Summary: Republic (page 2)

These three qualities—temperance, courage, and wisdom—are likewise found in the soul of the individual.

What can be read in large letters in the city must also be readable in small letters within the individual soul.

Although our soul is one, owing to the harmony of its various elements, it is not absolutely simple. These three parts of the soul correspond to the three classes of the city.

They are:

- That by which the soul reasons: the rational element.

- That by which it desires, hungers, or thirsts, and relentlessly pursues other cravings: the irrational and appetitive element.

- The irascible element, through which we feel anger.

Anger must be distinguished from other desires, since it can sometimes align with reason—for instance, when we feel angry at being treated unjustly.

In such cases, the irascible element sides not with the appetitive element but with the rational one, since the anger is justified.

Yet anger must still be distinguished from reason, for wild beasts and children are irascible without possessing reason.

Thus, in both the city and the soul of the individual, there are corresponding parts, equal in number ¹.

The individual is courageous, wise, or just in the same way and through the same element as the city. The city is just when each of its three classes carries out its own function. Likewise, each of us is just when the three parts of our soul remain in their proper place and fulfil their respective roles—reason must govern, aided by the irascible element, while the appetitive element must remain subordinate.

In this way, we have identified both the just city and the just individual in a single movement. Just as health is maintained when the body's elements stand in the right relation of dominance, so virtue is established through the proper hierarchy of the soul's parts.

There may be as many types of soul as there are types of political constitution: five constitutions, five types of soul.

Book V

What, for Plato, is the best constitution—the one corresponding to the good soul?

It is monarchy, when one man stands remarkably above the rest. It may also be called aristocracy when several men excel over the others.

I call such a constitution good and upright, whether in the city or in man ².

Beyond this, four other constitutions can be identified, all of them flawed and degenerate.

Before examining these constitutions in detail, however, Socrates is pressed to explain his idea of a community of women and children, which he describes as follows:

The wives of our warriors shall be common to all: none of them shall dwell in private with any of them; likewise, the children shall be common, and parents shall not know their children, nor these their parents ³.

In The Republic, eugenics is applied with the utmost rigour: deformed children are to be discarded, and frequent unions between elite men and women must be encouraged; conversely, such unions must be rare among inferior subjects—so that the herd may attain the highest degree of perfection ⁴.

The community of women and children is but one aspect of the broader community of property that Plato advocates.

How would this benefit the city?

Plato argues that the greatest evil for a city is whatever divides it and makes it many rather than one; and the greatest good, whatever unites it and makes it one.

The best-organised city, then, is one in which most citizens say the same things about what concerns them: This affects me; this does not affect me ⁵.

With this in mind, the community of women and children serves this unity. It is therefore a system that must be established—and doing so would require abolishing the family as the social foundation of the city. This is one of the most striking ideas developed in The Republic.

¹ 440e-441e
² 448a-449d
³ 457b-458b
⁴ 459b-460a
⁵ 462a-462e