Plato's Ideal City

The other side of the coin is the idea of being unjust, Plato describes this as, “meddling and exchange between these classes, there is the greatest harm…and the worst thing one could do to the city is cause injustice” (434c-pg109). The meddling and exchange between classes refers to the idea of not having specialization, consequently this type of behavior is expressed as harmful, because it leaves room for individuals to produce mediocre abilities.

In the discussion between Socrates and Glaucon that involved how to create an ideal city, they divided the people into three classes: rulers, auxiliaries, and craftsmen. In this city each class has a certain role. The rulers are the highest of rank in the city. They are older, wise men who govern the state and make decisions in the best interest of the

Now let us take a look into the background of the story. Plato gives his ideals on a perfect society and everything it should include. He basically implies that justice is rightness, and rightness is whatever he feels it should be. He breaks society down into guardians, wage earners, and auxiliaries. Wage earners are people such as surgeons or shoemakers.

In the Republic, Plato sets up a framework to help us establish what the four virtues are, and their relationship between them to both the city and the soul. According to Plato, the four virtues are wisdom, courage, moderation, and justice. There are three classes within the city: guardians, auxiliaries, and artisans; and three parts within the soul include intellect, high-spirited, and appetitive. By understanding the different classes of the city or parts of the soul, one will be able to appreciate how the virtues attribute to each one specifically.

As Socrates was building the city, according to his different accounts of how city ought to be. There were different classes of people and the position they held in the cities community. In a just city as Socrates claims there will be citizens, guardians and a philosopher king as the ruler of the city. In order to maintain order, politics influence on human nature by politically influencing laws such as stopping peoples from changing their division of labour. For example, Socrates claims that it is impossible for an individual to practice many crafts proficiently as discussed by the companions earlier. (Plato, 1992, p. 49). The reason there is division of peoples in the city is so the city can run efficiently, if there were many people doing many thing, there will not be an efficiency of work. For this reason, politics constrained human nature in which individual as human nature wants to do more than one thing, but it is stopped through influence of ideology of how one ought to be. That individual does not want to do one job for the rest of his life; this form of ideology is first form pre capital which was discussed in the republic. Continuing, as politics influence increases in the republic the more constrained human nature becomes. In politics, the political thought of Socrates creates a guardian for city, a protector to defend against an enemy or to conquer land for the city. In

Plato's view of Justice can be seen in his model of The Tripartite Soul. In this model Plato outlines 3 sectors of his ideal society. This theoretical society is composed of Guardians, Auxiliaries, and Producers. The Guardians were the upper class citizens who had the authority to pass judgment. Guardians were rational and wise, and could participate and become involved in politics. The Auxiliaries were positioned as courageous citizens who helped preserve the spirit and emotion of a society by "protecting and serving" much like a modern day public works department or police and fire squad. In the lowest tier of Plato's ideal society were the Producers, whose job it was to create. The Producers were to use temperance in their lives, for they were classified as appetitive souls who could easily succumb to bodily desires. The Producers were to practice asceticism, which is the eradication of bodily desires.

Plato?s view of Justice can be seen in his model of The Tripartite Soul. In this model Plato outlines 3 sectors of his ideal society. This theoretical society is composed of Guardians, Auxiliaries, and Producers. The Guardians were the upper class citizens who had the authority to pass judgment. Guardians were rational and wise, and could participate and become involved in politics. The Auxiliaries were positioned as courageous citizens who helped preserve the spirit and emotion of a society by ?protecting and serving? much like a modern day public works department or police and fire squad. In the lowest tier of Plato?s ideal society were the Producers, whose job it was to create. The Producers were to use temperance in their lives, for they were classified as appetitive souls who could easily succumb to bodily desires. The Producers were to practice asceticism, which is the eradication of bodily desires.

The component of specialization within the city-soul analogy, that of which classifies the working class as the most inferior in comparison to the ruling and guardians classes, and must succumb to the authority of the latter, raises questions to possible alternate purposes of the analogy. Perhaps, along with attempting to simply define the nature of justice, this analogy also attempts to pacify the portion of the city population deemed as appetitive and perhaps threatening, possibly to strengthen the political position of the philosopher-kings, a political class Plato was most likely apart of. Although Socrates is quite harsh in his definition of the working class and is straightforward in his requirement for it to succumb to the authority of its superiors, he provides a justification for the workers that allows the class to view their circumstance as inevitable or ‘natural’, thus not worth fighting against. Bernard Williams brilliantly words this view in his article ‘The Analogy of City and Soul in Plato’s Republic”:

Throughout Plato’s explanations, he utilizes the myth of the three metals to provide justification for the class system which he believes will create a perfect society. As Plato idealizes, each metal represents a specific class in society. ““Appropriately so. Nevertheless, listen to the rest of the story. “All of you in the city are brothers,” we’ll say to them in telling our story, “but the god who made you mixed some gold into those who are adequately equipped to rule, because they are most valuable.””

