Communitarianism

By: Daniel Bell

Modern-day communitarianism began in the upper reaches of Anglo-American academia in the form of a critical reaction to John Rawls' landmark 1971 book A Theory of Justice (Rawls 1971). Drawing primarily upon the insights of Aristotle and Hegel, political philosophers such as Alasdair MacIntyre, Michael Sandel, Charles Taylor and Michael Walzer disputed Rawls' assumption that the principal task of government is to secure and distribute fairly the liberties and economic resources individuals need to lead freely chosen lives. These critics of liberal theory never did identify themselves with the communitarian movement (the communitarian label was pinned on them by others, usually critics),^[1] much less offer a grand communitarian theory as a systematic alternative to liberalism. Nonetheless, certain core arguments meant to contrast with liberalism's devaluation of community recur in the works of the four theorists named above (Avineri & de-Shalit 1992, Bell 1993, Berten et al. 1997, Mulhall & Swift 1996, and Rasmussen 1990) ,and for purposes of clarity one can distinguish between claims of three sorts: methodological claims about the importance of tradition and social context for moral and political reasoning, ontological or metaphysical claims about the social nature of the self, and normative claims about the value of community.^[2]

This essay is therefore divided in three parts, and for each part I present the main communitarian claims, followed by an argument (in each part) that philosophical concerns in the 1980s have largely given way to the political concerns that motivated much of the communitarian critique in the first place.

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1. Universalism Versus Particularism

Communitarians have sought to deflate the universal pretensions of liberal theory. The main target has been Rawls description of the original position as an ‘Archemedian point’ from which the structure of a social system can be appraised, a position whose special virtue is that it allows us to regard the human condition ‘from the perspective of eternity’,^[3] from all social and temporal points of view. Whereas Rawls seemed to present his theory of justice as universally true, communitarians argued that the standards of justice must be found in forms of life and traditions of particular societies and hence can vary from context to context. Alasdair MacIntyre and Charles Taylor argued that moral and political judgment will depend on the language of reasons and the interpretive framework within which agents view their world, hence that it makes no sense to begin the political enterprise by abstracting from the interpretive dimensions of human beliefs, practices, and institutions (Taylor 1985, ch. 1; MacIntyre 1978, chs.18-22 and 1988, ch.1; Benhabib 1992, pp. 23-38, 89n4). Michael Walzer developed the additional argument that effective social criticism must derive from and resonate with the habits and traditions of actual people living in specific times and places. Even if there is nothing problematic about a formal procedure of universalizability meant to yield a determinate set of human goods and values, ‘any such set would have to be considered in terms so abstract that they would be of little use in thinking about particular distributions’ (Walzer 1983, 8; Young 1990, 4). In short, liberals who ask what is just by abstracting from particular social contexts are doomed to philosophical incoherence and liberal theorists who adopt this method to persuade people to do the just thing are doomed to political irrelevance.

Rawls has since tried to eliminate the universalist presuppositions from his theory. In Political Liberalism, (Rawls 1993) he argues in a communitarian vein that his conception of the person as impartial citizen provides the best account of liberal-democratic political culture and that his political aim is only to work out the rules for consensus in political communities where people are willing to try for consensus. In the Law of Peoples, (Rawls 1999) he explicitly allows for the possibility that liberalism may not be exportable at all times and places, sketching a vision of a ‘decent, well-ordered society’ that liberal societies must tolerate in the international realm. Such a society, he argues, need not be democratic, but it must be non-aggressive towards other communities, and internally it must have a ‘common good conception of justice’, a ‘reasonable consultation hierarchy’, and it must secure basic human rights. Having said that, one still gets the sense that the liberal vision laid out in A Theory of Justice is the best possible political ideal, one that all rational individuals would want if they were able to choose between the available political alternatives. There may be justifiable non-liberal regimes, but these should be regarded as second best to be tolerated and perhaps respected, not idealized or emulated.

Other liberal theorists have taken a harder line against communitarian concessions, arguing that liberal theory can and should present itself as a universally valid ideal. Brian Barry, for one, opens his widely cited book Justice as Impartiality by boldly affirming the universality of his theory: ‘I continue to believe in the possibility of putting forward a universally valid case in favor of liberal egalitarian principles’ (Barry 1995, 3). Barry does recognize that a theory of justice must be anchored in substantive moral considerations, but his normative vision appears to be limited to the values and practices of liberal Western societies. He seems distinctly uninterested in learning anything worthwhile from non-Western political traditions: for example, his discussion of things Chinese is confined to brief criticisms of the Cultural Revolution and the traditional practice of foot-binding. One might consider the reaction to a Chinese intellectual who puts forward a universal theory of justice that draws on the Chinese political tradition for inspiration and completely ignores the history and moral argumentation in Western societies, except for brief criticisms of slavery and imperialism.

Still, it must be conceded that 1980s communitarian theorists were less-than-successful at putting forward attractive visions of non-liberal societies. The communitarian case for pluralism for the need to respect and perhaps learn from non-liberal societies that may be as good as, if not better than, the liberal societies of the West may have been unintentionally undermined by their own use of (counter) examples. In After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre defended the Aristotelian ideal of the intimate, reciprocating local community bound by shared ends, where people simply assume and fulfill socially given roles (MacIntyre 1984). But this pre-modern Gemeinschaft conception of an all-encompassing community that members unreflectively endorse seemed distinctly ill-suited for complex and conflict-ridden large-scale industrialized societies. In Spheres of Justice, Michael Walzer pointed to the Indian caste system, ‘where the social meanings are integrated and hierarchical’ (Walzer 1983, 313) as an example of a non-liberal society that may be just according to its own standards. Not surprisingly, few readers were inspired by this example of non-liberal justice (not to mention the fact that many contemporary Indian thinkers view the caste system as an unfortunate legacy of the past that Indians should strive hard to overcome). In short, this use of ill-informed examples may have unintentionally reinforced the view that there are few if any justifiable alternatives to liberalism in modern societies. Communitarians could score some theoretical points by urging liberal thinkers to be cautious about developing universal arguments founded exclusively on the moral argumentation and political experience of Western liberal societies, but few thinkers would really contemplate the possibility of non-liberal practices appropriate for the modern world so long as the alternatives to liberalism consisted of Golden Ages, caste societies, fascism, or actually-existing communism. For the communitarian critique of liberal universalism to have any lasting credibility, thinkers need to provide compelling counter-examples to modern-day liberal-democratic regimes and 1980s communitarians came up short.

By the 1990s, fairly abstract methodological disputes over universalism versus particularism faded from academic prominence, and the debate now centers on the theory and practice of universal human rights. This is largely due to the increased political salience of human rights since the collapse of communism in the former Soviet bloc. On the liberal side, the new, more political voices for liberal universalism have been represented by the likes of Francis Fukuyama, who famously argued that liberal democracy's triumph over its rivals signifies the end of history (Fukuama 1992). This view also revived (and provoked) the second wave communitarian critique of liberal universalism and the debate became much more concrete and political in orientation.

Needless to say, the brief moment of liberal euphoria that followed the collapse of the communism in the Soviet bloc has given way to a sober assessment of the difficulties of implementing liberal practices outside the Western world. It is now widely recognized that brutal ethnic warfare, crippling poverty, environmental degradation, and pervasive corruption, to name some of the more obvious troubles afflicting the developing world, pose serious obstacles to the successful establishment and consolidation of liberal democratic political arrangements. But these were seen as unfortunate (hopefully temporary) afflictions that may delay the end of history when liberal democracy has finally triumphed over its rivals. They were not meant to pose a challenge to the ideal of liberal democracy. It was widely assumed that liberal democracy is something that all rational individuals would want if they could get it.

The deeper challenge to Western liberal democracy has emerged from the East Asian region.^[4] In the 1990s, the debate revolved around the notion of ‘Asian values’, a term devised by several Asian officials and their supporters for the purpose of challenging Western-style civil and political freedoms. Asians, they claim, place special emphasis upon family and social harmony, with the implication that those in the chaotic and crumbling societies of the West should think twice about intervening in Asia for the sake of promoting human rights and democracy. As Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew put it, Asians have ‘little doubt that a society with communitarian values where the interests of society take precedence over that of the individual suits them better than the individualism of America’.^[5] Such claims attracted international attention primarily because East Asian leaders seemed to be presiding over what a U.N. human development report called ‘the most sustained and widespread development miracle of the twentieth century, perhaps all history’.^[6] In 1997-98, however, the East Asian miracle seemed to have collapsed. And it looks like Asian values was one casualty of the crisis.

The political factors that focused attention on the East Asian challenge remain in place, however. East Asian economies (with the notable exception of Indonesia) have been slowly recovering. China in particular looks set to become an economic and political heavyweight with the power to seriously challenge the hegemony of Western liberal democratic values in international fora. Thus, one hears frequent calls for cross-cultural dialogue between the West and the East designed to understand and perhaps learn from the other side. Failing to take seriously East Asian political perspectives risks widening misunderstandings and setting the stage for hostilities that could have been avoided.

From a theoretical point of view, however, it must be conceded that the official debate on Asian values has not provided much of a challenge to dominant Western political outlooks. The main problem is that the debate has been led by Asian leaders who seem to be motivated primarily by political considerations, rather than by a sincere desire to make a constructive contribution to the debate on universalism versus particularism. Thus, it was easy to dismiss — rightly so, in most cases — the Asian challenge as nothing but a self-serving ploy by government leaders to justify their authoritarian rule in the face of increasing demands for democracy at home and abroad.

Still, it would be a mistake to assume that nothing of theoretical significance has emerged from East Asia. The debate on Asian values has also prompted critical intellectuals in the region to reflect on how they can locate themselves in a debate on human rights and democracy in which they had not previously played a substantial part. Neither wholly rejecting nor wholly endorsing the values and practices ordinarily realized through a liberal democratic political regime, these intellectuals are drawing on their own cultural traditions and exploring areas of commonality and difference with the West. Though often less provocative than the views of their governments in the sense that few argue for the wholesale rejection of Western-style liberal democracy with an East Asian alternative these unofficial East Asian viewpoints may offer more lasting contributions to the debate. Let me (briefly) note three relatively persuasive East Asian arguments for cultural particularism that contrast with traditional Western arguments for liberal universalism (see Bell 2000, ch. 1):

1. Cultural factors can affect the prioritizing of rights, and this matters when rights conflict and it must be decided which one to sacrifice. In other words, different societies may rank rights differently, and even if they face a similar set of disagreeable circumstances they may come to different conclusions about the right that needs to be curtailed. For example, U.S. citizens may be more willing to sacrifice a social or economic right in cases of conflict with a civil or political right: if neither the constitution nor a majority of democratically elected representatives support universal access to health care, then the right to health care regardless of income can be curtailed. In contrast, the Chinese may be more willing to sacrifice a civil or political liberty in cases of conflict with a social or economic right: there may be wide support for restrictions on the right to form independent labor associations if they are necessary to provide the conditions for economic development. Different priorities assigned to rights can also matter when it must be decided how to spend scarce resources. For example, East Asian societies with a Confucian heritage will place great emphasis upon the value of education, and they may help to explain the large amount of spending on education compared to other societies with similar levels of economic development.
2. Cultural factors can affect the justification of rights. In line with the arguments of ‘1980s communitarians’ such as Michael Walzer, it is argued that justifications for particular practices valued by Western-style liberal democrats should not be made by relying on the abstract and unhistorical universalism that often disables Western liberal democrats. Rather, they should be made from the inside, from specific examples and argumentative strategies that East Asians themselves use in everyday moral and political debate. For example, the moral language (shared even by some local critics of authoritarianism) tends to appeal to the value of community in East Asia, and this is relevant for social critics concerned with practical effect. One such communitarian argument is that democratic rights in Singapore can be justified on the grounds that they contribute to strengthening ties to such communities as the family and the nation (see below, section III).
3. Cultural factors can provide moral foundations for distinctive political practices and institutions (or at least different from those found in Western-style liberal democracies). In East Asian societies influenced by Confucianism, for example, it is widely held that children have a profound duty to care for elderly parents, a duty to be forsaken only in the most exceptional circumstances.^[7] In political practice, it means that East Asian governments have an obligation to provide the social and economic conditions that facilitate the realization of this duty. Political debate tends to center on the question of whether the right to filial piety is best realized by means of a law that makes it mandatory for children to provide financial support for elderly parents as in mainland China, Japan, and Singapore or whether the state should rely more on indirect methods such as tax breaks and housing benefits that simply make at-home care for the elderly easier, as in Korea and Hong Kong. But the argument that there is a pressing need to secure this duty in East Asia is not a matter of political controversy.

Thinkers influenced by East Asian cultural traditions such Confucianism have also argued for distinctive as-yet-unrealized political practices and institutions that draw on widely-held cultural values for inspiration. For example, Korean scholars Hahm Chaihark and Jongryn Mo argue for the need to revive and adapt for the contemporary era such Choson dynasty institutions as policy lectures and the Confucian censorate, traditional institutions that played the role of monitoring the dealings of the Emperor (Hahm 2003, Mo 2003, Bell 2000, ch. 5).

In contrast to 1980s communitarian thinkers, East Asian critics of liberal universalism have succeeded in pointing to particular non-liberal practices and institutions that may be appropriate for the contemporary world. Some of these may be appropriate only for societies with a Confucian heritage, others may also offer insights for mitigating the excesses of liberal modernity in the West. What cannot be denied is that they have carried forward the debate beyond the implausible alternatives to liberalism offered by 1980s communitarian thinkers.

It is worth emphasizing, however, that contemporary communitarians have not been merely defending parochial attachments to particular non-liberal moralities. Far from arguing that the universalist discourse on human rights should be entirely displaced with particular, tradition-sensitive political language, they have criticized liberals for not taking universality seriously enough, for failing to do what must be done to make human rights a truly universal ideal. These communitarians — let us label them the ‘cosmopolitan critics of liberal universalism’ — have suggested various means of improving the philosophical coherence and political appeal of human rights.

In fact, there is little debate over the desirability of a core set of human rights, such as prohibitions against slavery, genocide, murder, torture, prolonged arbitrary detention, and systematic racial discrimination. These rights have become part of international customary law, and they are not contested in the public rhetoric of the international arena. Of course many gross violations occur off the record, and human rights groups such as Amnesty International have the task of exposing the gap between public allegiance to rights and the sad reality of ongoing abuse. This is largely practical work, however. There is not much point writing about or deliberating about the desirability of practices that everyone condemns at the level of principle.

But political thinkers and activists around the world can and do take different sides on many pressing human rights concerns that fall outside what Walzer terms the ‘minimal and universal moral code’ (Walzer 1987, 24; Walzer 1994). This gray area of debate includes criminal law, family law, women's rights, social and economic rights, the rights of indigenous peoples, and the attempt to universalize Western-style democratic practices. The question is: how can the current thin list of universal human rights be expanded to include some of these contested rights?

Charles Taylor has put forward the following proposal (Taylor 1999). He imagines a cross-cultural dialogue between representatives of different traditions. Rather than argue for the universal validity of their views, however, he suggests that participants should allow for the possibility that their own beliefs may be mistaken. This way, participants can learn from each others ‘moral universe’. There will come a point, however, when differences cannot be reconciled. Taylor explicitly recognizes that different groups, countries, religious communities, and civilizations hold incompatible fundamental views on theology, metaphysics, and human nature. In response, Taylor argues that a ‘genuine, unforced consensus’ on human rights norms is possible only if we allow for disagreement on the ultimate justifications of those norms. Instead of defending contested foundational values when we encounter points of resistance (and thus condemning the values we do not like in other societies), we should try to abstract from those beliefs for the purpose of working out an ‘overlapping consensus’ of human rights norms. As Taylor puts it, ‘we would agree on the norms while disagreeing on why they were the right norms, and we would be content to live in this consensus, undisturbed by the differences of profound underlying belief’ (Taylor 1999, 124).

