1G0xxeB

Happy City, Happy Citizens? The Common Good and the Private Good in Plato’s Republic2 2 5ians are happiest, and he is able to keep the conversation progressing withoutexploring the question any further.In the second passage, Socrates confirms Glaucon’s belief that the guardianslive “the best life,” but with a transparently inadequate argument. (Theclaim itself is subsequently undermined.) In context, however, this argumentfor the goodness of the auxiliary guardians’ life serves to intensify Glaucon’salready evident desire to learn how to found a city such as Kallipolis. Byencouraging Glaucon’s enthusiasm, Socrates more or less “forces” Glaucon toforce him to introduce the topic of philosophic rule—and therewith the topicof the philosophic life and the truer “answer” to Glaucon’s initial challenge.(It is the philosophic life that resolves the problem of justice and happiness,to the extent that this problem is resolved.) Thus, again, Socrates’s secondinvocation of the happiness of the city—and, this time alone, the superiorhappiness of the guardians—serves to keep the conversation moving towardthe end Socrates has in mind, and does so in a way that keeps the ambiguityalive when the arguments are analyzed more closely.In the third and final passage, Socrates is more blunt about the conflictbetween the common good and the happiness of the philosophers. He goesso far as to say that, in the eyes of the philosopher, the life of a nonphilosopheris unequivocally wretched. At the same time, however, and as Vlastoshas insisted, the description of the happiness of the city in this passage isconsistent with the reductionist claim that, through the mutual conferringof benefits, the citizens of Kallipolis are rendered happy. This allows Socratesboth to insist upon the superiority the philosopher’s happiness and to maintainthe conviction that Kallipolis is indeed the best political order. By doingso, he is able to return to the city-soul analogy in books 8 and 9 and use it tosupport the claim that the just life is best. (This is especially true of the firstproof for the superiority of justice.) Had the belief in the happiness of citizensin Kallipolis been completely undermined, Socrates would not have been ableto use the analogy in the way he does (which is already projected at the end ofbook 4 and beginning of book 5, 445c–e, 449a).Thus, Socrates’s ambiguity makes sense if the Republic is read as a dialoguewhere Socrates makes use of (and even encourages) certain questionableconvictions of his interlocutors in order to lead them toward a position thatthey are not at the outset likely to accept or understand (that the case forjustice rests on the case for the philosophic life). And this leads to a finalreflection. Given the importance of maintaining Glaucon’s belief that all citizensare better off in Kallipolis, why even call attention to the gap at all? Why