Plato's City-Soul Analogy: the Slow Train to Ordinary Virtue [word count: 6, 309 By Nathan Nicol Now, the members of this small group have tasted how sweet and blessed a possession philosophy is, and at the same time they've also seen the madness of the majority and realized, in a word, that hardly anyone acts sanely in public affairs and that there is no ally with whom they might go to the aid of justice and survive, that instead they'd perish before they could profit either their city or their friends and be useless both to themselves and to others, just like a man who has fallen among wild animals and is neither willing to join them in doing injustice nor sufficiently strong to oppose the general savagery alone. Taking all this into account, they lead a quiet life and do their own work. Thus, like someone who takes refuge under a little wall from a storm of dust or hail driven by the wind, the philosopher seeing others filled with lawlessness – is satisfied if he can depart from it with good hope, blameless and content. Well, that's no small thing for him to have accomplished before departing. But it isn't the greatest either, since he didn't chance upon a constitution that suits him. Under a suitable one, his own growth will be fuller, and he'll save the community as well as himself. Republic 496e-497a Without any shadow of doubt, amidst this vertigo of shows and politics, I settle myself ever the firmer in the creed, that we should not postpone and refer and wish, but do broad justice where we are, by whomsoever we deal with, accepting our actual companions and circumstances, however humble or odious, as the mystic officials to whom the universe has delegated its whole pleasure for us. If these are mean and malignant, their contentment, which is that last victory of justice, is a more satisfying echo to the heart, than the voice of poets and the casual sympathy of admirable persons. I think that however a thoughtful man may suffer from the defects and absurdities of his company, he cannot without affectation deny to any set of men and women, a sensibility of extraordinary merit. Emerson, Experience 1 I Introduction: from Socrates' mission to Plato's Republic At risk of pedantry, we might begin by noting that 'polis' is not captured perfectly by 'city' or 'state' (Cartledge: 17-20). That I render it by 'city' in most of the rest of this chapter is a reflection partly of convenience, but also of the fact that Plato is here our main guide: and as he comes to it, the polis is the city of Athens, and especially Athens as Socrates' stomping grounds. In his account of Socrates' trial, Plato is at pains to emphasize that Socrates would not accept a punishment that required him to recuse himself to a quiet life: As long as I draw breath and am able, I shall not cease to practice philosophy, to exhort you and in my usual way to point out to any one of you whom I happen to meet: Good friend, you are an Athenian, a citizen of the greatest city [polis] with the greatest reputation for both wisdom and power; are you not ashamed of your eagerness to possess as much wealth, reputation and honors as possible, while you do not care for nor give thought to wisdom or truth, or the best possible state of your soul?" .... I shall treat in this way anyone I happen to meet, young and old, citizen and stranger, but more my fellow citizens – more by as much as you are closer to me in kinship. (Apology 29d-30a)1 Driving the bravado here is a conception of philosophy as essentially a public activity, as entailing a commitment to participating in the polis in such a way as to insist on the priority of goods of the soul over other more external, conventional goods; and there is also a parallel conception of the city as needing guidance from philosophy. If by the time we arrive at Plato's Kallipolis in his Republic (politeia), the polis looks more like a state than a city, we will finesse the snag by sticking with Kallipolis. For now, polis as 'city' will suffice. Although this chapter has to be highly selective, I try to focus on a cluster of issues that are most distinctive of philosophical thinking about the city in the ancient world, and so in particular on how Plato moves from Socrates' mission to Athens to his own philosopher-kings in in Kallipolis, where they are called 'saviors' and 'helpers' (463b). How does Plato pry into and redraw the boundaries of Socrates' conception of philosophy and the city as thoroughly 2 interdependent, and how does this lead to the conclusion that "until philosophers rule as kings ... cities will have no rest from evils" (473c-d)? The key is Plato's city-soul analogy, or so I suggest in what follows. In brief, my aims here are twofold. First and foremost, I try to sketch the main contours of Plato's city-soul analogy, how this analogy grounds and shapes his overarching argument in his Republic. This analogy is where he spells out the conceptual underpinnings of Socrates' mission, and thus a conception of the city as essentially tied to the flourishing of its inhabitants: a conception of the city as what would be commensurate to our capacities for reciprocal flourishing (496c-497a, quoted above, cf. 369b-c, 420b). Second, I turn to explore several interpretations of Plato's analogy by focusing on two prominent objections that have been raised against it. I will not here attempt to