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2 0 6 I n t e r p r e t a t i o n Volume 41 / Issue 3would neglect their proper jobs within the city (420e–421b). While a city cansurvive having some negligent cobblers and other craftsmen, it cannot survivehaving a ruling class that fails to be “guardians of the laws and the city”and is instead concerned with private gratification (421a–b). Hence, Socratesconcludes that they are not to arrange the city so that the guardians have“the most happiness,” but rather so that “the city as a whole” has the mosthappiness, and the way to do that is to “compel and persuade” the guardiansand also the producers to be “the best possible craftsmen at their jobs”(421b–c). As for the happiness of the city’s classes, Socrates declares that they“must let nature assign to each of the groups its share of happiness” (421c). 11Finally, since only the guardian class had been deprived of private property,Socrates concludes by prescribing that the producers (who will be allowedprivate property) will not be allowed to grow too rich or too poor, since bothconditions would cause them to do their jobs poorly (421c–422a). In short,all the classes will be allowed the material conditions most conducive to thebest performance of their particular jobs.Although aspects of this passage are fairly straightforward, overall itdoes not provide decisive support for either the holistic or the reductionistinterpretation of the claim that the city is happy as a whole. On one hand,there are at least two statements that support the holistic interpretation. First,the analogy to painting statues (420c–d) seems to suggest that the happinessof the city is something other than the happiness of the parts. Socrates doesnot say that a beautiful whole is composed of beautifully colored parts, butrather of “suitably” colored parts. If happiness is the analogue to beauty, itfollows that the happiness predicated of the city does not follow from thehappiness of the parts. The parts must have a “suitable” happiness, but that isnot necessarily the same as the greatest possible happiness.This interpretation has not gone unchallenged. Rachana Kamtekar offersan alternative. She reads the analogy as asserting that “for the whole [statue]to be beautiful, each of its parts must be a beautiful part, and that requiresthat each part continue to be a part (i.e., retain its function in relation to thewhole).” But a purple eye “would no longer be an eye…and, a fortiori, not abeautiful eye,” and thus would render the whole defective and not beautiful.Hence, “each part’s being as beautiful as possible is a necessary condition forthe whole’s being as beautiful as possible.” 12 Mutatis mutandis, the same holds11eateon hopōs hekastois tois ethnesin hē phusis apodidōsi tou metalambanein eudaimonias (421c4–6).12Kamtekar, “Social Justice,” 207.