The Republic Versus Huxley's Brave New World

2464 Words5 Pages

"The Republic" by Plato and Huxley's "Brave New World" depict very similar worlds through starkly opposing contexts. While they both present a vision of a future society that honors community, hierarchy, and authority, among other things, Plato believes the world that he envisions is utopian, while Huxley is attempting to portray a dystopia. Going beyond the style in which both thinkers portray their imagined societies, and controlling for differences in sociocultural and technological development between Plato's and Huxley's times, it is clear that both of these imagined societies share many similarities. The few differences between Plato's utopia and Huxley's dystopia can be accounted for by acknowledging the intent of each thinker in their writings. Plato intends to inspire and innovate, while Huxley intends to warn and …show more content…

These variations are not merely conceptual gaps between Plato and Huxley but can be seen as existing under the notion of how Plato's thought differs sufficiently from how his thought would play out in reality, sufficiently enough to flip his utopia in theory into a dystopia in practice, which is what Huxley is giving testimony to in his writing. We can see this clearly by looking at how Plato's virtues, those virtues which are the pillars of his political and moral philosophy, are necessarily perverted in Huxley's "Brave New World" by the harsh dictates of political reality. Plato, whilst speaking through Socrates in The Republic, advocates for four distinct virtues: wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice. Starting with wisdom, Plato defines it essentially as the ability to know how to live well. Wisdom, then, is something that requires a sufficient amount of individual initiative. It also then obliges the wise individual to critically examine their reality and determine how it is faulty and how it is

Open Document