul, Plato explains why not everyone is prepared to rule the community and, according to that, only few members would be able to acquire the characteristics that a true ruler should have.
 

Plato’s theory
 
One of the basic point that shapesPlato’s theory is the division of the human soul in three different parts: the appetitive, the rational and the spirited (Plato 1976, Book 4). The first part is responsible for the basic desires of people, the rational part judges the benefit of the previous desires and imposes rationality over banal desires, and the spirited part enforces reason, bringing the total pureness to the soul as a whole.At the same time, each part of the soul is associated to each social class, the appetitive part to the producers, the rational part to the guardians, and the spirited part to the philosopher kings. Therefore, from this initial point, Plato already begin to explain why the latter class is more suitable for ruling.
Nonetheless, to explain this point, Plato introduces the theory of forms (Plato1976, Book 5). Briefly explained, this theory states that there are two different worlds: the world of forms and the world we live in. In the first one, we find the forms or ideas of what we see in our world. Those forms are the perfect representation of the things in our world; they represent the truth and reality, thus, everything we know in this world is not real, and it is just a representationof those forms. Generally, people are not able to truly know the essence of things since they do not acknowledge the forms, but with the analogy of the cave (Plato 1976: Books 7-8), Plato explains how few people, at some point in their lives, scape from ignorance and are able to see and understand the forms, making it possible for those people to have a true wisdom, and so, be truly prepared torule.
Finally, the other main point of Plato’s theory is the principle of specialisation and the unique aptitude doctrine (Plato 1976: Book 2). This idea states that people are born with a natural aptitude for a craft. By specialising in their own fields, they contribute to the order of the polis structure. Hence, by the specialisation through education, those people naturally fit for ruling areprepared for it, and those who succeed in their 50 years training will acquire the required knowledge to be a philosopher king.

Scholar opposition
 
This idea may seem to be acceptable and useful in theory, however, few people would agree that it would be effective in the real world since Plato bases all his theories in total subjective points of view. In opposition to current ideologies...