In Plato’s «Republic» it is pointed out that the happiness of a Kallipolis citizen is ensured by the harmony of the three elements of his soul (reasonable, ambitious, lustful), each of them retaining its own and not enfringing on someone else’s. The hierarchy of social classes is built in a similar way: philosophers-rulers; guards and the representatives of the so-called economic class (farmers, artisans). The three classes form the Constitution of Kallipolis, i.e. literally the mega-soul of an ideal political community.
     In this case, the concept of Plato’s three-part soul should be considered in the spirit of holism, i.e. the doctrine that everything in the world is not autonomous, but depends on everything. So the mind of each of us is simultaneously ideological, emotional and motivated by our desires. In other words, a «pure mind» in the spirit of I. Kant according to Plato is impossible. Therefore, it becomes clear that the ruling philosophers as a standard of reasonableness will cease to meet this standard in the first stages of the embodiment of the utopia of Kallipolis.
     Thus, the idea of gradual degradation actually laid the idea of a perfect Plato Constitution. At the same time, the stages of constitutional and legal degradation (political and legal corruption) reflect the spiritual discord characteristic of a citizen who is an ideal type of this Constitution.
     In its first descending stage (in the transition to the timocratic Constitution) the mind is supplanted by the spirit of power. The arguments of reason in the soul of a timocratic citizen are reduced to the «status» of optional recommendations.
     In the second stage of the constitutional legal degradation a timocratic citizen is pushed into the background by the new «ideal type» of a citizen (an oligarch), whose center of the soul shifts to the maintenance of hedonistic desires.
     In the third (democratic) stage, the consistent vulgarisation of even hedonistic desires takes place. If in the oligarchic structure of the state, its representative type is a person oriented towards money-making, the children of oligarchs are already subject to a number of other low-grade vice in addition to hoarding.
     Finally, in the last stage of constitutional and legal degradation, the democratic political and legal system is decomposed under the influence of permissiveness, and a former Democrat, who has easily parted with the boring democratic Constitution, becomes the dominant psycho-citizen.
     Thus, there is one and the same mechanism that can be called the principle of constitutional and legal degradation: each corrupt Constitution dies of the excesses of its own nature or (according to E. Barker) «is devoured by what previously fed it.»
     The timocratic regime is thus dying because of the uncontrolled growth of passions within the political class. The oligarchic regime is collapsing because of the «democrats» who demand to put an end to the ideology of widespread possessiveness. The democratic regime dies of the excesses of freedom, for the sake of which a democratic Constitution was created, etc.
     Though, Plato in the «Republic» still believes that the way back is possible. The restoration of the right proportions in the soul of a typical representative of the state automatically ensures the restoration of the balance of the mega-soul of the entire political community. For example, it is possible to get away from the oligarchy by limiting the appetite of those in power. It is achieved through the formation and establishment of the right laws.
     

Plato, constitutional degradation, state, three-part soul