From Rule of Law to Rule of Love: towards Plato‟s Ideal State - the City of God

Abstract

The pervading highhandedness and insensitivity in governance, the consequent suffering of the masses and a global order that has virtually reverted to the Hobbesian state of nature, confirm the Biblical averment that “when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn.” Inspired by this timeless, instructive and worrisome admonition, the paper reviews the evolution of Western political thought and the resultant theories targetedat constantly updating, fine-tuning and upholding the essence of the Social Contract towards the realization of the essence of the Biblical averment, which states that “when the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice.” Fundamentally a presentation on leadership and spiritual intelligence, the paper discusses these two phenomena with special reference to good governance and recommends that organizational and political leaders should be conscious of the transience of power, the ephemerality of materialism and the eternity of the soul vis-à-vis the immutable Biblical injunction that “you reap what you sow.” The paper argues that “the righteous” of the literature of Judeo-Christian theology is the same as the “philosopher kings” of Plato‟s Utopian Kalipolis and the modern day leader who governs guided by the essence of spiritual intelligence. The paper opines that it is only when the consciousness of spiritual intelligence permeates the system, especially within the leadership class, that amoral familsim will abate along with the decay of social infrastructure, pervasive poverty, ever-elongating unemployment line, youth restiveness, social fragility and volatility and countless other social malaise that constitute the insidious albatross of human society. In conclusion, the paper holds that the string that ties the theories enunciated and their applicability in governance is the human element and here lies the issue of leadership. Here, the paper avers, lies the realization of the Biblical “rule of the righteous” and “kingdom of God on earth” and Plato‟s “ideal state--the city of God.”