Plato`s political science is never exclusively ancient or Hellenic, but identifies, epitomizes, and explores the still current background of politics: the problematic “irreversibility” and “scarcity”. As an adequate discussion of such problem must probe into its past and future possibilities, Plato, a “spectator or all times and of all existence”, maneuvering colorful characters able to imagine a limited human likelihood of gods in the future, and narrating in prose and myth, tested the feasibility and sustainability of “perfect” political systems at all levels of technological development, in a world of inherent randomness, apparent physical laws, and free will. Revelation of this test, then, are twofold, that no political system, including those best-designed, could hope for static existence forever, due to the world`s innate randomness, regardless of whether “irreversibility” and “scarcity” was overcame with technology. Yet this same randomness could, at the same time, and on the contrary, deny despotism immortality and full legitimacy at least in theory, by protecting ethics and freedom from natural sciences, and preserving hope, through refusal of strict determinism in all manners. It is thus noteworthy, that in such Platonic world, and probably our world, political idleness would never be safe, even in the best-governed polity, of powerful technology, so self-loving people should always bear the burden, however light, of making themselves just in a just manner.
Wen Yi Zhu (Thu,) studied this question.