Plato’s Ideal City
What is the ideal city in Plato’s Republic? The question is usually answered by pointing to the elaborate aristocratic constitution developed by Socrates, with its three classes, its guardians and its philosopher rulers.
But Socrates constructs more than one city in the course of the discussion, and the language he uses to describe them is worth noticing. Before the familiar aristocratic city has come into existence, Socrates has already constructed a much simpler city and described it in strikingly favourable terms. Glauco’s dissatisfaction with that city leads Socrates to develop a very different one.
The following extract compares Socrates’ descriptions of the two cities.
Which is the ideal city?
He calls the classless city “true” or “real” (alêthînê—372e6) and “healthy” (hygiês—e7), while the subsequent city in its infancy he calls “spoilt” (truphôsa—e3) and “festering” (phlegmainousa—e8). Once the whole constitution is in place, and a mechanism has been devised for keeping further growth in check, Socrates can call the aristocratic city fine/beautiful (VII.572c2) and even good (VIII.543c9), and the aristocratic man is identified with the best man (544a6).
Extract from Chapter 6, ‘The Digression’, in Ivor Ludlam (2014), Plato’s Republic as a Philosophical Drama on Doing Well, p. 174.
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