While Taylor's proposal moves the debate on universal human rights forward, it still faces certain difficulties. For one thing, it may not be realistic to expect that people will be willing to abstract from the values they care deeply about during the course of a global dialogue on human rights. Even if people agree to abstract from culturally specific ways of justifying and implementing norms, the likely outcome is a withdrawal to a highly general, abstract realm of agreement that fails to resolve actual disputes over contested rights. For example, participants in a cross-cultural dialogue can agree on the right not to be subject to cruel and unusual punishment while radically disagreeing upon what this means in practice — a committed Muslim can argue that theft can justifiably be punished by amputation of the right hand,^[8] whereas a Western liberal will want to label this an example of cruel and unusual punishment.

As we have seen, the debate on universalism versus particularism has moved from fairly abstract methodological disputes between Anglo-American philosophers to relatively concrete international political disputes between philosophers, social scientists, government officials, and NGO activists. The distinctive communitarian contribution has been to cast doubt on universal theories grounded exclusively in the liberal moralities of the Western world, on the grounds that cultural particularity should both make one sensitive to the possibility of justifiable areas of difference between the West and the rest and to the need for more cross-cultural dialogue for the purpose of improving the current thin human rights regime. Various contributions from East Asia and elsewhere have given some meat to these challenges to liberal universalism. In any case, let us now turn to the second main area of controversy between liberals and communitarians — the debate over the self that has similarly moved from philosophy to politics.

2. The Debate Over the Self

Communitarian thinkers in the 1980s such as Michael Sandel and Charles Taylor argued that Rawlsian liberalism rests on an overly individualistic conception of the self. Whereas Rawls argues that we have a supreme interest in shaping, pursuing, and revising our own life-plans, he neglects the fact that our selves tend to be defined or constituted by various communal attachments (e.g., ties to the family or to a religious tradition) so close to us that they can only be set aside at great cost, if at all. This insight led to the view that politics should not be concerned solely with securing the conditions for individuals to exercise their powers of autonomous choice, as we also need to sustain and promote the social attachments crucial to our sense of well-being and respect, many of which have been involuntarily picked up during the course of our upbringing. First, however, let us review the ontological or metaphysical debate over the self that led to this political conclusion.

In an influential essay titled ‘Atomism’, Charles Taylor objected to the liberal view that ‘men are self-sufficient outside of society’. (Taylor 1985, 2000) Instead, Taylor defends the Aristotelian view that ‘Man is a social animal, indeed a political animal, because he is not self-sufficient alone, and in an important sense is not self-sufficient outside a polis’ (Taylor 1985, 190). Moreover, this atomistic view of the self can undermine liberal society, because it fails to grasp the extent to which liberalism presumes a context where individuals are members of, and committed to, a society that promotes particular values such as freedom and individual diversity. Fortunately, most people in liberal societies do not really view themselves as atomistic selves.

But do liberal thinkers actually defend the idea that the self is created ex-nihilo, outside of any social context and that humans can exist (and flourish) independently of all social contexts? In fact, Taylor's essay was directed at the libertarian thinker Robert Nozick. As it turns out, the communitarian critique of the atomistic self does not apply to Rawslian liberalism: in Part III of Theory of Justice, Rawls pays close attention to the psychological and social conditions that facilitate the formation of liberal selves committed to justice. But few readers ever got to Part III of Rawls massive tome, so communitarians got quite a bit of mileage from their critique of liberal atomism. This charge didn't stick, however.

While liberals may not have been arguing that individuals can completely extricate themselves from their social context, the liberal valuation of choice still seemed to suggest an image of a subject who impinges his will on the world.^[9] Drawing on the insights of Heidegger and Wittgenstein, communitarians argued that this view neglects the extent to which individuals are embodied agents in the world. Far from acting in ways designed to realize an autonomously arrived-at life-plan, vast areas of our lives are in fact governed by unchosen routines and habits that lie in the background. More often than not we act in ways specified by our social background when we walk, dress, play games, speak, and so on without having formulated any goals or made any choices. It is only when things break down from the normal, everyday, unchosen mode of existence that we think of ourselves as subjects dealing with an external world, having the experience of formulating various ways of executing our goals, choosing from among those ways, and accepting responsibility for the outcomes of our actions. In other words, traditional intentionality is introduced at the point that our ordinary way of coping with things is insufficient. Yet this breakdown mode is what we tend to notice, and philosophers have therefore argued that most of our actions are occasioned by processes of reflection. Liberals have picked up this mistaken assumption, positing the idea of a subject who seeks to realize an autonomously arrived-at life-plan, losing sight of the fact that critical reflection upon ones ends is nothing more than one possibility that arises when our ordinary ways of coping with things is insufficient to get things done.

Some liberals have replied by recognizing the point that vast areas of our lives are governed by unchosen habits and routines, that the deliberate, effortful, choosing subject mode may be the exception rather than the rule. They emphasize, however, that the main justification for a liberal politics concerned primarily with securing the conditions for individuals to lead autonomous lives rests on the possibility and desirability of normative self-determination, that is,on the importance of making choices with respect to things that we value (Doppelt 1989). While it may be true that certain communal practices often, or even mostly, guide our behavior behind our backs, it doesn't follow that those practices ought to be valued, or reflectively endorsed in non-ordinary moments of existence, much less that the government ought somehow to promote these practices. And what liberals care about ultimately is the provision of the rights, powers, and opportunities that individuals need to develop and implement their own conceptions of the good life.

This qualified version of the liberal self, however, still seems to imply that moral outlooks are, or should be, the product of individual choice. One's social world, communitarians can reply, provides more than non-moral social practices like table manners and pronunciation norms — it also provides some sort of orientation in moral space. We cannot make sense of our moral experience unless we situate ourselves within this given moral space, within the authoritative moral horizons. What Charles Taylor calls ‘higher, strongly evaluated goods’ (Taylor 1989) — the goods we should feel committed to, those that generate moral obligations on us regardless of our actual preferences are not somehow invented by individuals, but rather they are located within the social world which provides one's framework of the lower and the higher. Thus, the liberal ideal of a self who freely invents her own moral outlook, or private conception of the good, cannot do justice to our actual moral experience.

But once again, liberals need not deny the assumption that our social world provides a framework of the higher and the lower nor need it be presumed that we must regard our own moral outlook as freely invented. Will Kymlicka, for example, explicitly recognizes that things have worth for us in so far as they are granted significance by our culture, in so far as they fit into a pattern of activities which is recognized by those sharing a certain form of life as a way of leading a good life (Kymlicka 1989, 166). That one's social world provides the range of things worth doing, achieving, or being does not, however, undermine the liberal emphasis on autonomy, for there is still substantial room for individual choice to be made within this set. The best life is still the one where the individual chooses what is worth doing, achieving, or being, though it may be that this choice has to be made within a certain framework which is itself unchosen.

Communitarians can reply by casting doubt on the view that choice is intrinsically valuable, that a certain moral principle or communal attachment is more valuable simply because it has been chosen following deliberation among alternatives by an individual subject. If we have a highest-order interest in choosing our central projects and life-plans, regardless of what is chosen, it ought to follow that there is something fundamentally wrong with unchosen attachments and projects. But this view violates our actual self-understandings. We ordinarily think of ourselves, Michael Sandel says, ‘as members of this family or community or nation or people, as bearers of this history, as sons or daughters of that revolution, as citizens of this republic’, (Sandel 1981, 179) social attachments that more often than not are involuntarily picked up during the course of our upbringing, rational choice having played no role whatsoever. I didn't choose to love my mother and father, to care about the neighborhood in which I grew up, to have special feelings for the people of my country, and it is difficult to understand why anyone would think I have chosen these attachments, or that I ought to have done so. In fact, there may even be something distasteful about someone who questions the things he or she deeply cares about — certainly no marriage could survive too long if fundamental understandings regarding love and trust were constantly thrown open for discussion! Nor is it obvious that, say, someone who performs a good deed following prolonged calculation of pros and cons is morally superior than a Mother-Teresa type who unreflectively, spontaneously acts on behalf of other people's interests.

Liberals can reply that the real issue is not the desirability of choice, but rather the possibility of choice. There may well be some unchosen attachments that need not be critically reflected upon and endorsed, and it may even be the case that excessive deliberation about the things we care about can occasionally be counter-productive. But some of our ends may be problematic and that is why we have a fundamental interest in being able to question and revise them. Most important is not choosing our own life-plans; rather, liberalism founded on the value of self-determination requires only that we be able to critically evaluate our ends if need be, hence that ‘no end or goal is exempt from possible re-examination’ (Kymlicka 1989, 52; Dworkin 1989, 489; Macedo 1990, 247). For example, an oppressed woman has a fundamental interest in being able to critically reflect upon traditional understandings of what it means to be a good wife and mother, and it would be unjust to foreclose her freedom to radically revise her plans.

This response, however, still leaves open the possibility of a deep challenge to liberal foundations. Perhaps we are able to reexamine some attachments, but the problem for liberalism arises if there are others so fundamental to our identity that they cannot be set aside, and that any attempt to do so will result in serious and perhaps irreparable psychological damage. In fact, this challenge to liberalism would only require that communitarians be able to identify one end or communal attachment so constitutive of one's identity that it cannot be revised and rejected. A psychoanalyst, for example, may want to argue that (at least in some cases) it is impossible to choose to shed the attachment one feels for one's mother, and that an attempt may lead to perverse and unintended consequences. A feminist theorist may point to the mother-child relationship as an example of a constitutive feature of one's identity and argue that any attempt to deny this fails to be sensitive to women's special needs and experiences (Frazer & Lacey 1993, 53-60). An anthropologist may argue on the basis of field observations that it is impossible for an Inuit person from Canada's far north to suddenly decide to stop being an Inuit and that the only sensible response is to recognize and accept this constitutive feature of his identity. Or a gay liberation activist may claim that it is both impossible and undesirable for gays to repress their biologically-given sexual identity. These arguments are not implausible, and they seem to challenge the liberal view that no particular end or commitment should be beyond critical reflection and open to revision.

Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that we can identify one particular attachment so deeply-embedded that it is impossible to really bring to conscious awareness and so significant for one's well-being that an individual can only forsake commitment to its good at the cost of being seriously psychologically disturbed. This end is beyond willed change and one loses a commitment to it at the price of being thrown into a state of disorientation where one is unable to take a stand on many things of significance (Taylor 1989, 26-7). Does this really threaten liberal politics? It may, if liberal politics really rests on the liberal self. Fortunately, that is not the case. Rereading some of the communitarian texts from the 1980s, there seems to have been an assumption that once you expose faulty foundations regarding the liberal self, the whole liberal edifice will come tumbling down. The task is to criticize the underlying philosophy of the self, win people on your side, and then we can move on to a brand new communitarian society that owes nothing to the liberal tradition. This must have been an exhilarating time for would-be revolutionaries, but more level-headed communitarians soon realized that overthrowing liberal rights was never part of the agenda. Even if liberals are wrong to deny the existence of constitutive ends — even if the philosophical justifications for a liberal form of social organization founded on the value of reflective choice are rotten to the core — there are still many, relatively pragmatic reasons for caring about rights in the modern world. To name some of the more obvious benefits, liberal rights often contribute to security, political stability and economic modernization.

In short, the whole debate about the self appears to have been somewhat misconceived. Liberals were wrong to think they needed to provide iron-clad philosophies of the self to justify liberal politics, and communitarians were wrong to think that challenging those foundations was sufficient to undermine liberal politics. Not surprisingly, both sides soon got tired of debating the pros and cons of the liberal self. By the early 1990s, this liberal-communitarian debate over the self had effectively faded from view in Anglo-American philosophy.^[10]

So what remains of the communitarian conception of the self? What may be distinctive about communitarians is that they are more inclined to argue that individuals have a vital interest in leading decent communal lives, with the political implication that there may be a need to sustain and promote the communal attachments crucial to our sense of well-being. This is not necessarily meant to challenge the liberal view that some of our communal attachments can be problematic and may need to be changed, thus that the state needs to protect our powers to shape, pursue, and revise our own life-plans. But our interest in community may occasionally conflict with our other vital interest in leading freely chosen lives, and the communitarian view is that the latter does not automatically trump the former in cases of conflict. On the continuum between freedom and community, communitarians are more inclined to draw the line towards the latter.

But these conflicts cannot be resolved in the abstract. Much turns on empirical analyses of actual politics — to what extent our interest in community is indeed threatened by excess liberal politics, to what extent the state can play a role in remedying the situation, to what extent the nourishment of communal ties should be left to civil society, and so on. This is where the political communitarians of the last decade have shed some light. Let us now turn to the politics of community, the third major strand of the communitarian thought.

3. The Politics of Community

In retrospect, it seems obvious that communitarian critics of liberalism may have been motivated not so much by philosophical concerns as by certain pressing political concerns, namely, the negative social and psychological effects related to the atomistic tendencies of modern liberal societies. Whatever the soundness of liberal principles, in other words, the fact remains that many communitarians seem worried by a perception that traditional liberal institutions and practices have contributed to, or at least do not seem up to the task of dealing with, such modern phenomena as alienation from the political process, unbridled greed, loneliness, urban crime, and high divorce rates. And given the seriousness of these problems in the United States, it was perhaps inevitable that a second wave of 1990s communitarians such as Amitai Etzioni and William Galston would turn to the more practical political terrain of emphasizing social responsibility and promoting policies meant to stem the erosion of communal life in an increasingly fragmented society.^[11] Much of this thinking has been carried out in the flagship communitarian periodical, The Responsive Community, which is edited by Amitai Etzioni and includes contributions by an eclectic group of philosophers, social scientists, and public policy makers [this periodical, regrettably, folded in summer 2004 due to financial constraints]. Etzioni is also the director of a think-tank, Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies, that produces working papers and advises government officials in Washington.^[12]

Such political communitarians blame both the left and the right for our current malaise (Bell 1997). The political left is chastised not just for supporting welfare rights economically unsustainable in an era of slow growth and aging populations, but also for shifting power away from local communities and democratic institutions and towards centralized bureaucratic structures better equipped to administer the fair and equal distribution of benefits, thus leading to a growing sense of powerlessness and alienation from the political process. Moreover, the modern welfare state with its universalizing logic of rights and entitlements has undermined family and social ties in civil society by rendering superfluous obligations to communities, by actively discouraging private efforts to help others (e.g., union rules and strict regulations in Sweden prevent parents from participating voluntarily in the governance of some day care centers to which they send their children), and even by providing incentives that discourage the formation of families (e.g., welfare payments are cut off in many American states if a recipient marries a working person) and encourage the break-up of families (e.g., no-fault divorce in the US is often financially rewarding for the non custodial parent, usually the father).

Libertarian solutions favored by the political right have contributed even more directly to the erosion of social responsibilities and valued forms of communal life, particularly in the UK and the US. Far from producing beneficial communal consequences, the invisible hand of unregulated free-market capitalism undermines the family (e.g., few corporations provide enough leave to parents of newborn children), disrupts local communities (e.g., following plant closings or the shifting of corporate headquarters), and corrupts the political process (e.g., US politicians are often dependent on economic interest groups for their political survival, with the consequence that they no longer represent the community at large). Moreover, the valorization of greed in the Thatcher/Reagan era justified the extension of instrumental considerations governing relationships in the marketplace into spheres previously informed by a sense of uncalculated reciprocity and civil obligation. This trend has been reinforced by increasing globalization, which pressures states into conforming to the dictates of the international marketplace.

More specifically in the American context, communitarian thinkers such as Mary Ann Glendon indict a new version of rights discourse that has achieved dominance of late (Glendon 1991). Whereas the assertion of rights was once confined to matters of essential human interest, a strident rights rhetoric has colonized contemporary political discourse, thus leaving little room for reasoned discussion and compromise, justifying the neglect of social responsibilities without which a society could not function, and ultimately weakening all appeals to rights by devaluing the really important ones.

