A Question That Reaches Across 2,400 YearsIn the 4th century BC, the Athenian philosopher Plato posed a single question through long dialogues with friends and disciples: "What is justice? And what kind of state truly embodies it?" The answer to that question took shape in the Republic, a monumental work spanning ten books. Covering the nature of justice, the structure of the soul, the qualities required of rulers, and the meaning of education, this portrait of an ideal community is far more than a relic of ancient Greek thought. It confronts those of us living today with insights of startling precision.What would Plato think if he were alive in our time? Faced with the rapid widening of economic inequality, a society fracturing along every imaginable line, a democracy battered by the storms of populism, and a spiritual emptiness in which people are losing touch with their own inner lives — what would he say, and what would he write? Holding Plato up as an enormous mirror to the present reveals the deep contradictions embedded in social structures and values we have long taken for granted.In the pages that follow, we press the core of Plato's thought against the surface of contemporary society and ask: if he were to describe the state as it exists today, what picture would he draw? The inquiry moves carefully through the transformation of democracy, economic inequality, the dissolution of community, the corruption of the soul, and the problems of education and governance.The Fate of Democracy, That "Beautiful Beast"The institution Plato attacked most savagely in the Republic was democracy. He defined it as "a system of disorder in which every desire is set loose," arguing that a society in which people follow their emotions and appetites without limit — all in the name of freedom — must inevitably collapse into mob rule. Demagogues who say only what the crowd wants to hear rise to positions of leadership; society fractures and descends into chaos; and finally a strongman emerges to restore order, giving birth to the tyrant. Plato presented this fall from democracy to tyranny as a historical inevitability.When this analysis is laid over the political landscape of today, its accuracy is striking. In recent years, populism has expanded its reach with extraordinary speed across the entire world. Simple messages that appeal to emotion, the excessive simplification of complex problems, and the fanning of an "elites versus the people" opposition — all of this is the precise figure of the demagogue Plato described, the one who tells the crowd what it wants to hear. Scenes in which short-term emotional satisfaction overrides long-term public interest in referendums and elections repeat themselves everywhere. Politicians who win power not through carefully considered policy debate but through emotional storytelling and the invention of enemies are enacting, in essence, the spectacle of mob rule that Plato painted some 2,400 years ago.Yet to take Plato as a wholesale opponent of democracy is to flatten his thought. What he criticized was democracy without wisdom. If every citizen possesses the rational judgment and ethical sensibility to argue seriously for the common good, democracy need not become the worst of all regimes. Indeed, Plato argued that cultivating precisely such citizens is the supreme task of the state. If modern democracy is malfunctioning, the problem lies not first with the institutions but with the education and moral character of the citizens who sustain them.Were Plato to describe the modern state, he would not try to abolish democratic institutions. He would instead subject to severe scrutiny the conditions required for those institutions to function in the spirit for which they were designed. He would grieve deeply over a world in which the formal machinery of elections is preserved while genuine public deliberation has died, and he would insist, forcefully, that the improvement of human beings must come before the reform of systems.Economic Inequality and the "Corruption of the Soul"Plato approached the problem of wealth and appetite through the lens of what he called the corruption of the soul. In his ideal state, the guardian class was strictly forbidden from holding private property; their motivation for living was to be honor and service to the community. Once the accumulation of wealth was permitted among the ruling class, society would decay from "timocracy" into "oligarchy," then pass through "democracy" on its way to "tyranny." Plato regarded the domination of material desire over reason as the supreme disease of both the state and the individual soul.This analysis is an uncommonly precise diagnosis of the pathology of contemporary global capitalism. According to international surveys, the wealthiest one percent of the world's population owns approximately 45 percent of all global wealth, and that share is growing year by year. Meanwhile, nearly half the world's population lives in conditions of severe economic hardship, and the widening of inequality has become one of the most powerful drivers of social fracture and political instability. Even within advanced economies, the hollowing out of the middle class has accelerated, and "inequality of opportunity" — in which the family one is born into largely determines the choices available in life — is becoming entrenched. Compared with an era when the belief that "effort leads to reward" provided the social bond, many young people today are losing their will to participate in society. This may be a sign that what Plato called the corruption of the soul has spread beyond individuals to pervade society as a whole.Plato's sharpness lies in placing the root of the problem not in inequality itself but in the distortion of values that produces it. A society in which wealth rather than virtue or wisdom is the sole measure of success, and in which those who possess wealth wield disproportionate influence over politics and culture, is precisely what Plato meant by oligarchy. The structural tendency in many contemporary democracies for political decision-making to be pulled toward the interests of economically powerful groups presents the old