1G0xxeB

Happy City, Happy Citizens? The Common Good and the Private Good in Plato’s Republic2 1 9cannot maintain itself unless (most of) the citizens are happy. 39 In sum, onecannot conceive of a happy city unless it has happy citizens, nor can a goodcity maintain itself without happy citizens.In light of the previous analysis, Morrison’s position is much more persuasivethan that of the other reductionists because it manages to harmonizethe happiness of the citizenry with the fact that Socrates speaks as thoughone can attend to the happiness of the city without directly attending to thehappiness of the citizens. Morrison fails to prove, however, that the happinessof the city is either conceptually or causally dependent on that of the citizens.While building the city in speech, Socrates never says that the happinessor well-being of the citizenry is the object of the laws. As already noted, thecity and its regime are ultimately rooted in a number of basic human needs(369b–e), but the meeting of basic needs cannot be equated with the provisionof happiness—at least not without a further argument. When Socrates speaksof the concern of the law (at 519e–520a), he says that its goal is the happinessof the city (not that of the citizenry), which it provides for by persuadingand compelling citizens to be useful to one another. 40 Thus, the text does notsupport the claim that the happiness of the city is conceptually dependent onthat of the citizenry.Nor does it support the claim that the happiness of the city is causallydependent on the citizens’ happiness. Morrison’s argument here relies uponthe assumptions that virtue is sufficient for happiness and that the citizensof a happy city must be virtuous. Even if we grant that virtue of some sort isnecessary for happiness, however, Morrison still fails to disambiguate “virtue”in this context. The virtues of the city and thereby of its citizens 41 arenot the same as the virtues of the soul (compare 427c–434d to441c–444b). Topick the most obvious and relevant case, the justice of the city consists of eachclass doing its part (432b–434c). We could take this to mean that the justice39“Unless many of the citizens possess a considerable degree of virtue, the overall structure of thecity will be unsound”; and “in Plato, it is true of both the individual and the city that the primarycomponent of its happiness is its virtue” (ibid.). The note appended to this last sentence contains notextual reference to the Republic or any other dialogue supporting the substance of Morrison’s claim.He could, perhaps, have cited Rep. 352d–354a.40On two occasions late in the Republic Socrates speaks as though the law aims at producing justicein the soul of those under it (see 589c–591a and 604a–605a). Both of these passages rely on a problematicequating of law with reason (logos) and thus do not provide unambiguous evidence for theconceptual dependence of the city’s happiness on that of the citizenry.41If we assume that the virtues of the city can be predicated of the citizens.