To remedy this imbalance between rights and responsibilities in the US, political communitarians propose a moratorium on the manufacture of new rights and changes to our ‘habits of the heart’ away from exclusive focus on personal fulfillment and towards concern with bolstering families, schools, neighborhoods, and national political life, changes to be supported by certain public policies. Notice that this proposal takes for granted basic civil and political liberties already in place, thus alleviating the concern that communitarians are embarking on a slippery slope to authoritarianism. Still, there may be a concern that marginalized groups demanding new rights, e.g., homosexual couples seeking the right to legally sanctioned marriage, will be paying the price for the excesses of others if the communitarian proposal to declare a moratorium on the minting of new rights is put into effect.

More serious from the standpoint of those generally sympathetic to communitarian aspirations, however, is the question of what exactly this has to do with community. For one thing, Etzioni himself seeks to justify his policies with reference to need to maintain a balance between social order and freedom, (Etzioni 1996) as opposed to appealing to the importance of community. But there is nothing distinctively communitarian about the preoccupation with social order; both liberals such as John Stuart Mill and Burkean conservatives affirm the need for order. And when the term community is employed by political communitarians, it seems to mean anything they want it to mean. Worse, as Elizabeth Frazer has argued, it has often been used to justify hierarchical arrangements and delegitimize areas of conflict and contestation in modern societies (Frazer 1999).

Still, it is possible to make sense of the term community as a normative ideal.^[13] Communitarians begin by positing a need to experience our lives as bound up with the good of the communities out of which our identity has been constituted. This excludes contingent attachments such as golf-club memberships, that do not usually bear on ones sense of identity and well-being (the co-authors of Habits of the Heart (Bellah et al. 1985) employ the term ‘lifestyle enclaves’ to describe these attachments). Unlike pre-modern defenders of Gemeinshaft, however, it is assumed that there are many valued forms of communal life in the modern world. So the distinctive communitarian political project is to identify valued forms of community and to devise policies designed to protect and promote them, without sacrificing too much freedom. Typically, communitarians would invoke the following types of communities:

1. Communities of place, or communities based on geographical location. This is perhaps the most common meaning associated with the word community. In this sense, community is linked to locality, in the physical, geographical sense of a community that is located somewhere. It can refer to a small village or a big city. A community of place also has an affective component — it refers to the place one calls ‘home’, often the place where one is born and bred and the place where one would like to end one's days even if home is left as an adult. At the very least, communitarians posit an interest in identifying with familiar surroundings.

In terms of political implications, it means that, for example, political authorities ought to consider the existent character of the local community when considering plans for development (Jane Jacobs famously documented the negative effects of razing, instead of renovating, run-down tenements that are replaced by functionally adequate but characterless low-income housing blocs (Jacobs 1965). Other suggestions to protect communities of place include: granting community councils veto power over building projects that fail to respect existent architectural styles; implementing laws regulating plant closures so as to protect local communities from the effects of rapid capital mobility and sudden industrial change; promoting local-ownership of corporations; (Shuman 1999) and imposing restrictions on large-scale discount outlets such as Wal-Mart that threaten to displace small, fragmented, and diverse family and locally owned stores (Ehrenhalt 1999).

2. Communities of memory, or groups of strangers who share a morally-significant history. This term — first employed by the co-authors of Habits of the Heart — refers to imagined communities that have a shared history going back several generations. Besides tying us to the past, such communities turn us towards the future — members strive to realize the ideals and aspirations embedded in past experiences of those communities, seeing their efforts as being, in part, contributions to a common good. They provide a source of meaning and hope in peoples lives. Typical examples include the nation and language-based ethnocultural groups.

In Western liberal democracies, this typically translates into various nation-building exercises meant to nourish the bonds of commonality that tie people to their nations, such as national service and national history lessons in school textbooks. Self-described republicans such as Michael Sandel place special emphasis upon the national political community and argue for measures that increase civic engagement and public-spiritedness (Sandel 1996). However, there is increased recognition of the multi-national nature of contemporary states, and modern Western states must also try to make room for the political rights of minority groups. These political measures have been widely discussed in the recent literature on nationalism, citizenship, and multiculturalism (Kymlicka 1995, Macedo 2000, Tamir 1993).

3. Psychological communities, or communities of face-to-face personal interaction governed by sentiments of trust, co-operation, and altruism. This refers to a group of persons who participate in common activity and experience a psychological sense of togetherness as shared ends are sought. Such communities, based on face-to-face interaction, are governed by sentiments of trust, cooperation, and altruism in the sense that constituent members have the good of the community in mind and act on behalf of the communitys interest. They differ from communities of place by not being necessarily defined by locality and proximity. The differ from communities of memory in the sense that they are more ‘real’, they are typically based on face to face social interaction at one point in time and consequently tend to be restricted in size.^[14] The family is the prototypical example. Other examples include small-scale work or school settings founded on trust and social cooperation.

Communitarians tend to favor policies designed to protect and promote ties to the family and family-like groups. This would include such measures as encouraging marriage and increasing the difficulty of legal marriage dissolution. These policies are supported by empirical evidence that points to the psychological and social benefits of marriage (Waite 1996). Communitarians also favor political legislation that can help to restructure education in such a way that peoples deepest needs in membership and participation in psychological communities are tapped at a young age. The primary school system in Japan, where students learn about group cooperation and benefits and rewards are assigned to the classroom as a whole rather than to individual students, could be a useful model (Reid 1999).

What makes the political project of communitarianism distinctive is that it involves the promotion all three forms of valued communal life. This leads, however, to the worry that seeking the goods of various communities may conflict in practice. Etzioni, for example, argues for a whole host of pro-family measures: mothers and fathers should devote more time and energy to parenting (in view of the fact that most childcare centers do a poor job of caring for children), labor unions and employers ought to make it easier for parents to work at home, and the government should force corporations to provide six months of paid leave and another year of unpaid leave (Etzioni 1993, ch.2 and Etzioni 1996, ch.6). The combined effect of these changes of the heart and public policies in all likelihood would be to make citizens into largely private, family-centered persons.

Yet Etzioni also argues that the American political system is corrupt to the core, concluding that only extensive involvement in public affairs by virtuous citizens can remedy the situation: ‘once citizens are informed, they must make it their civic duty to organize others locally, regionally, and nationally to act on their understanding of what it takes to clean up public life in America’ (Etzioni 1993, 244) But few can afford sufficient time and energy to devote themselves fully to both family life and public affairs, and favoring one ideal is most likely to erode the other. Surely it is no coincidence that republican America in Jeffersons day relied on active, public-spirited male citizens largely freed from family responsibilities. Conversely, societies composed of persons leading rich and fulfilling family lives (such as contemporary Singapore) tend to be ruled by paternalistic despots who can rely on a compliant, politically apathetic populace.

Communitarians who advocate both increased commitment to public affairs and strengthened ties to the workplace (to the point that it becomes a psychological community) also face the problem of conflicting commitments. Michael Sandel, for example, speaks favorable of ‘proud craftsmen’ in the Jacksonian era and of Louis Brandeis's idea of ‘industrial democracy, in which workers participated in management and shared responsibilities for running the business’ (Sandel 1996, 170, 213; Bell 1997b) Identification with the workplace and industrial democracy are said to improve workers civic capacities, but that may not be the case. In the same way that extensive involvement in family life can conflict with commitments to public life, few persons will have sufficient time and energy for extensive participation in both workplace and public affairs. Recall that the republican society of ancient Athens relied on active, public-spirited males freed from the need to work (slaves did most of the drudge labor).

It is also worth noting that devotion to the workplace can undermine family life. As Tatsuo Inoue of Tokyo University argues, Japanese-style communitarianism — strong communal identity based on the workplace — sometimes leads to karoshi (death from overwork) and frequently deprives workers of ‘the right to sit down at the dinner table with their families’ (Inoue 1993). Just as liberals (pace Ronald Dworkin) sometimes have to choose between ideals (e.g., freedom and equality) that come into conflict with one another if a serious effort is made to realize any one of them fully, so communitarians may have to make some hard choices between valued forms of communal life.

Still, there may be some actual or potential win-win scenarios cases where promoting a particular form of communal life can promote, rather than undermine, other forms — and political communitarians will of course favor change of this sort. For example, critics have objected to residential community associations, or ‘walled communities', on the grounds that they undermine attachment to the polity at large and erode the social cohesion and trust needed to promote social justice and sustain the democratic process (McKenzie 1994, Bell 1995).^[15] Might it then be possible to reform urban planning so that people can nurture strong local communities without undermining attachment to the national community, perhaps even strengthening broader forms of public-spiritedness? Many practical suggestions along these lines have been raised. Architects and urban planners in the US known as the New Urbanists, for example, have proposed various measures to strengthen community building — affordable housing, public transport, pedestrian focused environments, and public space as an integral part of neighborhoods — that would not have the ‘privatizing’ consequences of gated communities. The problem, as Gerald Frug points out, is that ‘virtually everything they want to do is now illegal. To promote the new urbanist version of urban design, cities would have revise municipal zoning laws and development policy from top to bottom.’^[16] This points to the need for public policy recommendations explicitly designed to favor complementing forms of communal attachments.

Just as it would be wrong to assume that communitarian goals always conflict, so one should allow for the possibility that individual rights and communitarian goals can co-exist and complement each other.^[17] In Singapore, for example, it can be argued that more secure democratic rights would have the effect of strengthening commitment to the common national good.^[18] The Singapore government does not hide the fact that it makes life difficult for many who aim to enter the political arena on the side of opposition parties: Between 1971 and 1993, according to Attorney General Chan Sek Keong, eleven opposition politicians were made bankrupt (and hence ineligible to run in elections).^[19] Whether intended or not, such actions send an unpatriotic message to the community at large: Politics is a dangerous game for those who haven't been specially anointed by the top leadership of the ruling party, so you should stick to your own private affairs. As Singaporean journalist Cherian George puts it, one can hardly blame people for ignoring their social and political obligations ‘when they hear so many cautionary tales: Of Singaporeans whose careers came to a premature end after they voiced dissent; of critics who found themselves under investigation; of individuals who were detained without trial even though they seemed not to pose any real threat; of tapped phones and opened letters’. The moral of these stories: In Singapore, better to mind your own business, make money, and leave politics to the politicians.’^[20] Put positively, if the aim is to secure attachment to the community at large, then implementing genuinely competitive elections, including the freedom to run for the opposition without fear of retaliation,^[21] is an important first step.

The Singapore case, however, points to another dimension of the politics of community that brings us back to the communitarian defense of cultural particularism. Democratic reformers in Singapore typically think of democracy in terms of free and fair competitive elections what Western analysts often label ‘minimal democracy’. In Hong Kong, the situation is similar — the aspiration to ‘full’ democracy put forward by social critics turns out to mean (nothing more than) an elected legislature and Chief Executive. Put differently, it is quite striking that the republican tradition in communitarian thought with its vision of strong democracy supported by active, public-spirited citizens who participate in political decision-making and held shape the future direction of their society though political debate seems largely absent from political discourse in Singapore and Hong Kong, and perhaps East Asia more generally. Many East Asians are clamoring for secure democratic rights, but this rarely translates into the demand that all citizens should be committed to politics on an ongoing basis or the view that, as David Miller puts it, ‘politics is indeed a necessary part of the good life’ (Miller 2000). At one level, the relative absence of republican ideals can be explained by the fact that there are no equivalents of Aristotle and Jean-Jacques Rousseau in East Asian philosophy. It can also be argued that republicanism fails to resonate because East Asians typically place more emphasis on other forms of communal life — the family in particular has been important theme in Confucian ethical theory and practice (relative to Western philosophy). To the extent that different forms of communal life do conflict in practice, in short, it may the case that different cultures will draw the line in different places — and they may have a strong moral case in doing so, if these lines conform to the views shared by both defenders and critics of the political status quo.

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Plato's Ethics and Politics in The Republic

Eric Brown <eabrown@wustl.edu>

Plato's Republic centers on a simple question: is it always better to be just than unjust? The puzzles in Book One prepare for this question, and Glaucon and Adeimantus make it explicit at the beginning of Book Two. To answer the question, Socrates takes a long way around, sketching an account of a good city on the grounds that a good city would be just and that defining justice as a virtue of a city would help to define justice as a virtue of a human being. Socrates is finally close to answering the question after he characterizes justice as a personal virtue at the end of Book Four, but he is interrupted and challenged to defend some of the more controversial features of the good city he has sketched. In Books Five through Seven, he addresses this challenge, arguing (in effect) that the just city and the just human being as he has sketched them are in fact good and are in principle possible. After this long digression, Socrates in Books Eight and Nine finally delivers three "proofs" that it is always better to be just than unjust. Then, because Socrates wants not only to show that it is always better to be just but also to convince Glaucon and Adeimantus of this point, and because Socrates' proofs are opposed by the teachings of poets, he bolsters his case in Book Ten by indicting the poets' claims to represent the truth and by offering a new myth that is consonant with his proofs.

As this overview makes clear, the center of Plato's Republic is a contribution to ethics: a discussion of what the virtue justice is and why a person should be just. Yet because Socrates links his discussion of personal justice to an account of justice in the city and makes claims about how good and bad cities are arranged, the Republic sustains reflections on political questions, as well. Not that ethics and politics exhaust the concerns of the Republic. The account in Books Five through Seven of how a just city and a just person are in principle possible is an account of how knowledge can rule, which includes discussion of what knowledge and its objects are. Moreover, the indictment of the poets involves a wide-ranging discussion of art. This article, however, focuses on the ethics and politics of Plato's Republic. For more on what the Republic says about knowledge and its objects, see Plato: Metaphysics and Epistemology, and for more about the discussion of the poets, see Plato: Rhetoric and Poetry.

The article attempts to provide a constructive guide to the main issues of ethics and politics in the Republic. Two assumptions shape its organization. First, it assumes that an account of ethics and politics in the Republic requires a preliminary understanding of the question Socrates is facing and the strategy Socrates uses to answer the question. Second, it assumes that politics in the Republic is based upon the moral psychology in the Republic, and thus that the former is more profitably discussed after the latter.

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1. Introduction: The Question and the Strategy

1.1 The Nature of the Question

In Book One, the Republic's question first emerges in the figure of Cephalus. After Socrates asks his host what it is like being old (328de) and rich (330d)--rather rude, we might think--Cephalus says that the best thing about wealth is that it can save us from being unjust and thus smooth the way for an agreeable afterlife (330d-331b). This is enough to prompt more questions, for Socrates wants to know what justice is. Predictably, Cephalus and then Polemarchus fail to define justice in a way that survives Socratic examination, but they continue to assume that justice is a valuable part of a good human life. Thrasymachus erupts when he has had his fill of this conversation (336ab), and he challenges the assumption that it is good to be just. On Thrasymachus' view (see especially 343c-344c), justice is conventionally established by the strong, in order that the weak will serve the interests of the strong. The strong themselves, on this view, are better off disregarding justice and serving their own interests.

Socrates sees in this "immoralist" challenge the explicit question of whether one should live a just or unjust life (344de), and he tries repeatedly to repel Thrasymachus' onslaught. Eventually, Thrasymachus withdraws sullenly, like Callicles in the Gorgias, but Socrates' "victory" fails to satisfy Glaucon and Adeimantus. The brothers pick up where Thrasymachus left off, providing reasons why most people think that justice is not intrinsically valuable but worth respecting only if one is not strong enough (or invisible enough) to get away with injustice. They want to be shown that most people are wrong, that justice is worth choosing for its own sake. More than that, Glaucon and Adeimantus want to be shown that justice is worth choosing regardless of the rewards or penalties bestowed on the just by other people and the gods, and they will accept this conclusion only if Socrates can convince them that it is always better to be just. So Socrates must persuade them that the just person who is terrifically unfortunate and scorned lives a better life than the unjust person who is so successful that he is unfairly rewarded as if he were perfectly just (see 360d-361d).