and ever-new problem of the fusion of wealth and power.Were Plato to survey the economic conditions of today, he would acknowledge redistribution policies as one tool while demanding, above all, that the fundamental question — "What is wealth for?" — be restored to the center of social life. The modern Plato would argue with force for a rejection of economic growth as an end in itself and for a shift in values: measuring human flourishing not by material abundance but by the richness of the soul. The virtue of moderation, he would insist, is not merely a personal excellence but a foundational principle for designing a sustainable society.The Dissolution of Community and "Justice as Harmony"At the heart of Plato's theory of the state lies the ideal of harmony within community. In the Republic, he defined justice as "the condition in which each person fulfills their proper role and all live in harmony with one another." This is not simply a matter of the division of labor. It means the organic unity of a community in which people genuinely need one another and are bound together in pursuit of a common good.Modern society faces a grave crisis of exactly this kind: the dissolution of community. Industrialization and urbanization have broken down the traditional communities built on ties of place and kinship. Globalization has set people in motion under the logic of economic rationality. The spread of individualism has promoted a set of values in which self-realization takes precedence over belonging to a community. As a result, social isolation and loneliness have deepened across most of the advanced world. In Japan, countermeasures against loneliness and social isolation have become a national policy agenda; in Britain, a Minister for Loneliness was appointed. These facts show that the dissolution of community in modern society is no longer treated as a personal problem but has been recognized as a public health crisis demanding a response at the level of the state.What Plato feared was precisely the process by which people pursue only their private interests and lose their sense of responsibility toward the community. He already carried in the depths of his thought the insight that human beings are by nature creatures of the polis — that they can live as truly human only within a community — an insight his student Aristotle would later give a precise formulation. The dissolution of community is not merely the loss of social connection; it means the collapse of justice and harmony within the individual soul as well. That is how Plato would see it.The modern Plato would urge, before any discussion of global economic order or institutional design, the rebuilding of community as a concrete place where people meet face to face, listen to one another, and work together on shared problems. He would return again and again to the recovery of civic solidarity rooted in local life, the restoration of genuine dialogue in public space, and the importance of rebalancing individual freedom with responsibility to the community. The conviction that justice resides not in abstract institutions but in the daily texture of human relationships and shared life carries an ever more urgent meaning in our time.The Ideal of the Philosopher-King and the Modern Image of LeadershipOne of the most provocative propositions Plato put forward in the Republic was this: "Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, cities will never have rest from their evils." The leader Plato envisioned was one who, through years of philosophical training, had come to know the Form of the Good, and who governed not by emotion or self-interest but by pure reason and wisdom. In this figure he placed his hope for the realization of a just state.This ideal appears fundamentally incompatible with modern democracy. In a system where leaders are chosen through elections, there is no institutional guarantee that a philosopher-king in Plato's sense will ever appear. But the core of the problem does not lie in the form of the institution. What Plato insisted upon was that wisdom and virtue are indispensable in those who govern, and this claim has lost none of its force today.When one considers the qualities that ought to be demanded of contemporary political leaders, Plato's requirements function as something like a minimum standard. The capacity to make judgments with an eye toward the public good across generations, rather than acting only on the basis of the next opinion poll or the next election. The courage and intelligence to choose the right policy even when it is unpopular, rather than pandering to emotional crowds. An understanding of service to the public as one's proper calling, rather than an attachment to personal gain or power. These are the qualities Plato required of the philosopher-king, translated into a contemporary idiom.Furthermore, Plato held that the excellent ruler is not born but formed through long education and experience. In our time as well, the kind of education political leaders and public officials have received, and the values and judgment they bring to public office, remain a foundational question for the quality of society. Before any improvement of electoral institutions or technical refinement of policy, the ethical and philosophical education of those who govern must be called into question. If a modern Plato were to discuss political reform, his argument would always return to this point. The recognition that the quality of politics is, in the end, a question of the quality of human beings cuts across 2,400 years of history and strikes deeply into contemporary society.Education Is the Foundation of the StateThe problem of education in the Republic is anything but a peripheral theme. It is the most important pillar underlying the entire design of the ideal state. The stories children hear, the music they grow close to, the values they internalize as they develop — these determine the shape of each individual soul, and in time determine the character of the state as a whole. That is what Plato believed. Education, in his view, is not the transmission of knowledge and technique but the turning of the soul toward what