adjudicate between the interpretations, except in the more general sense of suggesting that I side with those who find Plato's analogy more or less deeply plausible. II A Sketch of Plato's Analogy of City and Soul Plato has Socrates introduce the city-soul analogy in Book 2, as the first positive step forward in his response to the overarching problem of the Republic. The investigation we're undertaking is not an easy one but requires keen eyesight. Therefore, since we aren't clever people, we should adopt the method of investigation that we'd use if, lacking keen eyesight, we were told to read small letters from a distance and then noticed that the same letters existed elsewhere in a larger size and on a larger surface. We'd consider it a godsend, I think, to be allowed to read the larger ones first and then to examine the smaller ones, to see whether they really are the same. That's certainly true, said Adeimantus, but how is this case similar to our investigation of justice? I'll tell you. We say, don't we, that there is justice of a single man and also the justice of the whole city? Certainly. And a city is larger than a single man? 3 It is larger. Perhaps, then, there is more justice in the larger thing, and it will be easier to learn what it is. So, if you're willing, let's first find out what sort of thing justice is in a city and afterwards look for it in the individual, observing the ways in which the smaller is similar to the larger. (368c-369a) Let us notice three points about this introduction. First, the turn to develop the analogy is explicitly in the service of addressing the overarching ethical question: the more political dimension is invoked in order to shed light on the consideration of the individual, of how and why it is always in one's best interest to be just. In other words, since Thrasymachus' tirade in Book 1, duly revitalized by Glaucon and Adeimantus in Book 2, the main question has been whether it is one's interest to be just: Thrasymachus maintains that "justice is another's good but one's own loss," Socrates much the opposite view (392b, cf. 348b, 357a-367e). Socrates is now framing the question in terms of the analogy of city and soul. Second, the terms, "larger" and "smaller," seem to circumvent the more pressing difference between justice in the city and that in the soul, which is that the salient workings of the city are open to the eye, whereas those of the individual soul are invisible. The basic idea is in any case to extrapolate from the manifest case of the city to the more obscure one of the individual. Third, however, it is important to recognize that the analogy is put forward as a working hypothesis, which must yet be tested in the dialectical fires of the later developments (e.g., 434d, quoted below; Blössner: 346, pace Barnes: 32). In short, Socrates is not insisting on the analogy but suggesting it as a sort of heuristic which will have the effect of acting as a control on the account(s) of justice in the city and in the soul: each will have to be tested against the other. In Book 4 Socrates returns to the analogy, and enlarges its scope so that it significantly shapes the argument: Let's complete the present inquiry. We thought that, if we first tried to observe justice in some larger thing that possessed it, this would make it easier to observe in a single 4 individual. We agreed that this larger thing is a city, and so we established the best city we could, knowing well that justice would be in one that was good. So, let's apply what has come to light in the city to an individual, and if it is accepted there, all will be well. But if something different is found in the individual, then we must go back and test that on the city. And if we do this, and compare them side by side, we might well make justice light up as if we were rubbing fire-sticks together. (434d-435a) Socrates moves to transpose the results of the discussion of justice in the city to an account of justice in a person. A first result is that justice in the city turns out to be a matter of each of the parts "doing its own work and not meddling with what isn't its own" (433a-b). In sum, there are three classes in Kallipolis (rulers, auxiliaries, and workers), and justice consists in the philosopher-kings ruling, the auxiliaries keeping the peace, and the workers producing the materials for survival and the economy more generally (433a-434d). Accordingly, the bulk of the rest of Book 4 is devoted to the derivation of the "parts of the soul." Again, in sum, it emerges that there are three parts to the soul (reason, spirit, and appetite), and justice here, too, is spelled out in terms of each doing its proper work: reason theorizes and rules, spirit provides the motivational infrastructure, and desire acquiesces in its place rather than pressing its own agenda (443d).2 The just person thus harmonizes the parts of his soul like three limiting notes in a musical scale (high, middle, low), and so cultivates and secures the "inner harmony," which reflects the unity that is the greatest good in Kallipolis (462a-d). Hence, what began in Book 2 as a similarity in respect of being capable of being just has by the end of Book 4 been enlarged to encompass a correspondence of parts and structure, of hierarchy and harmony. In the case of the city, it is a natural intuition that the community benefits from the just behavior of its members, earlier suggested by Glaucon (358e-359b). By conceiving of the soul as itself also a community of diverse parts, Socrates plants the seeds to transfer that intuition to the soul: here, too, the whole benefits from the just behavior of its respective members, and suffers from their "civil war," to borrow one of Plato's favorite ways of putting it (547a, 554d, 556e, 559e). 