The challenge that Glaucon and Adeimantus present has baffled modern readers who are accustomed to carving up ethics into deontologies that articulate a theory of what is right independent of what is good and consequentialisms that define what is right in terms of what promotes the good. The insistence that justice be praised "itself by itself" has suggested to some that Socrates will be offering a deontological account of justice. But the insistence that justice be shown to be beneficial to the just has suggested to others that Socrates will be justifying justice by reference to its consequences.

In fact, both readings are distortions, predicated more on what modern moral philosophers think than on what Plato thinks. Socrates takes the basic challenge to concern how justice relates to objective happiness or flourishing. He states his general position by saying, "I think that justice belongs in the best class [of goods], that which should be loved both for its own sake and for the sake of its consequences by anyone who is going to be blessed" (358a1-3). In these terms, Glaucon and Adeimantus are asking, "If you are always acting for the sake of your happiness, are you also always overridingly committed to justice?" So understood, the challenge is not necessarily about whether justice brings about happiness as a consequence for the agent, for the agent who is always acting for the sake of his happiness may not be trying to bring about his happiness. Rather, the agent could always be trying to act in a way that instantiates happiness, and justice may (help to) constitute happiness. This would make sense of the demand to show both that justice is valued "itself by itself" and that the just are happier, and as we shall see, it seems to explain Socrates' strategy well.

There remains a further question about the answer Socrates aims to give. Although Socrates is asked to show that one is always happier being just than unjust, he may try to show more than this. He may try to show that justice is both necessary and sufficient for happiness, for that would entail that the just are always happier than the unjust. Of course, he need not be so bold. Even if there are circumstances in which the just do not flourish, Socrates will successfully answer the challenge if he shows that even in these circumstances the just are better off (that is, closer to flourishing) than the unjust. There is no way of determining which thesis Socrates ultimately tries to defend on the basis of the challenge Glaucon and Adeimantus present. The way the challenge is put suggests the weaker, comparative thesis, but we cannot rule out the possibility that Socrates will ultimately argue for the stronger, sufficiency thesis.

1.2 Rejected Strategies

After the challenge of Glaucon and Adeimantus, Socrates takes off in a strange direction (from 367e). He suggests looking for justice as a virtue of cities before defining justice as a virtue of persons, on the rather unconvincing grounds that justice in a city is bigger and more apparent than justice in a person (368c-369b), and this leads Socrates to a rambling description of some features of a good city (369b-427c). This may seem puzzling. But Socrates' indirect approach is not unmotivated. The arguments of Book One and the challenge of Glaucon and Adeimantus rule out a variety of more direct routes.

First, Socrates might have tried to settle quickly on a widely accepted account of what justice is and moved immediately to considering whether that is always in one's interests. But Book One rules this strategy out by casting doubt on widely accepted accounts of justice. Socrates cannot simply assume an ordinary conception of justice, because he has found ordinary conceptions of justice lacking. He must say what justice is in order to answer the question put to him. Of course, he does not have perfectly free rein to make justice whatever he should want it to be. Defining justice as happiness, for example, would beg the question, and an account of justice according to which we were required to torture red-headed children for amusement would fail to address the question that Glaucon and Adeimantus take themselves to be asking. Still, Socrates has to say what justice is, on his own terms.

Moreover, Socrates cannot try to define justice by enumerating types of actions required by justice and types of actions forbidden by justice. We might have objected to this strategy for this reason: because action-types can be specified in remarkably various ways and at remarkably different levels of specificity, no list of just or unjust action-types could be comprehensive. But a specific argument in Book One suggests a different reason why Socrates does not employ this strategy. When Cephalus characterizes justice as keeping promises and returning what is owed, Socrates objects by citing a case in which returning what is owed would not be just (331c). This objection potentially has very wide force, as it seems that exceptions could always be found for any action-type that does not include in its description a word like ‘wrong’ or ‘just’. Wrongful killing may always be wrong, but is killing? Just recompense may always be right, but is recompense? This reasoning explains why Socrates does not attempt to define justice by a list of prescribed and proscribed actions.

So Book One makes it difficult for Socrates to take justice for granted. What is worse, the terms in which Socrates accepts the challenge of Glaucon and Adeimantus make it difficult for him to take happiness for granted. If Socrates were to proceed like a consequentialist, he might offer a full account of happiness and then deliver an account of justice that both meets with general approval and shows how justice brings about happiness. But Socrates does not proceed like that. He proceeds as if he were trying to show that justice (helps to) constitute happiness. Note that Socrates does not even do as much as Aristotle does in the Nicomachean Ethics; he does not suggest some general criteria for what happiness is. He is proceeding as if happiness is quite unsettled. But if justice is crucial to happiness and yet unsettled, then he is right to proceed as if happiness were unsettled.

In sum, Socrates needs to construct an account of justice and an account of happiness at the same time, and he needs these accounts to entail without assuming the conclusion that the just person is always happier than the unjust.

1.3 The Adopted Strategy

How can Socrates establish the relation between personal justice and personal happiness when the nature of personal justice and the nature of personal happiness are up in the air? The difficulty of this task helps to explain why Socrates takes the curious route through the discussion of civic justice and civic happiness. It would be easier to assume that a just city is always more flourishing than an unjust city, for Glaucon and Adeimantus do not question this. If Socrates can give content to this assumption by offering an account of civic justice and civic happiness, then he can propose that a similar relationship between justice and flourishing holds in persons.

Socrates' strategy depends in some measure on an analogy between a city and a person. If what makes a city flourish bears no intelligible relation to what makes a person flourish, Socrates' strategy is ill-founded. Similarly, he will get nowhere if what makes a city just bears no intelligible relation to what makes a person just. But to answer the Republic's question, Socrates does not need a very tight relation between cities and persons. He must convince Glaucon and Adeimantus that on their considered conceptions of personal justice and personal happiness, one is happier being just than unjust, and this he can do quite independently of anything that he says about the flourishing and justice of cities. The discussion of a good city does not have to introduce premises for the argument about personal justice and happiness. It will be useful if it only gives us some reason to entertain an account of persons that we may not have otherwise entertained.

Although this is all that the city-person analogy needs to do, Socrates seems at times to claim more for it, and one of the abiding puzzles about the Republic concerns the exact nature and grounds for the full analogy that Socrates claims. At times Socrates seems to say that the same account of justice must apply to both persons and cities because the same account of any F must apply to all things that are F (e.g., 434d-435a). At other times Socrates seems to say that the same account of justice must apply in both cases because the F-ness of a whole is due to the F-ness of its parts (e.g., 435d-436a). Again, at times Socrates seems to say that these grounds are strong enough to permit a deductive inference: if a city's F-ness is such-and-such, then a person's F-ness must be such-and-such (e.g., 441c9-10). At other times, Socrates would prefer to use the F-ness of the city as a heuristic for locating F-ness in persons (e.g., 368e-369a). Plato is surely right to think that there is some interesting and non-accidental relation between the structural features and values of society and the psychological features and values of persons, but there is much controversy about whether this relation really is strong enough to sustain all of the claims that Socrates makes for it in the Republic.

Still, the Republic primarily requires an answer to Glaucon and Adeimantus' question, and that answer does not depend logically on any strong claims for the analogy between cities and persons. Rather, it depends upon a persuasive account of justice as a personal virtue, and persuasive reasons why one is always happier being just than unjust. So we can turn to these issues before returning to Socrates' remarks about the flourishing city.

2. Ethics, Part One: What Justice Is

2.1 Human Motivations

Socrates seeks to define justice as one of the cardinal human virtues, and he understands the virtues as states of the soul. So his account of what justice is depends upon his account of the human soul.

According to the Republic, just as the ideal city consists of persons who fall into three classes--rulers, auxiliaries, and producers--so too the human soul consists of psychological attitudes that fall into three classes-rational, spirited, and appetitive. This division of the soul can lead to talk of "parts," and it might also lead some to think about the ways in which we tend to classify psychological states into beliefs and emotions and desires. So it must be emphasized that the Platonic soul is not a physical thing comprising literal parts, despite Socrates' occasional choice of words, and it must be even more strongly emphasized that the rational, spirited, and appetitive kinds of psychological attitudes are not to be identified as beliefs, emotions, and desires, respectively. On the theory Socrates sketches in Book Four and develops thereafter (especially in Books Eight and Nine), humans have, on the one hand, rational desires for knowledge and rational eros, and on the other, spirited beliefs about what is honorable and appetitive beliefs about which kind of psychological attitudes should set the agenda. It seems, as we might put it, that there are representational psychological attitudes of all three kinds, motivating psychological attitudes of all three kinds, and affective attitudes of all three kinds. In fact, it is not even clear that Socrates in the Republic admits of any psychological attitude that is not simultaneously representational, motivating, and affective. Consequently, ‘belief’ and ‘desire’ in translations or discussions of Plato (including this one) must be handled with care; they should not be understood along Humean lines as motivationally inert representations, on the one hand, and non-cognitive motivators, on the other.

Socrates explains his threefold classification of psychological attitudes in two main stages. First, at the end of Book Four, he offers quick arguments for the classification, and these arguments, whether they are convincing or not, shed some light on what the kinds themselves are supposed to be. Then, in Books Eight and Nine, when Socrates discusses four inferior sorts of characterological types and argues for the superiority of the just character, he sheds more light on what the kinds of psychological attitudes are. Both of these stages are important, as the psychological analysis that Socrates provides should be assessed for its overall explanatory power.

In Book Four, psychological attitudes are initially divided into different kinds in order to avoid running afoul of what we might call the principle of non-opposition in our explanations of human experience. According to the principle of non-opposition, which bears comparison with Aristotle's formulation of the principle of non-contradiction (Metaphysics G3 1005b19-20), "the same thing will not be willing to do or undergo opposites in the same respect, in relation to the same thing, at the same time" (426b8-9). Now, it seems obvious that many people very often experience psychological conflict, and it seems natural to explain this psychological conflict in terms of opposition between psychological attitudes. But our desire to allow opposing psychological attitudes in our explanations needs to be rendered consistent with the principle of non-opposition. With many psychological conflicts, this is easy, for the opposing attitudes might be in relation to different things (an attitude in favor of drinking a martini conflicts with an attitude in favor of drinking champagne) or the opposing attitudes might be non-simultaneous (as Hobbes thought to be the case in all psychological conflicts). But what about cases in which we seem to experience opposing attitudes in relation to the same thing at the same time? Don't we sometimes have an attitude in favor of drinking what is in the cup and a simultaneous attitude opposed to drinking what is in the cup (437b-439d)? We can accept this phenomenon and explain it without running afoul of the principle of non-opposition only by supposing that the opposing attitudes do not oppose "in the same respect," and we can do this readily by supposing that we have, on the one hand, appetitive attitudes that arise in us as animals, independent of our considerations about what is good for us, and on the other hand, rational attitudes that track what we conceive to be good for us.

Socrates' appeal to psychological conflict is well-tailored to explain akrasia (weakness of will). In the Protagoras, Socrates denies that anyone willingly does other than what he believes to be best, but here in Republic IV, the door is opened for a person to act on an appetitive attitude that conflicts with a rational attitude for what is best. How far the door is open to akrasia awaits further discussion below. For now, we need to face the worry that Socrates' argument is also well-tailored to give rise to a multitude of psychological kinds, given the pervasiveness of psychological conflict. To assuage this worry, Socrates can point out that some apparent conflicts are non-simultaneous (à la Hobbes) and that other apparently conflicting attitudes are in relation to different objects (martini vs. champagne). These diachronic and external conflicts would not require an internal division of psychological attitudes in order to save the principle of non-opposition. Of course, anyone in the grips of the worry might find this response ad hoc, but Socrates is not done. He can support his distinction between internal psychological conflict and diachronic or external psychological conflict if he can justify his particular division of psychological attitudes into kinds on independent grounds, and he can do this if he can show how his particular psychological classification provides the best explanation of human experiences other than psychological conflict. This suggests that the appeal to psychological classification in order to explain psychological conflict should be assessed together with the appeal to the same psychological classification in order to explain other phenomena.

A broader appeal to explanatory power would seem to be what Socrates is hoping for when he argues that there exists a spirited kind of psychological attitudes in addition to the rational and appetitive kinds (439e-441c). Here he does not use the principle of non-opposition explicitly, but instead points to a range of phenomena, including anger, disgust, and a sense of honor. These phenomena would seem to be neither entirely independent nor entirely dependent on our consideration of what is good for us, and so they would be difficult to explain by reference to rational and appetitive attitudes. The best explanation perhaps requires a uniquely spirited kind of attitude.

The division of the soul first established in Book Four sets up even more audaciously imaginative patterns of psychological explanation in Books Eight and Nine. Here Socrates notes that different people have different psychological constitutions. In the most basic version of this pattern, Socrates divides the world into people ruled by their rational attitudes, those ruled by their spirited attitudes, and those ruled by their appetitive attitudes (580d-581e, esp. 581c): the first love wisdom and truth, the second love victory and honor, and the third profit and money. This simplistic division, it might be noted in passing, lays the groundwork for ongoing debates about whether it is best to be a philosopher, a politician, or an epicure (see, e.g., Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics I 5 and X 6-8). But more important for our purposes here, this basic classification greatly illuminates the division of the soul.

First, we learn about the organizing aims of each of the psychological kinds. Rational attitudes not only track what they conceive to be good for the person, but also seek wisdom. This may seem either a strange bifurcation of aims or a narrow identification of wisdom with human good, but on the view of Books Six and Seven, the drive to grasp the truth and achieve wisdom must go through knowledge of what the good is, and knowledge of one's own good will also depend upon knowledge of what the good is. So the rational attitudes have a unified quest: not just for what they conceive to be good for the person, but for what is truly good for the person. Spirited attitudes, by contrast, track social preeminence and honor. If ‘good’ is the organizing predicate for rational attitudes, ‘honorable’ or ‘fine’ is the organizing predicate for spirited attitudes. Finally, appetitive attitudes seek material satisfaction for bodily urges, which is, at its most general and fungible, money.

The basic division of the world into philosophers, honor-lovers, and money-lovers also illuminates what Socrates means by talking of being ruled by one kind of psychological attitude. If one kind of psychological attitude dominates in you, then aims of that kind of psychological attitude are your aims. If, for example, you are ruled by spirited attitudes, then your rational attitudes conceive of your good in terms of what is honorable. Rational attitudes have their own aim, to get their conception of what is good right, but in a soul perfectly ruled by spirited attitudes, where there are no genuine psychological conflicts between different kinds of attitudes, the rational attitudes for truth and wisdom must be limited to those that are also held to be honorable.

Still, Plato's full psychological theory is much more complicated than the basic division of persons would suggest. First, there are different kinds of appetitive attitudes (558d-559c, 571a-572b): some are necessary for human beings; some are unnecessary but regulable ("lawful"), and some are unnecessary and entirely uncontrollable ("lawless"). So there are in fact five kinds of pure psychological constitutions: aristocratically constituted persons (those ruled by their rational attitudes), timocratically constituted persons (those ruled by their spirited attitudes), oligarchically constituted persons (ruled by necessary appetitive attitudes), democratically constituted persons (ruled by unnecessary appetitive attitudes), and tyrannically constituted persons (ruled by lawless appetitive attitudes).

The second complication is that some people are not perfectly ruled by one class of their attitudes, but are subject to continuing conflicts between, say, attitudes in favor of doing what is honorable and appetitive attitudes in favor of pursuing a shameful tryst. Socrates does not concentrate on these people, nor does he say how common they are. But he does acknowledge their existence (544cd, cf. 445c). Moreover, the occurrence of akrasia would seem to require their existence. For if I am perfectly ruled by my spirited attitudes, then I take my good to be what is honorable, and how could I be akratic? My spirited attitudes and my rational attitudes are in line, so there will be no overpowering of rational attitudes about what is best by spirited attitudes. You might suppose that my appetitive attitudes could overcome my sense of what is honorable, but in that case, it would seem that I am not, after all, perfectly ruled by my spirited attitudes. Things might seem different with people ruled by their appetitive attitudes. Certainly, if I were perfectly ruled by appetitive attitudes, then I would be susceptible to akrasia of the impetuous sort, acting on appetitive desires without reflectively endorsing them as good. But impetuous akrasia is quite distinct from the standard akrasia in which I endorse phi-ing as best for me and at just that moment intentionally psi instead, and standard akrasia would seem to be impossible in any soul that is perfectly ruled by any one kind of psychological attitudes. If you think that competing appetitive attitudes could give rise to a strict case of standard akrasia, you should recall how Socrates would have to explain these cases of psychological conflict in order to avoid multiplying his divisions in the soul.