is good.Viewed from this perspective, modern education is confronted by a serious set of questions. Everywhere, contemporary schooling is designed around "the acquisition of knowledge" and "preparation for economic productivity." Mathematics, science, languages, vocational skills — these are unquestionably important. But the training of philosophical and ethical thinking, the capacity for precisely what Plato considered most essential — the ability to ask what is good — is conspicuously neglected in the curricula of most countries. The tendency of education policy to be preoccupied with the metrics of international academic comparisons is a perfect example of what Plato criticized as "education that ends in the training of technique rather than the cultivation of the soul."Plato described true education as the experience of "going outside the cave" — the transformative encounter in which one radically questions the values and assumptions one had taken for granted and turns toward a higher truth. In contemporary terms, this is the cultivation of critical thinking and philosophical reflection, not the acquisition of correct answers but the development of the capacity to pose questions. Why is this society organized as it is? What is just and what is unjust? How should one live? Placing the ability to confront these questions at the center of education is most likely the first proposal the modern Plato would make.He would also very likely stress that education does not and cannot complete itself within the institution of the school. Dialogue in the home, human relationships in the local community, the cultivation of sensibility through culture and art, and the lived experience of participating in politics — all of these constitute education in the broader sense, the practices through which the soul of the citizen is formed. Plato's philosophy of education arrives, in the end, at the recognition that the whole of society is a single place of education. Only a society in which every citizen takes seriously the question of how to live well can sustain a good state. This old and ever-new truth is what the modern Plato would convey to us, quietly but without wavering.Plato's Conclusion Before the Modern StateIf Plato were living in this era and were to describe the modern state, the work he produced would be a sharp and demanding book containing both despair and hope. He would most likely anatomize contemporary society by placing at its center the hollowing out of democracy, the unjust concentration of wealth and the distortion of values that sustains it, the dissolution of community and the spread of loneliness, the absence of virtue in those who lead, and the emptying out of education. And running through all of it would be the same questions that animate the Republic: "What is justice? How should one live? What ought a community to be?"What would surprise Plato most is perhaps the extreme coexistence of material abundance and spiritual poverty. People enjoying a level of material prosperity beyond all comparison with any earlier era are nonetheless losing sight of the meaning and purpose of their lives, carrying within them a growing inner emptiness. A state composed of individuals whose souls lack harmony cannot become a truly just community, no matter how elaborate its institutional arrangements. That would be Plato's deep and abiding concern.But he would not end with criticism alone. Plato was at heart a thinker who believed in the power of human reason and philosophy. No matter how degraded a society might become, he was convinced that through the light of reason and the force of education it could move in a better direction. The modern Plato would very likely urge the urgency of citizens studying philosophy, demand wisdom and ethics of those who lead, and above all argue for the importance of each individual attending to their own soul — bringing reason, appetite, and spirit into harmony.The words "one who has gone outside the cave must return to it" carry even heavier weight today. Those who have come to know the truth are not permitted to pretend otherwise and remain comfortably in the cave. Even if they are not understood, even at the risk of exclusion, they must go on speaking of what they saw in the world of light. To continue to raise philosophical questions in a polarized and information-saturated society is, as it was 2,400 years ago, an act that requires courage. But those questions are the very source of the force that moves society, however gradually, in a better direction. Plato would continue to insist on that, without change.Whether the ideal state Plato described will ever be fully realized — in antiquity or today — is doubtful. But the spirit that runs through it all: the seriousness with which justice and the good are pursued, the longing for wise governance, the unceasing self-cultivation by which the individual strives for harmony of the soul — these remain, in every era and in every state, the most important compass by which human society can find its way toward something better. If Plato were alive today, he would surely say the same thing: "Keep questioning. Seek the truth. Bring your soul into order. And use that wisdom in service of the good of your community."References・ Plato, Republic, trans. Reiko Fujisawa, Iwanami Bunko, 1979 ・ Plato, Republic, trans. Ilgong Park, Kyoto University Press, 2011 ・ Aristotle, Politics, trans. Noriko Ushida, Kyoto University Press, 2001 ・ Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Saburo Takada, Iwanami Bunko, 1973 ・ Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, Vol. 1, trans. Noriko Uchida and Makoto Ogawara, Miraisha, 1980 ・ Reiko Fujisawa, Plato's Philosophy, Iwanami Shinsho, 1998 ・ Noburu Notomi, Plato: What Is a Philosopher?, NHK Publishing, 2021 ・ Kazunori Tomano, How Is "Freedom" Possible?, NHK Publishing, 2014 ・ Oxfam International, Inequality Report 2024 ・ World Economic Forum, Global Risks Report 2024 ・ OECD, Education at a Glance 2023 ・ Michael Sandel, The Tyranny of Merit, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020 ・ Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, University of Chicago Press, 1958