5 While in Books 5-7 the city-soul analogy waits in wings, in Books 8 and 9 it returns to center stage. By contrast with the "natural hierarchy" we have just seen outlined in Book 4, Socrates here works through a series of transformations from one kind of constitutional and psychological type to another. These transformations trace out one and another falling off of the natural hierarchy, and so produce injustice and conflict. The prevailing pattern is that the ascendancy of one constitutional type is of a piece with the strength of the particular aspirations of the corresponding soul part(s). As Plato conceives of them, each of the parts of the soul has its own distinctive set of aspirations, its own agenda that it would set for the whole soul: reason strives for truth and the good of the whole soul, spirit for honor and prestige, and appetite for pleasure (580d-581e). In Kallipolis, then, the "natural hierarchy" is grounded in the domination, if that is the right word, of the rational part over the others: again, this is the model of the philosopher-king. When we turn in the next section to consider the critical reception of Plato's analogy, we will return to examine more closely how exactly reason rules, and what this entails for appetite and the workers. For now, let us review four other models that Socrates sets out: these are the next transformations of the constitutional, psychological types leading from Book 8 into 9. In the interests of space and simplicity, and since Socrates presents each type of person as the epitome of its analogous constitutional type more generally (576c, e.g.), we will focus on the persons, the epitomes of the type. (1) The Timocratic Person (547a-550b) 6 Socrates describes the timocratic person as dominated by his spirited part, and so as driven by "the love of victory and the love of honor" (548c). The timocrat is the first remove from the philosopher, and results from the struggle between reason, appetite, and spirit: So he's pulled by both. His father nourishes the rational part of his soul and makes it grow; the others nourish the spirited and appetitive parts. Because he isn't a bad man by nature but keeps bad company, when he's pulled in these two ways, he settles in the middle and surrenders the rule over himself to the middle part – the victory-loving and spirited part – and becomes a proud and honor-loving man. (550b) The timocrat strikes a compromise between dueling parties. On the one hand, he allows spirit to prevail as the dominant force in his soul, and so adopts the values more peculiar to that part, those of victory and honor. This is a significant step removed from the ideal, where reason is in charge. On the other hand, he has not let appetite rule him. To draw on terms that Socrates will soon set out (554a, 558d-559e, 571a7-572b9), the suggestion is that the timocrat has moderated both his necessary and his unnecessary desires. In short, he is not the picture of true virtue, but he remains a far cry from fully unmoored from virtue. (2) The Oligarchic Person (550c-555a) The next transformation is to the oligarchic person, where appetite begins to take control of the other parts of the soul, and this is manifest in the priority given to the love of money. Socrates hypothesizes that an oligarchic person emerges from the misfortunes of his timocratic father, who lost both position and property: The son sees all this, suffers from it, loses his property, and ... immediately drives from the throne of his own soul the honor-loving and spirited part that ruled there. Humbled by poverty, he turns greedily to making money, and, little by little, saving and working, he amasses property. Don't you think that this person would establish his appetitive and money-making part on the throne, setting it up as a great king within himself ... He makes the rational and spirited parts sit on the ground beneath appetite ... reducing them to slaves. He won't allow the first to reason about or examine anything 7 except how a little money can be made into great wealth. And he won't allow the second to value or admire anything but wealth and wealthy people or to have any ambition other than the acquisition of wealth or whatever might contribute to getting it. (553b-d) Socrates refers to appetite as "the money-loving" part, "because such appetites are most easily satisfied by means of money" (580e), but appetite's drive for money appears plainly to go beyond its instrumental value: part of what Socrates describes in the emergence of the oligarchic person is the rise of the desire for money for itself; this desire becomes "insatiable." Again, however, the oligarchic person strikes his own compromise. He has given over rule of himself to his appetitive part, and thereby to an "insatiable desire ... to become as rich as possible" (555b, cf. 442a, 554b). But then this very focus entails he does not give way to all of his desires: he takes care to satisfy