So the Republic's psychological theory is enormously complex. Moreover, many of the particular details of the Republic's psychological are dazzling, as, for example, the Freudian recognition of Oedipal desires that come out only in dreams (571cd). But the general form of the theory is enough for Socrates to begin to answer Glaucon and Adeimantus' question.

2.2 Introducing Virtuous Motivations

In Book Four, Socrates defines each of the cardinal virtues in terms of the complicated psychology he has just sketched. A person is wise just in case her rational attitudes are functioning well, so that her rational part "has in it the knowledge of what is advantageous for each part [of the soul] and for the whole in common of the three parts" (442c5-8). So the unwise person has a faulty conception of what is good for him. A person is courageous just in case her spirited attitudes do not change in the face of pains and pleasures but stay in agreement with what is rationally recognized as fearsome and not (442bc). So the coward will, in the face of prospective pains, fail to bear up to what he rationally believes is not genuinely fearsome, and the rash person will, in the face of prospective pleasures, rush headlong into what he rationally believes to be fearsome. A person is temperate or moderate just in case her different kinds of attitudes are in agreement. So the intemperate person has appetitive or spirited attitudes in competition with the rational attitudes, appetitive or spirited attitudes other than those the rational attitudes deem to be good. Finally, a person is just just in case all three "parts" of her soul are functioning as they should (441d12-e2; cf. 443c9-e2). Justice, then, brings the other virtues in its wake: anyone who is just is entirely virtuous. So the unjust person fails to be moderate, or fails to be wise, or fails to be courageous.

Actually, the relation among the virtues seems tighter than that, for it seems that the unjust person necessarily fails to be wise, courageous, and temperate. You might try to deny this. You might say that a person could be courageous-with spirited attitudes that track perfectly what the rational attitudes say is fearsome and not, in the face of any pleasures and pains-but still be unjust insofar has her rational attitudes are inadequately developed, failing to know what really is fearsome. But Socrates seems to balk at this possibility by contrasting the civically courageous whose spirit preserves law-inculcated beliefs about what is fearsome and not and the genuinely courageous in whom, presumably, spirit preserves knowledge about what is fearsome and not (430a-c). So you might say instead that a person could be moderate-utterly without appetitive attitudes at odds with what his rational attitudes say is good for him-but still be unjust insofar as his rational attitudes are inadequately developed and fail to know what really is good. But this picture of a meek, but moderate soul seems to sell short the requirements of moderation, which are not merely that there be no insurrections in the soul but also that there be agreement that the rational attitudes should rule. This would seem to require that there actually be appetitive attitudes that are in agreement with the rational attitudes' conception of what is good, which would in turn require that the rational attitudes be sufficiently strong to have a developed conception of what is good. Moreover, it would seem to require that the rational attitudes which endorse ruling be ruling, which would in turn require that the rational attitudes are at least on the path toward determining what really is good for the person. If these considerations are correct, then the unjust are lacking in virtue tout court, whereas the just possess all of the virtues.

After sketching these four virtues in Book Four, Socrates is ready to move from considering what justice is in a person to why a person should be just (444e). But this is premature. Socrates is moving to show that it is always better to have a just soul, but he was asked to show that it is always better to be the just person who does just actions. We might doubt that an answer concerning psychological justice is relevant to the question concerning practical justice.

It is easy to misstate this objection. The problem is not that the question is about conventional justice and Socrates is failing to address conventional justice. Neither the question nor the answer is bound to conventional justice, given what happened in Book One. Moreover, the problem is not that Socrates' answer is relevant only if the class of the psychologically just and the class of the practically just are coextensive. That would require Socrates to show that everyone who acts justly has a just soul, and Socrates quite reasonably shows no inclination for that thesis. He may have to establish some connection between doing just actions and becoming psychologically just if he is to give reasons to those who are not yet psychologically just to do just actions, but an account of habituation would be enough to do this (cf. 443e4-6, 444c10-d1).

The real problem raised by the objection is this: Socrates must be able to justify the claim that people with just souls are practically just. First, he must be able to show that the psychologically just refrain from injustice, and second, he must be able to show that the psychologically just do what is required by justice. The first point receives a gesture when Socrates is trying to secure the claim that harmonious functioning of the whole soul really deserves to be called justice (442e4-443a11), but he offers no real argument. Perhaps the best we can do on his behalf is to insist that the first point is not a thesis for argument but a bold empirical hypothesis. On this view, it is simply an empirical question whether all those who have the motivations to do unjust things happen to have souls that are out of balance, and an army of psychologists would be needed to answer the question.

That might seem bad enough, but the second point that Socrates needs to establish does not even receive a gesture. There is no denying the presence of this second requirement on the grounds that justice is a matter of refraining from harm ("negative duties") and not of helping others ("positive duties"). Plato's Republic makes justice a matter of both negative duties and positive duties. Socrates does not criticize the Book One suggestion that justice requires helping friends (332a ff.); he and his interlocutors agree that justice requires respect for parents and care for the gods (443a9-10); and they treat the principle that each should do his job (and thereby contribute to the city) as the image of justice (443c4-8).

Before we can consider Socrates' answer to the question of the Republic, we must have reason to accept that those who have harmonious souls do what is required by justice. Otherwise, we cannot be sure that psychological harmony is justice. Unfortunately, Socrates does not give any explicit attention to this worry at the end of Book Four or in the argument of Books Eight and Nine. But there are other places to look for a solution to this worry. First, we might look to Books Five through Seven. Second, we might look to Books Two and Three.

2.3 Perfectly Virtuous Motivations

Consider Books Five through Seven. In Book Four Socrates has told us that the just person is wise and thus knows what is good for him, but he has not told us anything about what knowledge or the good is. The digression of Books Five through Seven clearly addresses these issues. This opens up the possibility that knowledge of the good provides the crucial link between psychological justice and just actions. Even if that possibility goes unrealized, knowledge of the good should fill out our account of virtue. So Books Five to Seven are valuable in completing the account of perfectly virtuous motivations. This completion turns out to be surprising. Socrates makes it clear that one is virtuous if and only if one is a philosopher. For we already knew that virtue requires knowledge, and now we learn that only the philosophers have knowledge (esp. 474b-480a).

The philosophers are initially distinguished from non-philosophers because they answer questions like ‘What is beautiful?’ by identifying the non-sensible property (form) of beauty instead of some sensible property or particulars (474b-480a). Socrates does not name any philosophers who can knowledgeably answer questions like that. In fact, his account of how philosophers would be educated in the ideal city suggests that the ability to give knowledgeable answers requires an enormous amount of (largely mathematical) learning in advance of the questions themselves (521b-540a). How would this mathematical learning and knowledge of forms affect one's motivating attitudes?

One effect can be found by interpreting the form of the good that the philosopher comes to grasp, since this should shape the philosopher's rational conception of what is good for her. The form of the good is a shadowy presence in the Republic, but it is not unreasonable to suppose that goodness is coherence or harmony. This interpretation explains the importance of mathematics to the ascent to the good (through mathematics an account of the one over the many is learned), the superiority of the good over the other forms (the good is the unity or coherence of them, and not another alongside them), the goodness of the other forms (they are good by being part of the unified or coherent order), the intelligibility of the other forms (they are fully known only teleologically), and the overwhelming importance of unity and harmony to the ethics and politics of the Republic (see especially 462ab). If this interpretation is correct, then the philosophers recognize their good in the harmony of their psychological attitudes. Grasping the form of the good gives one a new appreciation of one's other attitudes: one now knows that one's psychological attitudes are good insofar as they are parts of a coherent set.

But there are other ways in which mathematical learning and knowledge of forms might affect one's motivating attitudes. Socrates suggests one way when he says that a philosopher will aspire to imitate the harmony among the forms (500b-d). It has also been suggested that Socrates is assuming that lovers of the forms will desire to procreate this order by cultivating more order and virtue in the world, as Diotima suggests in the Symposium. These suggestions seem to provide ways of seeing how knowledge of the forms motivates just actions that help other people, and thus to solve the standing worry about the relation between psychological justice and practical justice.

Unfortunately, it is far from obvious that Socrates wants to use these suggestions in this way. He does not actually say in the Republic that knowledge of the forms freely motivates positive actions on behalf of other people. In fact, he says seven times that the philosophers in the ideal city will have to be compelled to rule and do their part in sustaining the perfectly just city (500d4, 519e4, 520a8, 520e2, 521b7, 539e3, 540b5). It is possible to understand this compulsion as the constraint of justice: the philosophers rule because it is just for them to rule. But Socrates' own way of characterizing the compulsion suggests an alternative picture, according to which the compulsion is a law that requires those who are educated to be philosophers to rule. Moreover, this alternative picture seems required by Socrates' insistence that the philosophers are the best rulers because they prefer not to rule even while they are ruling (520e4-521b11, with 519c4-6). On this picture, the philosophers' knowledge of justice alone does not motivate them to rule; rather, their knowledge of justice motivates them to follow the law, which justly compels them to rule.

There is another reason to worry about explaining just actions by the motivating power of knowledge. If we think that the philosophers are motivated to do what is just by their knowledge of the forms, then we have, at least potentially, opened up an enormous gap between philosophers and non-philosophers. In addition to the epistemic gap-the philosophers have knowledge and the non-philosophers do not-we have a motivational gap-the philosophers' knowledge gives them motivations to do what is required by justice, and the non-philosophers are not similarly motivated. This gap suggests some rather unpalatable conclusions about the character of non-philosophers' lives even in the ideal city, and it also sits poorly with Socrates' evident desire to take the philosophers' justice as a paradigm that can be usefully approximated by non-philosophers (472c4-d1).

We need an explanation of how imperfectly constituted people can approximate perfectly constituted people. We might hope, as well, that this explanation would allow us to say that all the perfectly constituted people act as justice requires, for that would give us a connection between psychological justice and practical justice that does not rely on the special motivating power of knowledge.

2.4 Imperfectly Virtuous Motivations

This brings us to Books Two and Three, where Socrates offers a long discussion of how to educate the guardians for the ideal city. This education is most notable for its carefully censored "reading list;" the young guardians-to-be will not be exposed to inappropriate images of gods and human beings. But Socrates is remarkably optimistic about the results of a sufficiently careful education. Well-trained guardians will "praise fine things, be pleased by them, receive them into his soul, and, being nurtured by them, become fine and good," and each will "rightly object to what is shameful, hating it while he's still young and unable to grasp the reason" (401e4-402a2). Note that Socrates has the young guardians not only responding to good things as honorable (with spirited attitudes), but also becoming fine and good. Moreover, Socrates is confident that the spirited guardians are stably good: when he is describing the possibility of civic courage in Book Four, he suggests that proper education can stain the spirited part of the soul with the right dispositions so deeply that they will be preserved "through everything" (429b8, 429c8, 430b2-3).

This optimism suggests that the motivations to do what is right are acquired early in moral education, built into a soul that might become, eventually, perfectly just. And this in turn suggests one reason why Socrates might have skipped the question of why the psychologically just can be relied upon to do what is right. Socrates might be assuming that anyone who is psychologically just must have been raised well, and that anyone who is raised well can be relied upon to do what is right. So understood, early childhood education, and not knowledge of the forms, is the driving force that links psychological justice and just action.

Of course, there are questions about how far Socrates could extend this optimism about imperfect virtue among non-philosophers. Perhaps honor-loving members of the auxiliary class have psychological harmony secured by their consistent attachment to what they have learned is honorable, but what about the producers? Can their attachment to the satisfaction of bodily desires be educated in such a way that it results, in optimal social circumstances, in a tolerably well-ordered soul? These interesting questions require careful consideration of Plato's complicated psychology; they will be considered more fully below.

The questions about what is added by knowledge and how much is present without knowledge are of the utmost importance in settling questions about how Plato conceives of degrees of virtue. This account has just scratched the surface in order to indicate two general ways of linking psychological justice to just action. If one of them works, then Socrates is entitled to argue that it is always better to be just than unjust by showing why it is always better to have a harmonious soul.

3. Ethics, Part Two: Why a Person should be Just

3.1 Psychological Health

It is possible to find in the Republic as many as five separate arguments for the claim that it is better to be just than unjust, without regard to how other people and gods perceive us. The first appeals to an analogy between psychological health and physical health in Book Four (445a-b). The second, third, and fourth are what Socrates calls his three "proofs" in Books Eight and Nine (543c-580c, esp. 576b-580c; 580c-583a; 583b-588a). And the fifth is the image of the human soul consisting of a little human being (the rational "part"), a lion (the spirited "part"), and a many-headed beast (the appetitive "part") (588b ff.). Yet the first of these is interrupted and said in Book Eight to be continuous with the first "proof" of Books Eight and Nine (543c), and the last of them seems to be offered more as a concluding image than as an independent argument. This whittling leaves us with the three arguments that Socrates labels his "proofs" (580c9, cf. 583b), the first being a long discussion of psychological health and disease and the second and third being parries concerning pleasure.

The first argument begins and is aborted in Book Four. After sketching his account of justice in the soul, Socrates asks Glaucon whether they are ready to compare the happiness of the just and the unjust. Glaucon immediately declares the comparison silly: the unjust have souls that are ruined and in turmoil. Socrates presses on for a fuller reckoning, nonetheless, and that fuller reckoning is interrupted.

When Socrates resumes in Book Eight where he had left off in Book Four, he offers a long account of four defective psychological types. The list of four is not exhaustive (544cd, cf. 445c), but it captures the four imperfect kinds of pure psychological constitutions: pure rule by spirited attitudes, pure rule by necessary appetitive attitudes, pure rule by unnecessary but regulable appetitive attitudes, and pure rule by lawless appetitive attitudes. At the end of this long discussion, Socrates will again ask which sort of person lives the best life: the aristocratic soul of Books Six and Seven, or one of the other souls of Books Eight and Nine?

We might expect Socrates and Glaucon to argue carefully by elimination, showing the just life to be better than every sort of unjust life. But they do not. Instead, they quickly contrast the tyrannical soul with the aristocratic soul-the most unjust with the most just. In a way, they are picking up on Glaucon's original demand (in Book Two) to see how the perfectly just-who is most unfortunate but still just-is better than the perfectly unjust-who is unjust but still esteemed. But this symmetry is not enough to acquit the procedure. If the comparison of the tyrant and the philosopher does not generate some general lessons that tell in favor of justice over all forms of injustice, then the argument is dubious. So we should look at the comparison of the tyrant and the philosopher with an eye open for some general lessons.

Socrates and Glaucon characterize the person ruled by his lawless attitudes as enslaved, as least able to do what it wants, as full of disorder and regret, as poor and unsatisfiable, and as fearful (577c-578a). These characterizations fit in a logical order. The tyrannical soul wants satisfactions that depend upon external circumstances; in this way it is enslaved. Insofar as the tyrannical soul is most filled with never-ending desires that cannot all be satisfied and most filled with outsized desires for more than can be satisfied, then the tyrannical soul is least able to do what it wants. These initial difficulties give rise to the rest. The tyrant is full of disorder and regret by virtue of not having been able to do what he wants, is poor and unsatisfiable by virtue of now being unable to do what he wants, and is fearful by virtue of perceiving future inability to do what he wants. The result is a miserable existence, and the misery is rooted in attitudes that demand more satisfaction than a person can achieve. The tyrant does not have the capacity to do what he wants to do.

