Keperluan Kepada Pemimpin

Antara persoalan pokok dalam falsafah politik ialah kewujudan pemimpin. Mengapakah manusia perlu kepada pemimpin? Mengapakah pemimpin wujud?

Sesungguhnya ini adalah persoalan penting yang membawa kita kepada persoalan kedua: Bagaimanakah mereka itu muncul?

Ibnu Sina di bahagian akhir dari bukunya, al-Shifa' yang bertajuk ilahiyat (metaphysic), menjelaskan kenapa rakyat memerlukan kepada pemimpin.

Beliau mengambil punca-punca awal kehidupan manusia serta tabiat mereka untuk mengesahkan perlunya kelahiran seorang pemimpin berkaliber untuk menjamin kelangsungan hidup (survival) rakyat dan negara.

Sebagaimana Plato dan al-Farabi, Ibnu Sina juga bersetuju bahawa manusia mustahil boleh hidup dengan baik secara berseorangan iaitu hidup sendirian. Ia memerlukan orang lain yang berperanan secara timbal-balas (mutual-help)

Plato dalam tradisi intelektual Greek terlebih dahulu membawa gagasan "Mutual-help" dalam teori a "Polis"nya. Sikap saling memenuhi dan tolong-menolong menjadi elemen penting untuk mencapai kesempurnaan. David Melling meringkaskan idea tersebut seperti berikut:

"In the Republic, Plato presents a sustained and developed discussionof the nature of justice. Socrates constructs an account of the origin of the polis.

Individual human beings are not self-sufficient; alone, they are unable to fulfil their own needs. Human beings gather in communities, helping each other to satisfy their needs. They freely exchange mutual help to mutual advantage. A settled community of human beings co-operating together to fulfil their needs and to promote their common welfare is what we call a polis.

There are various different jobs which need to be done of the variety of different human human needs is to be fulfilled. Human beings need food to eat. clothing to wear, houses to live in. It would be possible for an individual person to spend part of his or her time in producing food, in making clothes, in building houses.

In a settled community the variety of forms of work essential to the community's economic life should ideally be performed by individuals who specialize in particular kinds of work. The specialist who applies his skills in a field of activity to which he is particularly suited can develop those skills to ensure his work is of a high standard. A settled community in which individual members specialize in work for which they are suited will provide a better basis for the fulfilment of the economic needs of its members than would a community of inviduals each of whom engaged himself in the whole range of tasks required in order to provide him with food, clothing, and shelter and to fulfil all his other needs.

A polis is a settled community of human beings whose economic functions are differentiated and specialized so that the needs of the members of the community are fulfilled. Sucj a community could be very small; Socrates argues it would be possible to have a polis of no more than a handful of members, since such a population would be sufficient to fulfil all the basic economic needs of the community. A farmer to produce food, a tailor and a shoemaker to produce clothing, a builder to build houses, a toolmaker to provide tools, and a merchant to trade and barter would seem to provide all the basic economic functions to allow the basic needs of a community to be met". (David J. Melling. Understanding PLATO. Oxford Univ. Press; Oxford, New York, 1987).