Plato's Rule of Philosopher Kings

In Republic Plato makes a policy claim about how he believes governments should be. His claim is that the most fitting rule of government is an oligarchy of philosopher kings. His grounds for this policy claim is that philosophers are the only people who have an inherent thirst and affinity of knowledge, as well as the only ones capable of fixing the ills in society. The latter ground made as a metaphor of the philosopher king being the only captain able to right the ship. The warrant here is that the rulers of a nation must be wise, and must have a desire to seek more knowledge. The backing to the warrant is that the people of the nation are not fit to run the nation, and a very small minority has the right to control the majority. Plato appeals the reader's logos by reasoning why a reign of philosopher kings is necessary to the security of the state. Being the eminent thinker of the time, Plato has as a great of ethos as any political thinker of the time, further more the Socratic dialogue this policy claim is set in, establishes the credibility of the character advocating the philosopher oligarchy. The kairos here is also important. Very few people today believe that nations should be run with complete control given to philosophers, at the time rule by the people was far from established. Republic was written only shortly after the philosophical origins of democracy, so absolute rule was considered the norm of the time, making the claim more credible then than it is now.