only his necessary desires, and to enslave his unnecessary and lawless ones, "forcibly holding his other appetites in check by means of some decent part of himself" (554c). (3) The Democratic Person (555b-562a) The third transformation is to the democratic person, where appetite expands its grip on the soul, and "freedom" (eleutheria, 562b) is the watchword. Socrates suggests that the democratic person springs from the seductions of pleasures beyond the narrow scope of those of his oligarchic father. Isn't it in some such way as this that someone who is young changes, after being brought up with necessary desires, to the liberation and release of useless and unnecessary pleasures? ... He spends as much money, effort, and time on unnecessary pleasures as the necessary ones. ... And so he lives, always surrendering rule over himself to whichever desire comes along, as if it were chosen by lot. And when that is satisfied, he surrenders the rule to another, not disdaining any but satisfying them all equally. (561a-b, cf. 590d) Whereas with the oligarchic person appetite was yet restrained to necessary desires, it is precisely the force of the freedom of the democratic person that his appetite is no longer so 8 restrained but indeed further empowered by adding to the necessary desires a sort of army of unnecessary ones, and insisting that they all enjoy equal standing. To the extent that there remains any compromise in his soul, it will be on the grounds that lawless desires are restrained: and failure to give abundant freedom to all (other, nonlawless) desires is not tolerated (562d, 563d, 572c-d). It is yet a signal dimension of this stage of degeneration that "reverence," "moderation," and "order" are driven out by the growing masses of desires and their respective claims to the revolving door of governance of the soul (560c-561d). The democratic person is thus the more degenerate than the oligarchic one, for one thing, just as there is far less harmonious unity in his soul, and what little remains is constantly in danger of dissolving into turmoil. (4) The Tyrannical Person (562a-576e) With the final transformation, we arrive at the tyrant, who is both the epitome of tyranny as a constitutional regime and the exemplar of the Thrasymachean view: Thrasymachus urged that "complete injustice is more profitable than complete justice" (348b), and the tyrant plays out just such a life. As Socrates explains how the tyrant arises from his democratic forerunners, the most distinctive point is the rise of lawless desires, which "contrive to plant in him a powerful erotic love, like a great winged drone to be the leader of those idle desires that spend whatever is at hand" (573e; cf. 565c, 567b). And it turns out that the actualization of the tyrant's own impunity is then his undoing, as it continues to oppress him with its ever-increasing demands: In truth, then, and whatever some people may think, a real tyrant is really a slave, compelled to engage in the worst kind of fawning, slavery, and pandering to the worst kind of people. He's so far from satisfying his desires in any way that is clear – if one happens to know that one must study his whole soul – that he's in the greatest need of most things and truly poor. And, if indeed his state is like that of the city he rules, then he's full of fear, convulsions, and pains throughout his life. (579d-e) 9 A striking aspect here is how Socrates deploys the city-soul analogy to display the tragic folly of the tyrant. He uses it partly to penetrate the daunting exterior of the tyrant's life, and partly to project the tyrant's inner life onto the broad canvas of political life. Socrates emphasizes the reversal thus on display: whereas the tyrant in all his bullying might seem to have the power to push others around, the analogy reveals that he is rather himself "forcibly driven by the stings of desire," that the best part of himself is a slave to his worst desires, and that he has no friends nor safe harbor anywhere (580a). In short, the tyrant's life becomes "the extreme of wretchedness" (578b), and so also Thrasymachus is roundly refuted (580c). This concludes our sketch of Plato's city-soul analogy. I hope it is now clear how Plato has Socrates uncork the analogy to secure his more overarching conclusions. In order to fill in more detail, and to give a sense of the considerable critical reception Plato's analogy has received, let us turn to consider two prominent objections which have been raised against it. III Interpretations According to an objection vigorously defended by Karl Popper, Plato's analogy is fatally flawed at its upper limit; for it implies "the organic theory of the state," as Popper put it, which has untenable metaphysical and political implications (Taylor: 34-5). And in fairness it must be granted that Popper's objection is motivated in part by the very plausible insight that Plato plainly does conceive of a person as more than just the sum of her (psychic) parts. Thus, again, it is the oligarchic person who "would establish his appetitive and money-making part on the throne" (553b). Similarly, the just person "puts himself in order ... and harmonizes the three parts of himself" (443d). Time and again, Plato presupposes a self who might identify with the promptings of one or another part of himself, but which remains distinct from those