The Intelligent Troglodyte’s Guide to Plato’s Republic, 2016a

73 The Timocratic City
See 547b-548d. When the various people in the city start disagreeing with one
another, those who are especially strong in the appetitive part of the soul (“iron
and bronze”) pull the city towards economic development and the pursuit of
wealth while those especially strong in the rational and spirited parts (“the gold
and silver types”) pull the city “towards virtue and the old political system.”
Socrates speculates that the city ends up compromising, with the former auxiliaries
taking over as rulers. This is a compromise because the spirited values of honor
and victory, involving as they do earning the respect of other people, fall between
the narrowly self-centered consumer values of the appetitive part and the rational
part’s fully informed love of the good. After owning no private property at all in
the aristocratic city, the former auxiliaries take possession of all the land and
houses, and distribute them in the manner of feudal lords. Then they enslave the
city’s workers, “those whom they had previously guarded as free friends and
providers of upkeep,” and turn their attention, in foreign affairs, to war, and in
domestic affairs, to guarding against uprisings of the people. Socrates describes
the domestic situation as enslavement because the workers are no longer working
for the harmonious flourishing of the whole city. Instead, they are compelled to be
part of the timocratic war machine. Although the rulers value above all else the
hard-earned honors of warfare – “timocratic” means honor-ruled – this does not
prevent them from indulging their appetitive desires in private; for as far as the
spirited part is concerned, what goes on in private doesn’t matter much as long as
it remains discreet and doesn’t surface to besmirch one’s reputation. What
happens to the philosophers under this constitution is unclear. They presumably
desire to return to contemplation of the forms, but they have to find some way to
make a living, and the rulers are not going to pay them to undermine their
reputations. (Maybe the philosophers end up researching new weapon systems.)
The paradigmatic timocracy in Socrates’ day was Sparta, Athens’ primary
adversary in the Peloponnesian War. Examples from later chapters in history
include Rome under the Republic with its profound concern for timocratic
dignitas, and the feudal societies of Europe and Japan with their codes of honor