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

38 Wisdom in the City
See 427d-429a. Having declared their initial sketch of the good city complete,
Socrates proceeds to define its virtues, the characteristic ways in which it is
excellent. Notice that there is no controversy when he states that the city “is wise,
courageous, temperate, and just.” These were recognized in Socrates’ day as
central moral virtues. Other virtues were of course recognized – piety, for
instance, and hospitality – but these appear to have been considered secondary
virtues, perhaps because they could be construed as aspects of one or another of
the four central virtues. (Hospitality, for instance, could be understood as justice
towards guests, and piety as justice towards the gods.) Socrates begins with the
virtue of wisdom. What is it for a city to be wise? It is for the rulers to have good
judgment, based on real knowledge, concerning the proper ordering of the city as a
whole, both internally and in foreign policy. Although wisdom is good for the city
as a whole, it is an excellence specifically of one part of the city, the rulers. The
city is wise if and only if its rulers are wise. Socrates will have more to say about
wisdom and the knowledge that serves as its basis in Books V-VII.
In a nation as large and complex as, for instance, the United States of
America, can any politician at the federal level be wise in Socrates’ sense of
the term, actually knowing what is good for the nation as a whole, and
possessing good judgment about how to order things? Is anyone capable of
thinking beyond the interests of certain “constituents,” a subset of the nation
as a whole?
What does a person need to know to deliberate well about what is good for a
city? What concepts? What facts? What values? What skills?
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