And, Plato argues, we would be happier with their choices than we ever could be if we chose our lives for ourselves under the circumstances of our everyday world. That choice would be left to the philosophers among us - a small class, definitely not that of philosophy professors today, who know what is good, just and right for every citizen. Plato's Republic, I hope, is one of the most disturbing books you have ever read: a casual conversation about old age, through an immense series of small steps, to which, though most seem reasonable, we are never allowed to object (Glaucon and Adeimantus are always there ahead of us with their unending "Yes, of course, Socrates"), results in an obsessively detailed description of a social organization in which most people in this room, despite our qualifications, would have ended up either as laborers or soldiers through no obvious choice of our own.
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