parts 10 (Schofield: 255). Hence, the objection extrapolates from the person on the soul end of the analogy to the Organic State on the other, and proceeds to maintain that this has two, dire implications: first the more metaphysical one that there exists such a thing as an Organic State over and above its parts, the citizens and other inhabitants, but then also the most vexed political one that the welfare of individuals might well be sacrificed for the good of this higher State: "the criterion of morality is the interest of the state" (Popper, his italics, quoted in Taylor: 34). To tackle first to the metaphysical implication, we might begin by noting that Plato's analogy cannot itself make Popper's case for him, since on those grounds alone it is impossible to tell how hard to squeeze the similarities of the sides of the analogy. Socrates may intend simply to point to structural similarities, not to assume that city and soul have the same metaphysical status. And when we look at how Plato presents the analogy, we find that he relies only on structural similarities, and never on a stronger metaphysical claim (435a-c, 441e-442c). The metaphysical aspect of Popper's objection is, then, not compelling. Even so, we should recognize that there does appear to be more than just a hint of the political aspect in some places. Perhaps the best passage in support of it is at the start of Book 4, when Socrates replies to Adeimantus' concern that, in so far outlining Kallipolis, "you aren't making these men very happy." Socrates explains that "in establishing our city, we aren't aiming to make any one group outstandingly happy but to make the whole city so, as far as possible" (420b). At first glance, this may well appear to elevate the interest of the city above those of the individuals. On closer inspection, the crucial contrast here is not between the interests of an abstract entity (Organic State whatever) and the individuals therein, but between the interests of the whole city (all of the individuals) and the sectarian interests of any particular group therein (philosophers, workers, whomever: see Taylor: 38). Little wonder, then, that 11 instead of the Organic State, some commentators have taken this passage to suggest a more aggregative interpretation of the happiness of the city, much like utilitarianism (Neu). On this interpretation, Socrates' aim is to maximize the aggregate happiness of the individuals in Kallipolis. Perhaps the most plausible interpretation is in between the Organic Theory and the aggregative approach (Scott: 371). For one thing, Plato is most emphatic that unity is the primary aim of Kallipolis: "Is there any greater evil we can mention for a city than that which tears it apart and makes it many instead of one? Or any greater good than that which binds it together and makes it one?" (462a, cf. 422e-423d) Unity is here not conceived of as good as a means of achieving aggregate happiness: the suggestion seems rather to be, if anything, the other way, that happiness is good for unity. Socrates later recalls these earlier points, when he replies to Glaucon's objection that compelling the philosophers to rule is unjust (to them): You are forgetting again that it isn't the law's concern to make any one class in the city outstandingly happy but to contrive to spread happiness throughout the city by bringing the citizens into harmony with each other through persuasion or compulsion and by making them share with each other the benefits that each class can confer on the community. The law produces such people in the city, not in order to allow them to turn in whatever direction they want, but to make use of them to bind the city together. (519e-520a, emphasis added) At the end of the day, Plato does appear to give priority to structural properties of the city over even the aggregate happiness of its individuals. Perhaps, then, it is hasty to conclude that, because Popper's objection is not compelling in its metaphysical claim, its more political dimension is accordingly left without a leg to stand on. Even so, it remains far from clear how much traction it might gain. When we turn next to tackle the second objection, we will return to the vexed matter of how Plato might conceive of the philosopher-kings as somehow oppressing the workers. 12 According to another objection, given animus by a magisterial paper by Bernard Williams, the trouble with Plato's analogy is not in its higher but its lower echelons; the trouble is with the workers and our appetite(s).3 According to Williams, Plato's analogy is a window into fatal fractures in the foundations of Kallipolis. He cites this passage: [W]e are surely compelled to agree that each of us has within himself the same parts and characteristics as the city? Where else would they come from? It would be ridiculous for anyone to think that spiritedness didn't come to be in cities from such individuals as the Thracians, Scythians, and others who live to the north of us who are held to possess spirit, or that the same isn't true of the love of learning, which is mostly associated with our part of the world, or the love of money, which one might say is conspicuously displayed by the Phoenicians and Egyptians. (435e-436a) Williams argues that Plato here commits himself to the following two points: (1) a city is F if and only if its people are