Contrast the philosophical soul. The philosopher is most able to do what she chooses to do, for she chooses to do what is best, and as long as one has agency, there would seem to be a doable best. (Should circumstances make a certain apparent best undoable, then it will no longer be best.) It might even seem that the philosopher's capacity to do what is best guarantees her success. But this pushes the interpretation too far. First, we should not suppose that what is best is always available. Socrates is quite clear that some appetitive attitudes are necessary, and one can well imagine circumstances of extreme deprivation in which the necessary appetitive attitudes (for food or drink, say) are unsatisfiable. Second, the capacity to do what is best may well require engaging in certain kinds of activities in order to maintain itself. Even if the philosopher can satisfy her necessary appetitive attitudes, she may be prevented by unfortunate circumstances from the sorts of regular thought and action that are required to hold onto the capacity to do what is best. These considerations suggest that a virtuous soul does not guarantee the capacity to do what one wants. Even if the philosophical soul is easily the most able to do what it chooses, and the closest thing to a sure bet for this capacity, it does not by itself guarantee the capacity.

This comparison between the tyrannical soul and the philosophical soul does all the work that Socrates needs if the capacity to do what one wants correlates closely with human flourishing and if the lessons about the tyrant's incapacity generalize to the other defective psychological constitutions. Start with the second point. A person who seeks honor or money above all might be fortunate enough to find himself in circumstances in which he regularly has the capacity to do as he chooses. But the capacity would not be fully his. It would depend in deep and obvious ways upon a cooperative environment that nurtures him and provides an orderly context in which he can do what he values as honorable or as lucrative. As long as that environment is secure, he will not be racked by regret, or frustration, or fear. He will be able to do what he chooses to do. This explains how the members of the lower classes in Socrates' ideal city can have a kind of capacity to do what they want, even though they are fully, slavishly dependent upon the rulers' work (cf. 590cd).

The characterization of appropriately ruled non-philosophers as slavish might suggest a special concern for the "heteronomous" character of their capacity to do what they choose and a special valorization of the philosophers' "autonomous" capacity. But we should be hesitant about applying these frequently confused and possibly anachronistic categories of thought to the Republic. Plato would probably prefer to think in terms of self-sufficiency, and for the purposes of Socrates' argument here, it is enough to contrast the way a producer's capacity is deeply dependent upon social surroundings and the way a philosopher's capacity is relatively free from this dependence.

This contrast must not be undersold, for it is plausible to think that the self-sufficiency of the philosopher makes him more flourishing. Appropriately ruled non-philosophers can enjoy a kind of happiness only so long as their circumstances are appropriately ruled, and this makes their happiness far less stable than what the philosophers enjoy. Things in the world tend to change, and the philosopher is in a much better position to flourish through these changes. Those of us living in imperfect cities, looking to use the Republic as a model for how to live (cf. 592b), need to emulate the philosopher in order to pursue stable, reliable happiness.

Nevertheless, so far as this argument shows, the happiness of appropriately ruled non-philosophers is just as real as the happiness of philosophers. This argument understands happiness in terms of the capacity to do what one wants to do, to realize what seems best to one, and it seems that exceptionally well-trained persons in exceptionally well-ordered cities can be happy whether they are pursuing what is honorable or the objects of necessary appetitive attitudes or what is known to be really good. Of course, they will be happy only if they do not consider the dependence of their happiness on external fortune; if they realize that their happiness depends upon their remarkable circumstances and if they believe that these circumstances are in jeopardy, then they will be racked by fear. But if their circumstances are sufficiently remarkable, they might not consider any threats to their happiness. Such people in such circumstances might be less happy than philosophers, but Socrates' first argument does not show that they are.

Socrates needs further argument in any case if he wants to convince those of us in imperfect circumstances (like Glaucon and Adeimantus) to pursue the philosophical life of perfect justice. The first argument tries to show that anyone who wants to satisfy her desires perfectly should cultivate certain kinds of desires rather than others. We can reject this argument in either of two ways, by taking issue with his analysis of which desires are regularly satisfiable and which desires are not, or by explaining why a person should not want to satisfy her desires perfectly. The first response calls for a quasi-empirical investigation of a difficult sort, but the second seems easy. We can just argue that a good human life must be subject to regret and loss. Of course, it is not enough to say that the human condition is in fact marked by regret and loss. There is no inconsistency in maintaining that one should aim at a secure life in order to live the best possible human life while also realizing that the best possible human life will be marked by insecurity. In fact, one might even argue that the proper experience of fragility requires attachment to security as one's end. So to reject Socrates' argument, we must show that it is wrong to aim at a life that is free of regret and loss: we must show that the pursuit of security leads one to reject certain desires that one should not reject. In this way, we move beyond a discussion of which desires are satisfiable, and we tackle the question about the value of what is desired and the value of the desiring itself. To address this possible objection, Socrates needs to give us a different argument.

3.2 Pleasure

This brings us to what many commentators have thought to be an odd feature of Plato's Republic. After delivering a long "proof" that it is always better to be just than unjust, Socrates piles on two more. This can seem strange. After all, the geometer does not need to offer multiple proofs of his theorem. What might seem worse, the additional proofs concern pleasure, and thereby introduce-seemingly at the eleventh hour-a heap of new considerations for the ethics of the Republic. For these reasons, some commentators have seen these "pleasure proofs" as awkward appendices or as mere reassurances that the just life is not unpleasant. But in fact, they are crucial to Socrates' case, as the considerations raised at the end of the previous section show. Socrates does not explicitly acknowledge these considerations, but Plato dramatizes them. Recall that Socrates has offered in the Republic not merely to demonstrate that it is always better to be just than unjust but to persuade Glaucon and Adeimantus (but especially Glaucon-see 327a1 and 357a1-b3 and the phrasing in Book Two) of this claim. Insofar as Glaucon shows sympathy for spirited attitudes (372d with the discussion in 4.1 below, and cf. 548d), his attachment to these attitudes could survive the realization that they are far from perfectly satisfiable. He may say, "I can see the point of perfectly satisfiable attitudes, but those attitudes and the objects of those attitudes are not as good as my less-than-perfectly satisfiable attitudes." Glaucon needs to be shown that the rewards of carrying insecure attitudes do not make up for the insecurity.

Socrates needs to offer additional proofs for a second reason, too, for he needs to complete his account of psychological attitudes. At the end of Book Five, Socrates says that faculties (at least psychological faculties) are distinguished by their results (their rate of success) and by their objects (what they concern) (477cd). So far, he has discussed only the success-rates of various kinds of psychological attitudes. He needs to discuss the objects of various kinds of psychological attitudes in order to complete his account. If we did not have the discussion of the second proof, in particular, we would have a very incomplete picture of the moral psychology of the Republic.

The two arguments that Socrates proceeds to make are frustratingly difficult. They are very quick, and though they concern "pleasures," Socrates never says exactly what a pleasure is. (At one point (585d11), the now-standard translation of the Republic by Grube and Reeve suggests that "being filled with what is appropriate to our nature is pleasure," but it may be better to read less into the Greek by rendering the clause "being filled with what is appropriate to our nature is pleasant.") The first argument suggests that pleasures might be activities of a certain kind, but the remarkably abstract second argument does not provide any special support to that suggestion. Even if a convincing account of how Plato wants us to conceive of pleasure in the Republic is wanting, however, we can get a grasp on the form of the two pleasure proofs.

The first "pleasure proof" is a kind of appeal to authority, in four easy steps. First, Socrates suggests that just as each part of the soul has its own characteristic desires and pleasures, so persons have characteristic desires and pleasures depending upon which part of their soul rules them. The characteristic pleasure of philosophers is learning. The characteristic pleasure of honor-lovers is being honored. The characteristic pleasure of money-lovers is making money. Next, Socrates suggests that each of these three different kinds of person would say that her own characteristic activities are most pleasant-that her own pleasure is best. So, third, to decide which pleasure really is best, we need to determine which sort of person's judgment is best. Socrates suggests that whoever has the most reason, experience, and argument is the best judge. What other criteria could he have suggested? Finally, Socrates argues that the philosopher is better than the honor-lover and the money-lover in reason, experience, and argument.

It has sometimes been thought that the philosopher cannot be better off in experience, for the philosopher has never lived as an adult who is fully committed to the pleasures of the money-lover. But this point does not disable Socrates' argument. The philosopher does not have exactly the experience that the money-lover has, but the philosopher has far more experience of the money-lover's pleasures than the money-lover has of the philosopher's pleasures. The comparative judgment is enough to secure Socrates' conclusion: because the philosopher is a better judge than the others, the philosopher's judgment has a better claim on the truth. So we have some reason for thinking that the activities desired by the money-lover and those desired by the honor-lover are less pleasurable than the philosopher's activities.

But this first proof does not explain why the distinction in pleasures is made; the appeal to the philosopher's authority as a judge gives no account of the philosopher's reasons for her judgment. Moreover, the first pleasure proof does not say that the philosopher's pleasures are vastly superior to those of the money-lover and the honor-lover. So Glaucon-or anyone else tempted to avoid the mathematical studies of Book Seven-might think that the superiority of the philosopher's psychological justice is slight, and given the disrepute heaped on the philosophers (487a ff.), Glaucon or anyone else might decide that the less-than-perfectly just life is better overall. Socrates needs to show that the philosopher's activities are vastly better than the non-philosopher's activities in order to answer the challenge originally put forth in Book Two by Glaucon and Adeimantus. So it is for very good reason that Socrates proceeds to offer a second pleasure proof that he promises to be the "greatest and most decisive overthrow" for the unjust (583b6-7).

Socrates' final argument moves in three broad steps. The first step establishes that pleasure and pain are not exhaustive contradictories but opposites, separated by a calm middle that is neither pain nor pleasure. This may sometimes seem false. The removal of pain can seem to be pleasant, and the removal of a pleasure can seem to be painful. But these appearances are deceptive. We can readily recognize the contrast between pleasures that fill a lack and thereby replace a pain (these are not genuine pleasures) and pleasures that do not fill a lack and thereby replace a pain (these are genuine pleasures). The second step in the argument is to establish that most bodily pleasures-and the most intense of these-fill a painful lack and are not genuine pleasures. Finally, Socrates takes his third step by arguing that the philosopher's pleasures do not fill a painful lack and are genuine pleasures. Contra the epicure's assumption, the philosopher's pleasures are more substantial than the pleasures of the flesh.

Even at the end of his three "proofs," Socrates knows that he cannot yet have fully persuaded Glaucon and Adeimantus that it is always better to be just than unjust. Their beliefs and desires have been stained too deeply by a world filled with mistakes, especially by the misleading tales of the poets. To turn Glaucon and Adeimantus more fully toward virtue, Socrates will need to undercut their respect for the poets, and he will need to begin to stain their souls anew. So there is more work to be done in the Republic. But Socrates' theoretical arguments on behalf of justice are finished. The work that remains to be done-especially the sketch of a soul at the end of Book Nine and the myth of an afterlife in Book Ten-should deepen without transforming our appreciation for the psychological ethics of the Republic.

4. Politics

4.1 Utopianism

The Republic contributes to political philosophy in two main ways, first by advancing claims about how a good city would be arranged and then by analyzing the evolution and shortcomings of bad regimes. Discussions of the first have been dominated by the attempt to characterize Plato's politics by one or more "isms," including utopianism, communism, feminism, and totalitarianism. We can survey Plato's detailed proposals for the ideal city and assess their broader implications by examining the warrant for each of these characterizations in turn. Then we can take up the second way in which the Republic contributes to politics.

Before we proceed to our first "ism," however, we should notice that Socrates actually describes two apparently ideal cities in the Republic. The first, simple city is sketched very briefly, and is rejected by Glaucon as a "city of pigs" though Socrates calls it "the healthy city" (369b-372e). The second, initially called by Socrates a "fevered city" and a "city of luxuries" (372e) but later purified of its luxuries (see especially 399e) and characterized as "Kallipolis" (527c2), includes the features described in Books Two, Three, and Four. (At 543cd, Glaucon suggests that it is possible to see a third city in the Republic by insisting that the additional claims of Book Five and later make for an entirely different city than the purified city of luxuries described in Books Two through Four, but I see the later claims as more explicit explorations of the second city.) Most of the alleged "isms" attached to the politics of Plato's Republic--communism, feminism, and totalitarianism--gain no foothold at all in the brief description of the first city, but another "ism"--utopianism--actually helps to explain the contrast between the two cities and gives us reason to take seriously Socrates' arrangements for the second city.

When we call some society a utopia, we mean that it is ideal (eu-topia = "good place"), but we sometimes mean as well that it is necessarily fictional (ou-topia = "no place"). When Plato is charged with utopianism--as he has been frequently charged, with relish, by modern political theorists since Machiavelli--he is being accused of describing a political ideal that rests on an unrealistic picture of human beings. This accusation is generally leveled at the second city discussed at length in the Republic, and it may be true of that city. But before we consider that version of the charge, we should see that it is definitely true of the first city, and that Plato knew it to be so.

The first city described so briefly in Book Two can seem to be an ideal-utopia, but this impression does not withstand scrutiny. Rather, the first city is a noplace-utopia. It is an exclusively economic society, a model of how the necessary appetitive attitudes would be optimally satisfied in a society of persons ruled exclusively by necessary appetitive attitudes. At the center of the model is a principle of specialization: each person should perform just the task to which he is best suited. Socrates later makes it clear that people who are ruled by their necessary appetitive attitudes can live harmonious lives only if they are ruled by reason from without (esp. 590cd; cf. 586ab), but the first city makes no provision for rational rule. So the first city is inconsistent with the Republic's view of human nature, and thus (by Socrates' lights) impossible. As an impossibility, it cannot be the ideal-utopia.

But Socrates does have very good reasons for introducting the nowhere-utopia of the first city. First, because the first city shows us how the necessary appetitive attitudes would be optimally satisfied in the best circumstances, it shows us how the producer class will live in the second city that is ruled by those with knowledge. In other words, the first city is really an initial sketch of part of the second city. Second, the principle of specialization that is crucial to the optimal satisfaction of necessary appetitive attitudes will prove to be generalizable into a principle of specialization that is crucial to the optimal satisfaction of all psychological attitudes (442d-444a with 432b-434c). Third, the picture of the first city begins to persuade Glaucon to turn his back on the merely appetitive reasons to reject justice. Glaucon reacts to the first city with spirited indignation, declaiming that it is fit for pigs and not human beings. In particular, the first city lacks couches, tables, relishes, and the other things required for a symposium, the cornerstone of a civilized human life. Glaucon is not calling for satisfaction of unnecessary appetitive attitudes, for the relishes he insists on are later recognized to be among the objects of necessary appetitive attitudes (559b). Rather, he is motivated by a spirited sense of what is honorable and fitting for a human being. He is insisting that there is more to a good human life than the satisfaction of appetitive attitudes.

The importance of the first city can scarcely be overstated. The Republic has two kinds of arguments for the superiority of the just life. The first appeals to the efficient satisfaction of psychological attitudes and the second appeals to the intrinsic value of different kinds of psychological satisfaction. The sketch of the first city takes the initial step for both of these arguments--the first argument in the principle of specialization and the second argument in Glaucon's reaction to the world of necessary appetitive attitudes. So while nowhere-utopianism is true of the first city, it is hardly an objection to the first city.

By contrast, nowhere-utopianism would be an objection to the second city. Socrates repeatedly insists that the ideal city of philosopher-rulers, guardian soldiers, and producers is not impossible (456bc, 502a-c, 540de). On his view, the ideal city requires its residents to reach their fullest psychological potential, but it does not require them to do more than their psychology allows. So nowhere-utopianism cannot be persuasively advanced as an objection to the Republic on the grounds that Socrates admits the impossibility of the second city. But the charge might stick in one of two other ways. First, we might think that the psychology of the Republic is fanciful. On this view, though the second city is possible, given the psychology, we should not give the Republic its psychology. To sustain this view, we should falsify some psychological claim that Socrates makes, and we should then show how that psychological claim is crucial to the political ideal of the second city. When this criticism is advanced, it is usually in very sweeping terms: Plato's psychology underplays self-interest, say. In these general terms, the criticism is false. Socrates seems acutely aware of how dangerous and selfish appetitive attitudes are. But more specific criticisms of Plato's psychology may well be tenable.

