Why is/was Sparta so admired?

[Alcsentre Calanice]

(such as more rights for female citizens)

That's actually false, because Plato did advocate for more rights for female citizens. I read the Nomoi and he's very modern here, he wanted women to take part in military exercises, I however didn't understand if he went so far to accord them voting rights.

forced segregation of the people by trade (and compulsive assignment of these trades: if you are born in the craftsman district, you are to be a craftsman and nothing else)

Well, that's a quite distored view of Plato's political idea. I don't if you read the originial works of him, but first you should know that there are two fundamental books (even if moral and political ideas certainly show up in other of his works): Politeia and Nomoi. To put it short, the Politeia is the description of the "best" polis, whereas the Nomoi describe the next best city. One interpretation of this is that Platon got more realistic and disillusioned as he grew older so he realized that he had to water down some of his extremist ideass if he wanted his ideal city implemented. Also, the Nomoi are much less abstract than the Politeia and include precise legal and constitutional provisions.

Now let's get into the details. The Politeia is progressive on some issues (like feminism) while it's really inhuman on others (eugenics). The society is indeed very segregated and hierarchic, with the philosopher kings on the top, the guardians in the middle and the workers at the bottom - however, IIRC, the children are assigned to the classes according to their spiritual condition: workers - appetite, guardians - spirit, rulers - reason. So the membership in a class was not hereditary, but you should look it up if you're interested in it. Wikipedia compares Plato's idea on an aristocratic government to a technocracy, and I think the whole technocratic line of political thought stems from Plato.

Anyway, I perceived the Politeia as very abstract and idealistic (really, that isn't surprising, giving Plato's idealism). I really
preferred the Nomoi to to the Politeia. In the Nomoi, Plato describes a classical Greek city of around 5000 citizens, but these aren't segregeted by trade at all. In facts, they are all landowners of an equal land lot. Plato isn't a communist, but he advocates a certain economic equality of all citizens for practical reasons. The collective ownership of the family is rejected as utopic in the Nomoi, but disputes between citizens over property should be prevented by the "ban" on poverty. Interesting is also that craftsmanship and commerce is prohibited, so these professions are open to foreigners only.

Finally, never forget that citizens will in Plato's model spend time on politics, gymnastics/war and education, because just like in Sparta, field work is done by slaves (so in fact, the city has much more than 5000 inhabitants; 5000 is just the number of male citizens fit for military service, and even there Plato's had the idea to include women too to double this number). Furthermore, eugenics aren't run by the state anymore, but shall be included in morals and education (boys are taught to choose women with regard to the common good of the polis. Also, the political system of the Nomoi is much more concrete and much more palatable too, even if it's still very aristocratic: Plato tries to find the middle between monarchy and democracy. Offices are elective, but the votes of the wealthy have more weight than those of the poor. The philosopher kings are replaced by different institutiton like Nocturnal council.

Needless to say, I'm never taking political advice from this guy!

Well, it depends. First I think you should read his books, because they are really fundamental to modern political theory, or at least some good synopsis like this one. Also, I think that tje ancient world could have benefited from some of Plato's ideas like public education, rights of women or the mixed constitution. Recently, I read the neoplatonic Dialogue of Political Science written under the rule of Justinian, and it really shows how even Byzantines were able to conceive a government beyond crude absolute monarchy of the Dominate. The author of the book imagines quite sophisticated institutions like a controlled, elective imperial succession and a Senate composed of the wisest men who are called from all over the world to serve Rome and the emperor (that's what Plato's philosopher kings became 8 centuries later).

 

[Gaius Julius Magnus]

Well I guess more recently it's probably because of 300 and the kind of fetishizing we see with other famous warrior groups.

 

[hwyl]

Plato lost me when he argued that art and literature lead people astray from the essential - art and literature are the essential, certainly not some moldy philosophy...

 

[Skallagrim]

That's an interesting response, @G.Washington_Fuckyeah -- I'll try to write down a coherent reply to it, although it's past 3 AM here. If I'm rambling, I blame being tired.

First off, like I wrote, what I listed was just off the top of my head, and I got the particulars of that whole district idea muddled. I looked it up, and you're right to say that he did allow for some kind of "selection" by dominant, ah, "soul-trait". (I'm not exactly sure what that becomes in an english translation. You called it the "spiritual condition"; the dominant part of the soul.) He did expect all traits to be hereditary, so such things would be an exception. As a rule, class membership would be hereditary, but yes: he recognised there would be exceptions, and his education system would find them and re-allocate such individuals to their proper place. I still think that's pretty rigid and scary, but you're right to point out that I was wrong to leave that out.

As for the rest, however... well, you interpret things in a very different way than I do. Which is not to say that I consider your interpretation invalid at all, but I don't "read" it the way you seem to. (On that note: yes, I have read Plato. It was a while back, though.)

For instance: you see Plato's view on women as modern, and say he wanted to afford them more right. I mostly see him imposing duties, mostly out of the fundamental notion that everyone should optimally serve the community to the greatest possible extent. Not because he particularly believes in extending them rights or anything. An interesting (and pretty balanced) article on this issue in particular is The Role Of Women In Plato’s Republic by C. C. W. Taylor. It describes the positive potential (for women) in Plato's ideas, but also critically observes that he certainly isn't doing it for the women: he treats them as instruments in service of the community. (To which I add that he does that with every person, which is a large part of my objection to him. Even when he argues for self-development, he never sees it as something for the self, but as a service to some greater good.)

