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Plato: States
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At the beginning of Book V, Plato is beginning to organize himself to describe the manifold ways in which both the state and the individual can decline and become corrupted. However, he is interrupted and these descriptions are, then, left until Books VIII and IX. Books V, VI, and VII offer answers to the questions that the audience now pose. Plato is reticent to answer these because he knows the answers will be unpopular and difficult to believe since they certainly contradict Athenian traditions. Plato conceives of these as three great waves of increasing difficulty --- the role of women, the structure and disposition of families, and the authority to rule.
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Really, in the Sophist, Statesman, Republic, and the Parmenides Plato himself associates knowledge with the apprehension of unchanging Forms and their relationships to one another (which he calls "expertise" in Dialectic). More explicitly, Plato himself argues in the Timaeus that knowledge is always proportionate to the realm from which it is gained. In other words, if one derives their account of something experientially, because the world of sense is in flux, the views therein attained will be mere opinions. And opinions are characterized by a lack of necessity and stability. On the other hand, if one derives their account of something by way of the non-sensible forms, because these forms are unchanging, so too is the account derived from them. It is only in this sense that Plato uses the term "knowledge."
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Like all ancient philosophers Plato maintains a virtue-based eudaemonistic ethics. That is to say, humanwell-being (eudaimonia) is the highest aim of moral thought and conduct; the virtues (aretê=‘excellence’) are the requisite skills and character-traits. If Plato's support for an ethics of happiness seems somewhat subdued that is due to several reasons. First of all, his conception of happiness differs in significant ways from ordinary views. He therefore devotes as much time to undermining the traditional understanding of the good life as to describing his own conception. Second, Plato regards happiness as a state of perfection that is hard to comprehend because it is based on metaphysical presuppositions that seem both hazy and out of the realm of ordinary understanding.
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Plato was born in Athens in about 428 BC and grew up during the decades of conflict with Sparta and other city-states. His parents, Ariston and Perictione, were one of the most distinguished and aristocratic couples in the city. Of the details of Plato's early life almost nothing is known. Because of his family's position it is likely that he was acquainted with Socrates from childhood. Plato probably intended to go into politics, but the fate that Socrates met at the hands of Athenian politicians changed his mind.
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Plato ... prescribes for the two Guardian classes an austere and communistic way of life, so that they may devote all their time and loyalties to the state. They are forbidden to possess private property or money, all their material needs being supplied by the Producers. The family unit is to be abolished, and both Rulers and Auxiliaries are to live together in common halls; children are to be conceived according to an organized breeding programme and brought up in state nurseries, having been removed from their natural mothers at birth. No one will know who their parents, siblings, or children are, and consequently everyone, Plato believes, will regard everyone else as a possible relative and be bonded accordingly. Amongst these two Guardian classes, too, women are to receive exactly the same education and perform exactly the same tasks as men, including ruling the state and going to war.
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By the end of Book IV, Plato had completed his description of the ideal state, an aristocracy of wisdom, and he had used that description to interpret the concepts of wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice. Also, he completed his analogy between individual and state so that he could extend his interpretation to the virtues of the individual. Indeed, in Plato's mind, the state and the individual share the same virtues and ... the same possibilities of decline from virtue.
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