A second way of charging the second city of the Republic with nowhere-utopianism is weaker. We might concede to the Republic its psychology, concede the possibility of the second city, and nevertheless insist that the second city is so impractical as to be merely fanciful. A hard-nosed political scientist might have this sort of response. But political theorizing need not propose ideas ready for implementation in order to propose ideas relevant to ready implementation. Plato is constructing a model of perfect city (and a model of a perfect soul) to give us targets by which to judge our own condition. This can work in very general terms: if we see in the ideals the unity and coherence that make them ideal, we can also see where our own cities and souls are defective. But it can also work in more specific terms: we should be able to recognize and promote the strategies and policies crucial to the ideal--the careful moral education societally and the habitual regulation of appetitive desire personally, the equal opportunity for work societally and development of multiple kinds of psychological attitudes personally.

So it is far from obvious that Plato's Republic is objectionably nowhere-utopian. Of course, it might also be far from obvious that Plato's Republic is attractively ideal-utopian. We need to turn to other features of the second city that have led readers to praise and blame it.

4.2 Communism

One of the most striking features of the second city is its abolition of private families and sharp limitation on private property in the two guardian classes. Starting with Aristotle, this communism in the Republic's ideal city has been the target of confusion and criticism. On the one hand, Aristotle (at Politics 1264a11-22) and others have expressed uncertainty about the extent of communism in the ideal city. On the other, they have argued against the provision of any communism in an ideal political community.

There should be no confusion about private property. When Socrates describes the living situation of the guardian classes in the ideal city (415d-417b), he is clear that private property will be sharply limited, and when he discusses the kinds of regulations the rulers need to have in place for the whole city (421c ff.), he is clear that the producers will have enough private property to make the regulation of wealth and poverty a concern. But confusion about scope of communal living arrangements is possible, due to the backhanded way in which Socrates introduces this controversial proposal. The abolition of private families enters as a casual afterthought. Socrates says that there is no need to list everything that the rulers will do, for if they are well educated, they will see what is necessary, including the fact that "marriage, the having of wives, and the procreation of children must be governed as far as possible by the old proverb: friends possess everything in common" (423e6-424a2). It is not immediately clear about whether this governance should extend over the whole city or just the guardian classes. Still, when he is pressed to defend the communal arrangements (449c ff.), Socrates focuses on the guardian classes, and it seems most reasonable to suppose that the communism about families extends just as far as the communism about property does, on the grounds that only the best people can live as friends with such things in common (cf. Laws 739c-740b).

To what extent the communism of the ideal city is subject to criticism is a more complicated question. The critics either claim that communism is undesirable or impossible. The charge of impossibility essentially extends one of Plato's insight: while Plato believes that most people are incapable of living without private property and private families, the critics argue that all people are incapable of living without private property. This criticism fails if there is clear evidence of people who live communally. But the critic can fall back on the charge of undesirability. Here the critic needs to identify what value is lost by giving up on private property and private families, and the critic needs to show that this value is greater than the unity and extended family purported for the communal arrangements. It is not clear how this debate should go. Plato's position on this question is a stubbornly persistent ideal, despite the equally stubborn persistence of criticism.

4.3 Feminism

The abolition of private families among the guardian classes is tied by Socrates to another radical proposal, namely, that in the ideal city the jobs of ruling and guarding should be open to women, and girls should be educated alongside boys for the purposes of training future rulers and guardians. The relation between these proposals is contestable. Is Socrates proposing the abolition of families in order to free up women to do the work of ruling? Or is Socrates putting the women to work since they will not have the job of family-caregiver anymore? But these questions need not be settled. Each of the proposals can be supported independently, and their dovetailing effects can be claimed as a happy convergence.

But the grounds for these proposals will matter significantly to a further question. Many readers have seen in Plato's Republic a rare exception in western philosophy's long history of sexist denigration of women, and some have even decided that Plato's willingness to open up the best education and the highest jobs to women shows a kind of feminism. Yet other readers have found this difficult to swallow. They point to Plato's indifference to the needs of actual women in his own city, to Socrates' frequent, disparaging remarks about women and "womanish" attitudes, and to the illiberal reasons Socrates offers for educating and empowering women.

The broad claim that Plato or the Republic is feminist cannot be sustained, and the label ‘feminist’ is an especially contested one, but still, there are two features of the Republic's ideal city that can be reasonably called feminist. First, Socrates suggests that the distinction between male and female is as relevant as the distinction between having long hair and having short hair for the purposes of deciding who should be active guardians: men and women, just like the long-haired and the short-haired, are by nature the same for the assignment of education and jobs (454b-456b). This suggestion seems to express the plausibly feminist point that one's sex is generally irrelevant to one's qualifications for education or employment.

The second plausibly feminist commitment in the Republic involves the abolition of private families. The feminist import of this may be obscured by the way in which Socrates and his interlocutors talk of "women and children shared in common." In fact, Socrates' companions might well have been forgiven if they had called to mind pictures of orgiastic free love in the guardians' camp, for that, after all, is how Aristophanes' Ecclesiazusae plays the proposal of "sharing women and children" for laughs. But as Socrates clarifies what he means, both free love and male possessiveness turn out to be beside the point. (The talk of "sharing women and children" reflects the male perspective of the men having the conversation but not the content of the proposal.) Then Socrates' proposal can seem especially striking. Plato is clearly aware that an account of how the polis should be arranged must give special attention to how families are arranged. Relatedly, he is clearly aware that an account of the ideal citizens must explain how sexual desire, a paradigmatic appetitive attitude, should fit into the good human life. Only very recently, with feminist interventions, have sexual desire and its consequences come to seem crucial to political and ethical theory, and we might think that Plato's awareness of these as topics of political philosophy shows at least proto-feminist concern. All the more might this awareness seem feminist when we relate it back to the first plausibly feminist commitment, for Plato wants the economy of desire and reproduction to be organized in such a way that women are free for education and employment alongside men, in the guardian classes, at any rate.

Three of the ways in which these attributions of plausibly feminist commitments might be undercut say more about the contest over the label ‘feminist’ than they do about Plato. First, some have said that feminism requires a concern for women's rights and have then argued that Plato is not a feminist on the grounds that Plato shows no interests in women's rights. This particular argument is not quite to the point, for it says nothing about Plato's view of women per se. He is not interested in women's rights just to the extent that he is not interested in anyone's rights. Second, some have said that feminism requires attention to what actual women want. Since Plato shows no interest in what actual women want, he would seem on this view of feminism to be anti-feminist. But the limitations of this criticism are apparent as soon as we realize that Plato shows no interest in what actual men want. Plato focuses instead on what women (and men) should want, what they would want if they were in the best possible psychological condition. Actual women (and actual men), as we might put it, are subject to false consciousness. Third, some have insisted that feminism requires attention to and concern for the particular interests and needs of women as distinct from the particular interests and needs of men. Since Plato does not admit of particular women's interests and needs, he would not, in this view, be a feminist (except insofar as he accidentally promoted any supposed particular interests by, say, proposing the abolition of the private family). Again, however, this objection turns on what we understand by ‘feminism’ more than on what Socrates is saying in the Republic. There should be no doubt that there are conceptions of feminism according to which the Republic is anti-feminist. What is worth interesting discussion is whether there are conceptions of feminism according to which the Republic is feminist.

Better ground for doubting Plato's apparent feminist commitments lies in the reasons that Socrates gives for them: Socrates consistently emphasizes concern for the welfare of the whole city, but not for the women themselves (esp. 456c ff.). But Socrates' emphasis in Book Five on the happiness of the city as a whole rather than the happiness of the rulers (and cf. 465e-466c) might have more to do with his worries about convincing his interlocutors that ideal rulers do not flourish by exploiting the ruled. Thus, his emphasis need not be taken to represent a lack of concern for the women's interests. And after all, what greater concern could Socrates show for the women than to insist that they be fully educated and allowed to hold the highest offices? Socrates goes on to argue that the philosopher-rulers of the city are as happy as can be, and this insistence must include not only the male rulers but also the female rulers.

The best reason for doubting Plato's feminism is provided by those disparaging remarks about women. We might try to distinguish between Plato's rather harsh view of the women around him and his more optimistic view of women as they would be in more favorable circumstances. It is also possible to distinguish between the traditional sexist tropes as they feature in Plato's drama and the rejection of sexism in Plato's ideas. But it is not clear that these distinctions will remove all of the tension, especially when Socrates and Glaucon are saying that men are stronger or better than women in just about every endeavor (455c).

Final judgment on this question is difficult. The disparaging remarks have to be taken one-by-one, as it is doubtful that all can be understood in exactly the same way. Moreover, it is of the utmost importance to determine whether each remark says something about the way all women are by nature or essentially. If Plato thinks that women are essentially worse than men, then Socrates' claim that men and women have the same nature for education and employment is puzzling. But if the disparagements do not express any considered views about the nature of women, then we might be able to conclude that Plato is deeply prejudiced against women and yet committed to some plausibly feminist principles.

4.4 Totalitarianism

Some of the most heated discussions of the politics of Plato's Republic have surrounded the charge of totalitarianism famously advanced by Karl Popper (in The Open Society and its Enemies). Like the other "isms" we have been considering, totalitarianism applies to the Republic only conditionally, depending on the definition of ‘totalitarianism’ offered.

First, we might define as totalitarian those regimes in which the political power is concentrated in one bloc, and the ruled have no alternative. On this definition, the ideal city of Plato's Republic is surely totalitarian. Socrates carefully argues that the ruled in his "Kallipolis" (as the ideal city is sometimes called) endorse the ruling party. When he argues that those without knowledge will concede that only the philosophers have knowledge (476d-480a), he is in effect demonstrating his confidence that the non-philosophers in Kallipolis will recognize the appropriateness of rule by philosophers. And if he is correct that in ideally ruled circumstances, even the producers who locate their good in the satisfaction of necessary appetitive attitudes will have optimally satisfied psychological attitudes, then he is justified in thinking that the ruled will find Kallipolis to be ideally ruled. So by showing concern for the consent of the governed, Socrates is painting a totalitarian state nicer than some, but he is still, by the first definition, painting a totalitarian state.

Second, we might define as totalitarian those regimes that exercise propagandistic control over the values and interests of the ruled. Again, by this definition, the ideal city of Plato's Republic will count as totalitarian. There is no doubt that the censored education in Kallipolis represent totalitarian concerns, as does Kallipolis' use of a "noble lie" to convince citizens' of their unequal standing and deep tie to the city (414b-415d). Before we assess this totalitarianism, however, we might want to evaluate its aims. Does the state or the ruling class have its own distinctive interests that are being served prior to and independent of the interests of the ruled? Or is the propaganda in the service of the interests of the ruled?

These questions bring us to the heart of the traditional dispute about totalitarianism in Plato's Republic. On one extreme view, Plato conceives of the city as a whole as an organic unity with its own interests, and he refuses to recognize the interests of individual citizens apart from that organic unity. The propaganda forces the citizens to serve the city. But this can hardly be right, as the Republic is supposed to provide a picture not just of a happy city but also of a happy individual person. Plato must have a conception of an individual's good that is independent of the city's good.

On the opposite extreme, Plato conceives of the city's good as nothing more than the aggregate good of all the citizens. On this view, citizens need to contribute to the city's happiness only because they need to contribute to the happiness of other citizens if they are to achieve their own maximal happiness. Propaganda is required only because the weakest citizens will not do what is in their interests on their own: the totalitarianism is paternalistic. Yet this view, too, seems at odds with much of what the Republic is trying to do. When Socrates says that the happiest city is a maximally unified city (462ab), or when he insists that all the citizens need to be bound together (519e-520a), he seems to be invoking a conception of the city's good that is not reducible to the aggregate good of the citizens.

So a mixed interpretation might seem to be called for. We can suppose that the good of the city and the good of the individual are independently specifiable, and that the citizens' own maximal good coincides with the maximal good of the city. Since Plato believes that this coincidence is realized only through propagandistic means in the ideal city, then the propaganda is paternalistically targeted at the citizens' own good but not exclusively at the citizens' own good. On this view, if the citizens do not see themselves as parts of the city serving the city, neither the city nor they will be maximally happy.

Critiques of the Republic's totalitarianism can proceed in three very different ways. First, we might reject the idea of an objectively knowable human good, and thus reject the idea that political power should be in the hands of those who know the human good. Here we might want to distinguish between Plato's picture of the human good and the very idea of an objective human good, for even if we want to dissent from Plato's view in some respect or another, we might still accept the very idea. At least, it does not seem implausible to suppose that some general psychological capacities are objectively good for their possessors (while others are objectively bad), and at that point, we can ask whether political power should be used to foster the good capacities and to restrain or prevent the bad ones. Given that state-sponsored education cannot but address the psychological capacities of the pupils, only very austere political systems could be supported by a thorough-going skepticism about the human good.

Second, we might accept the idea of an objectively knowable human good, but be wary of concentrating extensive political power in the hands of a few knowers. We might reject Plato's apparent optimism about the trustworthiness of philosopher-rulers and insist on greater checks upon political power, to minimize the risks of abuse. If this is our objection, then we might wonder what checks are optimal.

Finally, we might reject Plato's scheme on the grounds that political self-determination and free expression are themselves more valuable than what Kallipolis provides. This sort of response is perhaps the most interesting, but it is by no means easy. For it is difficult to assess the intrinsic value of self-determination and free expression, apart from skepticism about the knowledge or power of those limiting self-determining or free expression. Moreover, it is difficult to balance these values against the concerns that motivate Plato. Where does the power over massive cultural forces lie when it is not under political control? And to what extent can we live well when our culture is not shaped by people thoughtfully dedicated to living a good human life? These are not questions that can be easily shrugged off, even if we cannot embrace Kallipolis as their answer.

4.5 Political Analysis

Thus far, we have concentrated on what Socrates says about the good city. But the Republic makes another contribution to political theory, in its remarks about defective political aims and regimes. This is perhaps most obvious in Books Eight and Nine, where Socrates discusses a variety of defective political constitutions: timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, and tyranny.

This discussion emphasizes a causal account of continuous degeneration: aristocracy degenerates into timocracy (545c ff.); timocracy degenerates into oligarchy (550c ff.); oligarchy into democracy (555b ff.); and democracy into tyranny (562a ff.). If this account is taken to be an actual history, as Aristotle appears to do (Politics V 12), then it will not impress. But the schematic nature of the causal account suggests that Plato is not interested in providing an actual history of political change but rather an analysis of the weakness of each sort of regime. To say that timocracy naturally devolves into oligarchy is just to highlight timocracy's failure to check the pursuit of wealth as a badge of honor. Socrates is suggesting that just as a person who is dominated by spirited attitudes and not in properly educated from without is vulnerable to growing appetitive attitudes, so too, the city dominated by spirited persons is vulnerable to material greed. In this way, the causal story about the defective regimes is inextricably bound to a corresponding account of psychological decline that Socrates is also developing through Books Eight and Nine. We are in effect getting the flip-side of Books Two through Seven. The earlier books show the slow development of the perfectly just and flourishing city and person, and Books Eight and Nine show the slow development of the perfectly unjust and miserable city and person. Books Two through Seven can give the illusion of providing a political history, from primitive society ("the first city") to an ideal society ("Kallipolis"), but in fact, there are no real developmental claims, apart from the ideal education of the philosopher-ruler-to-be in the ideal city. Similarly, Books Eight and Nine give the illusion of providing a political history, but we should see the account as a theory of political psychology.

