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2 1 0 I n t e r p r e t a t i o n Volume 41 / Issue 3and they get prizes from their city while they live and when they diereceive a worthy burial. (465d–e)In other words, if the Olympic victors live a “most blessed life” because theywin an athletic competition on behalf of the city and are rewarded withpublic meals and honor, then the auxiliaries must enjoy an even greater happinessbecause they achieve an even greater victory for the city and receiveeven greater support and honor from it as a result.Socrates then recalls Adeimantus’s previous objection and notes that,at that time, they had deferred discussing the happiness of the guardians 20because they “were making the guardians guardians and the city as happyas we could, but…were not looking exclusively to one group in [the city] andforming it for happiness” (466a; recall 420b). Now, however, they can see thatthe guardians are in fact happiest—and certainly happier than the producers.If the Olympic victors are happier than common craftsmen and farmers (asGlaucon grants), and if the auxiliaries are happier than the Olympic victors(as they have just established), then clearly the auxiliaries must be happierthan the craftsmen and farmers, and are therefore the happiest class in thecity (466a–b). Indeed, Socrates goes so far as to assert that the “moderate,steady” life of the guardians (more precisely, of the auxiliaries) is, in fact, the“best life” (446b). He then concludes by once again denigrating the conceptionof happiness that lay behind Adeimantus’s original objection, mocking itas “a foolish, adolescent opinion about happiness” (466b). And he asserts yetagain that, were a guardian to pursue that kind of happiness, he would ceaseto be a guardian and would be led “to appropriate everything in the city withhis power” and thereby harm the city (466b–c).In light of our previous analysis of Socrates’s response to Adeimantus,it should be clear that this passage does little to resolve the ambiguities ofthe first response. Socrates still speaks here as though the happiness of thecity can be attended to without attending to the private happiness of citizensor groups of citizens: the city is made “as happy as we could” make it by“making the guardians guardians” (466a, italics mine), not by making themhappy. In this sense, this passage also lends itself more to a holistic than to areductionist interpretation. At the same time, there is once again no explicitdescription of what it means to make a city “happy as a whole,” and thusno explicit statements to help us decide between holism and reductionism.20After 414b, the term “guardians” becomes somewhat ambiguous, but it is only after 473c–e thatmaking a precise distinction between auxiliary and complete guardians might have any bearing onour question.