To be begin with, an individual cannot be good until they have attained the virtue of wisdom, and the same can be said for the city. For the individual, the person must not only be wise himself, but his soul must have wisdom. The only way to achieve this according to Socrates, is through for philosophy. In this way it is the same for the city, for in the city, wisdom lies with the guardians as they are the philosophers. The guardians are put in charge of the city because of their knowledge of how the city should be run. Because of this, the Guardians wisdom becomes the City’s. (Book IV)

“Then, under the influence either of poverty or of wealth, workmen and their work are equally liable to degenerate” (Plato 277). On the other hand, poverty causes the craftsmen to develop a rebel attitude. As such, the will resort to evil deeds in order to sustain themselves in the city. Another class in the city is the soldiers. Plato, through his mouthpiece Socrates, argues that the courage of the people of the city lie in their soldiers. However, courage is not a state in which there is lack of fear. Rather it is a state of knowing and persevering in one’s own convictions. However, for this to happen, soldiers need access to good education, which will strengthen their convictions. Education becomes an important part in ensuring that the soldiers understand their role in the city. “Educating [soldiers] in music and gymnastic; we were contriving influences which would prepare them to take the dye of the laws in perfection” (Plato 286). In other words, without education, soldiers would not be able to make decisions that resonate with their beliefs. Thus, lack of fear alone would not serve a full potential as it forms only a smaller portion of what courage constitutes. The third class of the city is the guardians. According to Plato, “Here, then, is a discovery of new evils, I said, against which the guardians will have to watch” (277). Guardians are portrayed as people who have wisdom to watch over

Rulers, otherwise known as “True Guardians” held the most worthy role, although not the most important. Their social metallic property was gold. The Rules were leaders and philosophers who kept society in order. To fulfill this role one must be specially educated in specifically math and dialect. Plato believed that rulers must live in poverty, with any possessions they do have held in common. The very things, then, that mean the most to commoners will be denied to the rulers. The next class were the Guardians, otherwise known as “auxiliaries”. As the name implies, they were soldiers or warriors. They were responsible for defending the city from invaders, and for keeping peace. They enforce convictions and ensure that rules were obeyed. Their metallic property was silver. Although not as worthy or as looked up to as Rulers, the Guardians held what is considered the most important role in society, much as in modern day society our

Plato suggests the entirety of everything a ruler does is for the advantage of the ruled. He does so in an analogy between the ruler of a society and the pilot of a ship. He writes, “the ruler will consider or command the benefit not of the pilot, but of the man who is a sailor and is ruled" (Plato 21). In putting the society before himself, he tells everyone what is known as the Noble Lie. In it, he claims that everyone in the city belongs to the city because they were born there and that there is a divine sanction to their natural hierarchy. This promotes an expectation of loyalty and keeps everyone satisfied with their standings in life within their trades. Through the Noble Lie, the ruler serves the city by ensuring order continues and that everyone is committed to the continued success of the city.

So effective is the education of the guardians that they fear not even death. In stark contrast to the guardians lie the producers or commoners. They serve to represent the appetitive part of the soul, and as such, are ruled from within by their own appetites. For this very reason, they are specialized to participate in economic activity. Plato goes to great pains later on to show that the least desirable existence, from both a political and individual standpoint, may be found in rule by appetite. Since the soul of the producer cannot be just, a producer cannot live a perfect life. By the presence of even one individual living a less than perfect existence, the kallipolis cannot be qualified as ideal.

In Book IV of Plato’s Republic, Socrates reasons that the embodied human soul is a tripartite plurality consisting of a rational part, an appetitive part, and a spirited part. An individual, or a society, thrives when these three parts strike a balance. In a just and perfect society, people from each of the three groups must maintain a delicate position compromised of control and influence relative to the other groups. An important feature of Socrates’ ideal city is its lack of intersectionality. Each person in the various classes must complete their specific job requirements, without meddling in outside affairs, in order to maximize the city’s efficiency. The ideal city is made up of the craftsperson, the auxiliary and the guardian ruler classes. The three classes directly parallel the three parts of the soul. The craftsperson represents the appetitive part of the soul, while the auxiliaries parallel the spirited soul and lastly, the guardian rulers embody the rational soul.