As such, all of the difficult questions about the city-person analogy return with a vengeance in Books Eight and Nine. Is the account of political change dependent upon the account of psychological change, or vice versa? Or if this is a case of mutual interdependence, exactly what accounts for the various dependencies? It seems difficult to give just one answer to these questions that will explain all of the claims in these books, and the full, complex theory that must underlie all of the claims is by no means clear.

But the details of Books Eight and Nine are not merely in the service of a more complicated political psychology. They also undoubtedly contribute commentaries on existing political institutions and regimes. The discussion of timocracy is surely relevant to Sparta, and the discussion of democracy is surely relevant to Athens (see 563d). Any serious attempt to connect Plato's writings with his attitudes towards and engagement with existing politics must make heavy use of Republic Eight and Nine. But this connection is difficult to establish. One needs to find criticisms that apply directly to existing institutions among criticisms that are driven by the psychological theorizing of the Republic and that are aimed at convincing Glaucon and Adeimantus to take up a philosophical life. Failure to draw this distinction is problematic, for what one will say about the problems of democracy, relative to an ideal world when one is trying to convince people that an egalitarian indulgence of one's appetitive attitudes is not a recipe for a good human life, is not necessarily what one will say about the problems of democracy, relative to the real world when one is wondering how to improve existing institutions.

Moreover, one who wants to connect Plato's writings with his attitudes towards and engagement with existing politics should not limit himself to Books Eight and Nine. Socrates' conversation with Thrasymachus, for example, turns on the central political problem of greed (pleonexia), and the principle of specialization that is fundamental to Kallipolis straightforwardly opposes the Athenian democracy. The Republic is rich in its connections to its time and place, and not just a remarkably long-lived contribution to ethical and political theory.

Bibliography

In the Anglophone world, the standard edition of the Greek text is in

• J. Burnet, ed. Platonis Opera, vol. 4. Oxford Classical Texts, 1902.

The full Greek text also appears with an excellent commentary in the edition of

• James Adams, ed. The Republic of Plato. edited, with critical notes, commentary, and appendices. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1902.

Among the English translations the following three deserve especially high regard (in chronological order):

• Paul Shorey. Plato. Republic. edited, translated, with notes and an introduction. 2 vols. Loeb, 1935-1937.
• Allan Bloom. The Republic of Plato. translated, with notes and an interpretive essay. New York: Basic Books, 1968.
• G.M.A. Grube, trans. Plato. The Republic. revised by C.D.C. Reeve. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1992

Here, in chronological order, are some helpful general discussions of the Republic:

• Richard Lewis Nettleship. Lectures on the Republic of Plato. New York: St. Martin's Press [1902] 1961.
• N.R. Murphy. The Interpretation of Plato's Republic. Oxford: Clarendon, 1951.
• R.C.Cross and A.D. Woozley. Plato's Republic: A Philosophical Commentary. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1964.
• Nicholas P. White. A Companion to Plato's Republic. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1979.
• Julia Annas. An Introduction to Plato's Republic. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981.
• C.D.C. Reeve. Philosopher-Kings: The Argument of Plato's Republic. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988.

There are also valuable collections of recent essays on the Republic:

• Otfried Höffe, ed. Platon: Politeia. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1997.
• Richard Kraut, ed. Plato's Republic: Critical Essays. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997.
• Erik Nis Ostenfeld, ed. Essays on Plato's Republic. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 1998.

The following monographs, in alphabetical order, treat multiple features of the ethics and politics of Plato's Republic:

• Julia Annas. Platonic Ethics Old and New. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999.
• Christopher Bobonich. Utopia Recast. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
• T.H. Irwin. Plato's Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. (This revises and supersedes Plato's Moral Theory [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977].)
• George Klosko. The Development of Plato's Political Theory. New York: Methuen, 1986.
• Mary Margaret MacKenzie. Plato on Punishment. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986.
• Sara Monoson, Plato's Democratic Entanglements. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000.
• Thanassis Samaris. Plato on Democracy. New York: Peter Lang, 2002.

The following are especially helpful for placing the ethics and politics of Plato's Republic in their context:

• A.W.H. Adkins. Merit and Responsibility. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960.
• Ryan K. Balot. Greed and Injustice in Classical Athens. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001.
• K.J. Dover. Greek Popular Morality in the Time of Plato and Aristotle. Oxford: Blackwell, 1974.
• Josiah Ober. Political Dissent in Democratic Athens: Intellectual Critics of Popular Rule. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998.

In addition to the monographs mentioned above, there is a huge number of scholarly essays and books that discuss more particular features of the ethics and politics in the Republic. I here list just a few that develop views featured in this article. The essays are organized (a bit imperfectly) under the headings used in the present article, and each cluster is listed in chronological order.

1.1-1.2 The Nature of the Question and Rejected Strategies

• H.A. Prichard, "Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?" Mind 21 (1912): 21-37; reprinted in his Moral Obligation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1949).
• H.A. Prichard, "Duty and Interest," Inaugural Lecture (Oxford,1928); reprinted in his Moral Obligation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1949).
• M.B. Foster, "A Mistake of Plato's in the Republic" Mind 46 (1937): 386-393.
• J.D. Mabbott, "Is Plato's Republic Utilitarian?" Mind 46 (1937): 386-393; revised in Plato: A Collection of Critical Essays, II: Ethics, Politics, and Philosophy of Art and Religion, ed. Gregory Vlastos (New York: Doubleday and Company, 1971), 57-65.
• C.A. Kirwan, "Glaucon's Challenge," Phronesis 10 (1965): 162-173.
• T.H. Irwin, "Republic 2: Questions about Justice," in Plato 2: Ethics, Politics, Religion, and the Soul, ed. Gail Fine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 164-185.

1.3 The Adopted Strategy

• Bernard Williams, "The Analogy of City and Soul in Plato's Republic," in Exegesis and Argument: Studies in Greek Philosophy Presented to Gregory Vlastos, ed. E.N. Lee et al. (Phronesis s.v. 1), 196-206; reprinted in Plato's Republic: Critical Essays, ed. Richard Kraut (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997), 49-60; and in Plato 2: Ethics, Politics, Religion, and the Soul, ed. Gail Fine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 255-264; and in Essays on Plato's Psychology, ed. Ellen Wagner (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2001), 157-168.
• Jonathan Lear, "Inside and Outside the Republic," Phronesis 37 (1992): 184-215; reprinted in Plato's Republic: Critical Essays, ed. Richard Kraut (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997), 61-94; and in Essays on Plato's Psychology, ed. Ellen Wagner (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2001), 169-202.
• Nicholas D. Smith, "Plato's Analogy of Soul and State," Journal of Ethics 3 (1999): 31-49; reprinted in in Essays on Plato's Psychology, ed. Ellen Wagner (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2001), 115-136.

2.1 Human Motivations

• Terry Penner, "Thought and Desire in Plato," in Plato: A Collection of Critical Essays, II: Ethics, Politics, and Philosophy of Art and Religion, ed. Gregory Vlastos (New York: Doubleday and Company, 1971), 96-118.
• Jon Moline, "Plato on the Complexity of the Psyche," Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 60 (1978): 1-26; revised in Plato's Theory of Understanding (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1981), 52-78.
• John M. Cooper, "Plato's Theory of Human Motivation," History of Philosophy Quarterly 1 (1984): 3-21; reprinted in his Reason and Emotion: Essays in Ancient Moral Psychology and Ethical Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 118-137; and in Plato 2: Ethics, Politics, Religion, and the Soul, ed. Gail Fine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 186-206.
• Charles H. Kahn, "Plato's Theory of Desire," Review of Metaphysics 41 (1987): 77-103.
• Christopher Bobonich, "Akrasia and Agency in Plato's Laws and Republic," Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 76 (1994): 3-36; reprinted in Essays on Plato's Psychology, ed. Ellen Wagner (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2001), 203-237.
• Terry Penner, "Plato and Davidson: Parts of the Soul and Weakness of Will," Canadian Journal of Philosophy s.v. 16 (1990): 35-74.
• Gabriela Roxana Carone, "Akrasia in the Republic: Does Plato Change his Mind?" Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 20 (2001): 107-148.

2.2 Introducing Virtuous Motivations, on the unity of the virtues

• John M. Cooper, "The Unity of Virtue," Social Philosophy and Policy 15 (1998): 233-274; reprinted in his Reason and Emotion (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 76-117.

2.2 Introducing Virtuous Motivations, on the relevance of Socrates' response

• David Sachs, "A Fallacy in Plato's Republic," The Philosophical Review 72 (1963): 141-158; reprinted in Plato: A Collection of Critical Essays, II: Ethics, Politics, and Philosophy of Art and Religion, ed. Gregory Vlastos (New York: Doubleday and Company, 1971), 35-51; and in Plato's Republic: Critical Essays, ed. Richard Kraut (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997), 1-16.
• Raphael Demos, "A Fallacy in Plato's Republic?" The Philosophical Review 73 (1964): 395-398; reprinted in Plato: A Collection of Critical Essays, II: Ethics, Politics, and Philosophy of Art and Religion, ed. Gregory Vlastos (New York: Doubleday and Company, 1971), 52-56.
• Norman O. Dahl, "Plato's Defence of Justice," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 51 (1991): 809-834; reprinted in Plato 2: Ethics, Politics, Religion, and the Soul, ed. Gail Fine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 207-234.

2.3 Perfectly Virtuous Motivations

• Gregory Vlastos, "Justice and Happiness in Plato's Republic," in Plato: A Collection of Critical Essays, II: Ethics, Politics, and Philosophy of Art and Religion, ed. Gregory Vlastos (New York: Doubleday and Company, 1971), 66-95; reprinted in his Platonic Studies, 2nd ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 111-139.
• John M. Cooper, "The Psychology of Justice in Plato," American Philosophical Quarterly 14 (1977): 151-157; reprinted in his Reason and Emotion: Essays in Ancient Moral Psychology and Ethical Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 138-149; and in Plato's Republic: Critical Essays, ed. Richard Kraut (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997), 17-30; and in Essays on Plato's Psychology, ed. Ellen Wagner (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2001), 91-114.
• Nicholas P. White, "The Ruler's Choice," Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 68 (1986): 22-46.
• Richard Kraut, "Return to the Cave: Republic 519-521," Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy 7 (1991): 43-62; reprinted in Plato 2: Ethics, Politics, Religion, and the Soul, ed. Gail Fine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 235-254.
• M.F. Burnyeat, "Plato on Why Mathematics is Good for the Soul," Proceedings of the British Academy 103 (2000): 1-81.
• Eric Brown, "Justice and Compulsion for Plato's Philosopher-Rulers," Ancient Philosophy 20 (2000): 1-17.

2.4 Imperfectly Virtuous Motivations

• Christopher Gill, "Plato and the Education of Character," Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 67 (1985): 1-26.
• Rachana Kamtekar, "Imperfect Virtue," Ancient Philosophy 18 (1998): 315-339.
• Eric Brown, "Minding the Gap in Plato's Republic," forthcoming.

3.1 Psychological Health

• A.J.P. Kenny, "Mental Health in Plato's Republic," Proceedings of the British Academy 55 (1969): 229-253; reprinted in his The Anatomy of Soul (Oxford: Blackwell, 1973): 1-27.
• Richard Kraut, "The Defense of Justice in Plato's Republic," in The Cambridge Companion to Plato, ed. Richard Kraut (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 311-337; reprinted in Plato's Republic: Critical Essays, ed. Richard Kraut (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997), 197-222.

3.2 Pleasure

• J.C.B. Gosling and C.C.W. Taylor, The Greeks on Pleasure (Oxford: Clarendon, 1982).
• Martha C. Nussbaum, "The Republic: true value and the standpoint of perfection," in The Fragility of Goodness (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 136-164.

4.1 Utopianism

• Malcolm Schofield, "Plato on the Economy," in The Ancient Greek City-State, ed. M.H. Hansen (Copenhagen, 1993), 183-196; rerpinted in his Saving the City: Philosopher-Kings and Other Classical Paradigms (London: Routledge, 1999), 69-81.
• M.F. Burnyeat, "Utopia and Fantasy: The Practicability of Plato's Ideally Just City," in Psychoanalysis, Mind and Art, ed. J. Hopkins and A. Savile (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992): 175-187; reprinted in Plato 2: Ethics, Politics, Religion, and the Soul, ed. Gail Fine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 297-308.
• M.F. Burnyeat, "Culture and Society in Plato's Republic," in The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, vol. 20, ed. Grethe B. Peterson (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1999), 215-324.
• Rachel Barney, "Platonism, Moral Nostalgia, and the ‘City of Pigs'," Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy 17 (2001).

4.2 Communism

• Aristotle, Politics, II 1-5.
• Martha C. Nussbaum, "Shame, Separateness, and Political Unity: Aristotle's Criticism of Plato," in Essays on Aristotle's Ethics, ed. A.O. Rorty (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980), 395-435.
• R.F. Stalley, "Aristotle's Criticism of Plato's Republic," in A Companion to Aristotle's Politics," ed. David Keyt and Fred D. Miller, Jr. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), 182-199.
• Eric Brown, Review of Mayhew, Aristotle's Criticisms of Plato's Republic, Bryn Mawr Classical Review 99.2.11.

4.3 Feminism

• Dorothea Wender, "Plato: Misogynist, Paedophile, and Feminist," Arethusa 6 (1973): 75-80.
• Julia Annas, "Plato's Republic and Feminism," Philosophy 51 (1976): 307-321; reprinted in Plato 2: Ethics, Politics, Religion, and the Soul, ed. Gail Fine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 265-279.
• Susan Moller Okin, "Philosopher Queens and Private Wives: Plato on Women and the Family," Philosophy & Public Affairs 6 (1977): 345-369.
• Arlene Saxonhouse, "The Philosopher and the Female in the Political Thought of Plato," Political Theory 4 (1976): 195-212; reprinted in Plato's Republic: Critical Essays, ed. Richard Kraut (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997), 95-114;
• Gregory Vlastos,"Was Plato a Feminist?" Times Literary Supplement 4,495 (17 March 1989): 276, 288-289; reprinted in his Studies in Greek Philosophy, Volume II: Socrates, Plato, and Their Tradition, ed. Daniel W. Graham (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 69-103; and in Plato's Republic: Critical Essays, ed. Richard Kraut (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997), 115-128.
• Eric Brown, Review of Morag Buchan, Women in Plato's Political Theory, Ancient Philosophy 22 (2002): 189-193.

4.4 Totalitarianism

• Karl Popper, The Open Society and its Enemies, Volume I: The Spell of Plato, 5th ed., 1965.
• Renford Bambrough, ed., Plato, Popper, and Politics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967.
• Gregory Vlastos, "Does Slavery Exist in the Republic" Classical Philology 63 (1968): 291-295; reprinted in his Platonic Studies, 2nd ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 140-146.
• Gregory Vlastos, "The Theory of Social Justice in the Polis in Plato's Republic," in Interpretations of Plato: A Swarthmore Symposium, ed. Helen North (Mnemosyne s.v. 50), 1-40; reprinted in his Studies in Greek Philosophy, Volume II: Socrates, Plato, and Their Tradition, ed. Daniel W. Graham (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 69-103.
• C.C.W. Taylor, "Plato's Totalitarianism," Polis 5 (1986): 4-29; reprinted in Plato's Republic: Critical Essays, ed. Richard Kraut (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997), 31-48; and in Plato 2: Ethics, Politics, Religion, and the Soul, ed. Gail Fine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 280-296.
• J.L. Ackrill, "What's wrong with Plato's Republic?" in his Essays on Plato and Aristotle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 230-251.
• Lesley Brown, "How Totalitarian is Plato's Republic?" in Essays on Plato's Republic, ed. Erik Nis Ostenfeld (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 1998), 13-27.

4.5 Political Analysis

• Keimpe Algra, "Observations on Plato's Thrasymachus: The Case for Pleonexia." in Polyhistor: Studies in the History and Historiography of Ancient Philosophy, Presented to Jaap Mansfeld on his Sixtieth Birthday, ed. Keimpe Algra et al. (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 41-59.