1G0xxeB

Happy City, Happy Citizens? The Common Good and the Private Good in Plato’s Republic2 1 3speak as though the happiness of the city can be promoted without attendingto the private happiness of citizens, and once again he declines to describein detail what the happiness of a city consists of. Further, Socrates quiteexplicitly says here that the philosophers (at least) do sacrifice some shareof happiness for the sake of the common good, which suggests that the happinessof the city is something other than the happiness of its parts. 22 Evenfurther, the life of the guardians that had previously been declared “the bestlife” (466b) is now declared (by Glaucon himself) to be a “worse life” thanthat of the philosopher. In light of the benefits of the philosophic life, thesupreme goodness of the life of the guardians, whose labors and honors areconcerned solely with the city, has now become questionable.On the other hand, as Gregory Vlastos has noted, 23 this passage containsone statement that could be seen as strongly favoring the reductionist position.Socrates says that the law looks to the happiness of the city as a whole by“making [the citizens] share with one another the benefit that each is able tobring to the commonwealth” (519e–520a). The language here would seem toequate the happiness of the city with that of the citizens, since the happinessof the city is apparently equated with citizens benefiting one another. 24 Thismight seem to support reductionism.Nonetheless, although this statement is surely compatible with reductionism,it does not provide decisive support for it. It is certainly true thatthe city is arranged in such a way that citizens have no option but to providebenefits for one another. As Socrates elsewhere says, “for all men obedient togood laws a certain job has been assigned to each in the city at which he iscompelled to work, and no one has the leisure” not to do this job (406c). Todo one’s job for the city certainly consists of providing benefits for fellow citizens:food, shelter, clothing, labor, security, and so forth, depending on one’sspecific job. When considering the division of civic labor embodied in theconstitution of Kallipolis, it makes sense to identify the city with its citizens,since that division of labor is rooted in human need (see 369b–c). But noneof this proves that the happiness of the city and that of the citizens are identicalto one another. Rather, it is perfectly consistent with the holistic reading22See Morrison, “Happiness,” 19–20.23Vlastos, “Social Justice,” 17.24As Vlastos says, for the citizens “to ‘impart benefit to the community’…is to ‘impart benefit to oneanother’; they, and they alone, are the beneficiary; the well-being of the polis is theirs” (17). Vlastos, itshould be noted, bolsters this interpretation with the earlier-mentioned argument that identifies thehappiness of the city with that of the citizenry as well (see Vlastos, “Social Justice,” 15).