F, and (2) the explanation of a city's being F is the same as that of a person's being F (197). The combination of these reveals the trouble: Kallipolis is the exemplar of a just city, which should entail that its citizens are just; but most of the citizens are workers, and they are ex hypothesis not themselves ruled by reason. By contrast, Plato appears to stress that the workers are ruled by their various appetites (442a, 484b, 585e-586b), and indeed to allow that "the majority cannot be philosophic" (494a). But then, if most of the people (even) in Kallipolis are not ruled by reason, then most of them do not have just souls. Hence, Williams concludes that Kallipolis both is and is not just, and that Plato has tied himself up in the knots of his own analogy. In response to Williams, commentators have suggested that his objection relies on an overly particular interpretation of Plato's analogy. To see this, it is useful to distinguish between two possible interpretations of the analogy: (a) on a macrocosm to microcosm interpretation, the analogy outlines a similarity of structure between the city and the soul; and (b) on a whole-part 13 interpretation, the city has a virtue only because the individuals in it have that virtue (Irwin: 331n.29). Once attuned to this distinction, we can notice that Williams' objection relies on (b), but that Plato's text will only underwrite (a): 435a-c and 441e-442c are crucial passages. Nevertheless, the spirit of Williams' objection may still seem to haunt the dialectical setting, not least in a persistent sense that Plato's project in elaborating Kallipolis is rooted in a sort of intellectual elitism. John Cooper concludes that "Plato consistently restricts justice, as a virtue of individuals, to those who possess within themselves knowledge of what it is best to do and be" (1984: 20, his emphasis). Given that Plato allows that only philosophers have such knowledge, if Cooper is correct, then workers cannot be just. Similarly, Jonathan Lear maintains that "Plato does not believe the appetitive person [i.e. a worker] has the virtue of temperance" (1992: 75, his emphasis). This leaves us with the dark question of how Plato does conceive of what virtue might be hoped for by, for lack of a better term, ordinary people. On refection, we can see that Plato has, however, provided profound provisions for the cultivation and maintenance of ordinary virtue throughout his Republic. One way into these provisions is to observe that both Cooper and Lear's arguably elitist assessments of Plato's view are not true without qualification. It must be acknowledged that, according to Plato, ordinary people, and the workers in Kallipolis in particular, do not have "true virtue with wisdom" (554e, cf. Phaedo 69b3, Theaetetus 176c5, Symposium 212a). But Plato recognizes virtue of lower grade that they might yet have: ordinary/demotic virtue (demotikê aretê: literally, virtue of the dêmos), which stems from habituation without precisely philosophically reasoning (Keyt: 202). Those who have acquired ordinary virtue have achieved, for one thing, a healthy measure of ordinary temperance and justice (389d-e, 431c-d), and so have at least escaped from the slavery to insatiable appetites that we have seen to be the fate of the tyrant. Again, when Socrates 14 explains what he means by unnecessary desires, offering the example of the desire for more food and drink than is "beneficial to well-being," he goes on to add that "most people can get rid of it, if it's restrained and educated while they're young" (558b). This seems a hopeful note, so long as the accordant education might be hoped for. Plato was acutely aware that the cultivation of ordinary virtue is likely to flourish only as the hard-earned harvest of seeds sown across a vast educational curriculum. We might get a sense of the breadth and depth of such a curriculum by noticing a few examples. To begin with the negative side, a good clue to how law will promote the values of Kallipolis throughout the city is its "forbidding [poets and other craftsmen] to represent – whether in pictures, buildings, or any other works – a character that is vicious, unrestrained, slavish, or graceless" (401b). As for the positive side, unfortunately Plato is very spare in details about the education of the workers (Reeve: 186-90). But what is clear is that, however elitist the overall program may be, it is also thoroughly saturated with paternalism. The aim is never to rule the workers (and appetite) at any cost, let alone regardless of their regard for being ruled. By contrast, the aim is that all the classes agree that it is best that the philosophers rule the others: "all sing the same song together" (432a). That concord is partly the result of an ambient culture that "seeps imperceptibly into people's characters and habits" (424d: see also Burnyeat (261): "norms for art in the ideal city will reshape the whole culture"), partly of having been raised on a steady diet of "simple, measured" desire-satisfaction (431c). And Plato supports the whole curriculum by underscoring it with a plausible principle of motivation: in short, the strength and indeed the shape of the appetites cultivated in the direction of moderation have the result of rather starving out other appetites (especially the lawless ones), which should wither away for lack of exercise (485b). 