Of course, a view wherein potential (unintended) good outweighs crappy motivations and pretty twisted ideals is perfectly valid. But it is not my view, and I cannot bring myself to view Plato as an advocate for women in any real way.

On another note, you present the idea that Plato perhaps "got more realistic and disillusioned as he grew older so he realized that he had to water down some of his extremist ideas if he wanted his ideal city implemented". Here, too, I'm not at all convinced. You say you prefer Nomoi to Politeia (which I can understand!), but I'm pretty sure that your phrasing "the Nomoi describe the next best city" is very accurate. Sure, after the fiasco in Syracuse, it can very much be assumed that Plato decided to go with a more realistic vision which he could more easily "sell to the public", so to speak. But consider his fundamental conception of reality: the ideal is true, and derivations thereof are inferior shadows of the true thing. Viewed in the Platonic mindset, I think his presentation of more "realistic" ideas is mostly a ploy to get them accepted, and not a reflection of a change in his actual beliefs. A more "gradual" approach to making his ideal a reality... but not a change in the ideal.

Bottom line: I'm pretty sure that it's too kind to him to point at his more moderate "amendations" and present those as what he really wanted. I rather suspect those were a false face for his true intentions. (But again, this is a difference in interpretation: neither of us could prove it either way.) To be sure, I condemn Plato as much on the basis of his avowed ideal as you exonerate him on the basis of his more moderate amendations to that ideal. I do not deny this; I can only explain my motivations for it. Additionally, even purely on the basis of the Nomoi, I can't say like what I see there. It has far more redeeming qualities, but it still sounds like a recipe for misery to me.

Interestingly, certain things you brought up - such as the positions exclusively meant for a non-citizen class - do bring us full circle in evoking Sparta. Perhaps one might say that in the Nomoi he aims at presenting a way to make a polis into "Sparta lite", whereas his actual ideal polis - on which I base most of my judgment of the man - truly is a more extreme version of Sparta in many ways. Either way, I think many ideas he advocates are bad ideas, and often for the same reson they were historically bad ideas in Sparta, and in various other places.

Which brings me to a final, if somewhat tangential point: you mention the very interesting ideas of certain neoplatonists. Of course, I believe that a thinker can neither be exactly blamed or condemned for the way others later develop (or maim, or abuse) his ideas in later ages. I do think ideas are influential in the "real world", and that their origin can be traced (more or less). In that way, you are right to observe Plato's ideas are very important to political theory (and not just political theory either). But I have to ask: are they mostly influential in a good way? I'm not so sure. You (correctly, I think) state Plato wasn't a communist (and I agree; not even his ideal polis, with its aspects of communal property, was what we'd communist), but you also observe (and also correctly, I think) that "the whole technocratic line of political thought stems from Plato".

Yes, to an extent, certainly. But to only slightly less of an extent, you can then also tie him to communism and nazism. Not in the way that says "he was one!!!!!!!", but in the way where you can say that those ideas owe a debt to his ideas. Partially descend from them. So if we are to honour Plato for the clever notions (which he never actually advocated) that people derived from his work in the sixth century... must we not also blame him for the horrors that also owe a debt to his ideas (and which he also never actually advocated)?

Certainly, I'm not trying to say that Plato is somehow the great-great-(...)-great-great-grandfather of nazism or anything. If anything, the idealisation of Sparta, brought up earlier in this thread, played a bigger role there-- Hitler himself was one of those who admired Sparta, and actually called it "the first fascist state in history". But Plato was part of that discourse; that idealisation of "the-state-above-the-individual" (and we do hear the echos of that thought: Du bist nichts, dein Volk ist alles!). Not to mention the love of eugenics in Plato's work and in Spartan society (and in all of ancient Greece, but Sparta went all out in that regard, and Plato took it into overdrive). etc. etc. -- the fact being that Plato had monumental influence on Western thinking, and that I believe that influence may ultimately have had a lot of (unintended) terrible influences.

Long story short: I'm not a fan of Plato, and I'm not a fan of Sparta, and it's got a lot of very similar reasons. And I recognise that there are people who see it differently, who look at the more noble aspects (of Plato's thought and/or of Spartan society), but I consider that view - in both cases - to be rather too rosy-tinted. Both Plato and Sparta were, in my opinion, not exactly something to write home about even by the standards of their day. And they both get far too much of a good (even revered) reputation, which I think is at least partially (and probably largely) undeserved in both instances.

Opinions may differ on this, and that's fine, too.

(And now I'm going to sleep. )

 

[Falecius]

That's actually false, because Plato did advocate for more rights for female citizens. I read the Nomoi and he's very modern here, he wanted women to take part in military exercises, I however didn't understand if he went so far to accord them voting rights.

I disagree with the wording here. Plato did argue for a sort of functional equality for women, but not for women's rights. This is because it looks like Plato did not think that people have rights in general.
His outlook on women is certainly exceptional for Ancient Greece and very interesting, but I read it as a statist view, not a feminist one. I think that Karl Popper's reading of the Politeia is broadly correct on this point (even if I don't subscribe to that reading in general). In other words, it's about what women can do for the polis, not what the women should be entitled to by the polis.
This is, however, the general Platonic approach to ALL social relations and social groups. People may receive prizes and incentives for beneficial activities, but they have nothing like rights in Plato's Politeia. (I am less familiar with Nomoi though).