In an early dialogue of Plato's, the Protagoras, Socrates asks
Protagoras why it is not as easy to find teachers of virtue as it is
to find teachers of swordsmanship, riding, or any other art.
Protagoras' answer is that there are no special teachers of virtue,
because virtue is taught by the whole community. Plato and Aristotle
both accept the view of moral education implied in this answer. In a
passage of the Republic (492 b) Plato repudiates the notion that the
sophists have a corrupting moral influence upon young men. The public
themselves, he says, are the real sophists and the most complete and
thorough educators. No private education can hold out against the
irresistible force of public opinion and the ordinary moral standards
of society. But that makes it all the more essential that public
opinion and social environment should not be left to grow up at
haphazard as they ordinarily do, but should be made by the wise
legislator the expression of the good and be informed in all their
details by his knowledge. The legislator is the only possible teacher
of virtue.
Such a programme for a treatise on government might lead us to expect
in the Politics mainly a description of a Utopia or ideal state which
might inspire poets or philosophers but have little direct effect upon
political institutions. Plato's Republic is obviously impracticable,
for its author had turned away in despair from existing politics. He
has no proposals, in that dialogue at least, for making the best of
things as they are.
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