15 Along these lines, then, William's objection to Plato's analogy might be kept at bay, if not perhaps fully refuted. His objection freezes the frame of reference to, in effect, where Plato speculates that we begin with reason and appetite. But once we enlarge the frame to take in what harmony (inner and outer) might be gained by educational and cultural reforms, we are in position to appreciate that Plato has resources sufficient to compel the objection to widen the focus. Again, the aim is not to downgrade the many for the upkeep of the philosophers, but for all to flourish as much as possible: "and in particular each enjoys its own pleasures, the best and truest pleasures possible for it" (586e). IV conclusion I have tried to motivate and make explicit, if not fully defend, three main points. First, in Plato's city-soul analogy, he develops Socrates' commitment to philosophy as public engagement with the city into a model of reciprocal flourishing: the health of the whole is yoked to that of each of the parts. In Kallipolis this will entail both that a citizen will flourish more as a person, as this polis will provide an educational environment commensurate to her capacities for flourishing, and that she will contribute more to the public affairs, as this will have been the aim of her education all along. Second, the key to unlocking Plato's analogy is to consider it more diachronically than synchronically, how in the unfolding each shapes the other: social struggles are reflections of conflicts within each soul, and vice versa. Third, it would be fruitful to continue to mine Plato's city-soul analogy for insights into our project of realizing ordinary virtue. 16 Endnotes: 1 Here and in what follows translations from Plato are based on Cooper 1997, with some slight alterations. The references to Plato's text are to the Stephanus pages (e.g., 435a), standard in most editions. 2 For fresh, lively discussions of Plato's moral psychology, see the excellent collection of essays in Barney, Brennan, and Brittain. 3 1973, The Analogy of City and Soul in Plato's Republic. The vast influence of this paper is evident in the near cottage industry that has grown up in response to it. My own response here draws from Blössner, Keyt, Kraut, Lear, Schofield, and Scott. 17 References Barnes, J. (2012) "Justice Writ Large." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, supplementary vol., 31-49. Barney, R., Brennan, T, and Brittain, C. (eds.) (2012). Plato and the Divided Self. New York: Cambridge University Press. Blössner, N. (2007). The City-Soul Analogy. 345-85 in G. R. F. Ferrari, (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Plato's Republic. New York: Cambridge University Press. Burnyeat, M. (1999). "Culture and society in Plato's Republic," The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, 20: 215-324. Cartledge, P. A. (2000). "Greek political thought: the historical context," in C. J. Rowe and M. Schofield (eds), The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Political Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Chapter 1. Cooper, J. (1984). "Plato's Theory of Human Motivation." History of Philosophical Quarterly 14, 3-21. Cooper, J. (ed.) (1997). Plato: Complete Works. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing. Irwin, T. (1979). Plato's Moral Theory: the Early and Middle Dialogues. New York: Oxford University Press. Keyt, D. (2006). "Plato and the Ship of State," in G. Santas (ed.). The Blackwell Guide to Plato's Republic. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 189-213. Kraut, R. (1973). "Reason and Justice in Plato's Republic," in E. N. Lee, A. P. D. Mourelatos, and R. M. Rorty (eds.), Exegesis and Argument: Studies in Greek Philosophy, Phronesis Supplement 1, 207-24. Lear, Jonathan. (1992) "Inside and Outside the Republic." Phronesis 37, 184-215. Reeve, C.D.C. (1988). Philosopher-Kings the Argument of Plato's Republic. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing. Schofield, M. (2006). Plato: Political Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press. Scott, D. (2011). "The Republic," in G. Fine (ed.). The Oxford Handbook of Plato. New York: Oxford University Press, Chapter 15. Taylor, C.C.W. (1997). "Plato's Totalitarianism," in R. Kraut (ed.). Plato's Republic: Critical Essays, 31-48. 18 William, B. (1973). "The Analogy of City and Soul in Plato's Republic," in E. N. Lee, A. P. D. Mourelatos, and R. M. Rorty (eds.), Exegesis and Argument: Studies in Greek Philosophy, Phronesis Supplement 1, 196-206. Further Reading: Ferrari, G. R. F. (2005). City and Soul in Plato's Republic. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (contrasts Plato's analogy with Isocrates' own city-soul analogy.) Kraut, R. (2002). Aristotle: Political Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press. (balanced, critical discussion of Aristotle's own view of the polis as well as his criticisms of Plato.) Ober, J. (1998). Political Dissent in Democratic Athens: Intellectual Critics of Popular Rule. Princeton: Princeton University Press. (a detailed account of Plato's treatment of the possibilities of fitting Socratic values into a democratic polis.) Schofield, M. (1999). Saving the City: Philosopher-Kings and Other Classical Paradigms. New York: Routledge. (explores Stoic developments of Plato's political views)