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Happy City, Happy Citizens? The Common Good and the Private Good in Plato’s Republic2 1 5producers are money lovers. 26 He argues, further, that each of these types iscapable of a distinct kind of happiness as well as a specific level of cognitiveachievement. 27 The philosophers are happiest, because they enjoy the highestpleasures and possess the intellectual virtue requisite for guiding them reliablytowards the attainment of this highest happiness. The auxiliaries andproducers enjoy successively lesser pleasures and are successively less capableof guiding themselves even toward the more limited happiness of which theyare capable. Both the honor lovers and the money lovers are therefore betteroff being ruled by someone wiser than themselves—someone who is capableof guiding them toward the greatest happiness that they can attain.In support of this claim about the unique psychic constitution, happiness,and cognitive ability of each class, Reeve relies on Socrates’s discussion,in book 9, of the pleasures particular to each part of the soul and his consequentdivision of people into three types, according to which part of thesoul predominates in them. 28 It should be noted, however, that Socrates neverexplicitly applies this taxonomy to the classes in Kallipolis. (The passagein question concerns the rule of the philosophic part of the soul over thesoul’s other parts.) Nonetheless, there is some evidence that love of moneypredominates in the producers, and love of honor among the auxiliaries. 29(It goes without saying that philosophers are wisdom lovers.) Thus, Reeve’sclaims are not prima facie false.Reeve further claims that in Kallipolis, the honor-loving auxiliaries andthe money-loving producers are both ruled by philosopher kings in such amanner that they are in fact able to enjoy the greatest sustainable happinessof which they are capable given their respective psychic constitutions. 30 Insupport of this claim, he cites Socrates’s assertion that only a soul ruled by thewisdom-loving part is capable of attaining the “best” and “truest” pleasures26See Reeve, Philosopher-Kings, 36–37, 170–204.27“Because people have different natures, they have different real interests, are made really happy bydifferent things and have different degrees of insight into themselves and the world. These differentnatures are of three primary types: money-lovers, honour-lovers, and wisdom-lovers or philosophers.Each is ruled, or has his ultimate goal determined by, the desires in one of the three parts of thepsyche: appetite, aspiration, and reason. Each has his own distinctive pleasure, his own peculiar Weltanschauung”(ibid., 36). Reeve elaborates on these statements at 43–49, 153–59, and chap. 4 passim.28Reeve, Philosopher-Kings, 36–37, 43–49, 176–97; see Rep. 580d–581c for the passage he relies on.29See, for example, 434a–c for love of money. At 414a and 468b–469b it is presupposed that love ofhonor is a powerful motive for the auxiliaries.30Reeve argues for this at length at Philosopher-Kings, 76–204. In summary, “Money-lovers andhonour-lovers can achieve what is for them real justice and real happiness only in a polis ruled by justphilosophers” (ibid., 37).

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