A History of Perfection

The desire for a perfect community, and the debate over what kind of community that would be, is one nearly as old as human civilization itself. In The Republic, Plato describes what he believes to be the ideal state. He envisions a state of total equality among its citizens in terms of gender, class, and hierarchy. Universal education would be established. The community would be governed by a benevolent philosopher-king, who has been trained from childhood to lead. While this seems idealistic and idyllic, some of the measures Plato suggests in The Republic for bringing about this society seem wrong, in the context of modern ethics. A guardian class would be established to maintain the state, and they would enforce the abolishing of private property and individual wealth. With this would come the dismantling of the family; because of the total equality of the society, parents would not raise their own children, and children would not know who their parents are. Instead, they would be raised by the community as a whole. Perhaps the most controversial aspect of this is a selective breeding program, where individuals are paired by the guardian class to produce ideal offspring. Essentially, this is eugenics. Though we may balk at the extreme proposals put forth by scientists and intellectuals like Peter Singer and Julian Savulescu, we must bear in mind that these are not new ideas. Rather, they are simply the newest incarnations of very old ideas.