Ancient Philosophy 21 (2001) ©Mathesis Publications

Articles

The Happiness of the City and the Happiness of the Individual in Plato's Republic

Donald Morrison

Is the polis, as conceived by Plato in the Republic, some kind of 'super-indi­vidual', or is it nothing over and above its component individuals? Is the happi­ness of the polis a separate and transcendent value, for which the happiness of its citizens might be sacrificed, or not? Answers to these questions are often grouped into two roughly opposed camps or tendencies. 'Individualists' tend to say that the polis is nothing but its citizens, and that the happiness of the polis is nothing but the happiness of its citizens. 1 'Holists' tend to say that the polis is not identi­cal to its members, but rather an emergent entity. They are also likely to insist that the polis is a genuine and irreducible subject of value, and that its happiness is distinct from the happiness of its members.

The property I shall focus on in this paper is happiness: 'What is the relation­ship between the happiness of the polis and the happiness of the individual citi­zens?' People who write about Plato's political philosophy often seem to consider only two alternatives: either Plato identifies the happiness of the city with the happiness of the citizens, or else he makes the happiness of the city inde­pendent of the happiness of the citizens.

A representative of the first view is Vlastos 1977, 15: 'the happiness of the whole polis is not treated as something distinct from the happiness of the citi­zens; it is collapsed with theirs'. Another is Annas 1981, 179: 'the city's happi­ness is just the happiness of all the citizens' .2

Williams 1973, 197 expresses the second view: 'Thus at 419a ff .... Socrates says that a city's being sublimely happy does not depend on all, most, the leading part, or perhaps any, of its citizens being sublimely happy, just as a statue's being

1 Who counts as 'members' or 'component individuals of the polis' is an important issue. Do all inhabitants count, or all citizens? Do slaves count, or only free people? Aristotle thematizes this issue at the beginning of Politics iii, where he argues that the polis is a whole composed of its citizens. (On this doctrine and a problem it raises, see Morrison 1999.) Plato is far less explicit. I shall assume that for Plato, the polis is composed of its citizens, and so I shall speak of 'citizens' and ·members' and 'component individuals' interchangeably. (Of course Plato must use a different criterion of citizen­ship than Aristotle, else only the ruling class would.be£itizens.) Whether Plato's Kallipolis contains slaves is disputed among scholars; I assume that if K~iipolis does contain slaves, they do not count as citizens or as members of the polis.

2 Other supporters of this view include Neu 1971,246. Taylor 1986, 19, agrees with Vlastos that eudaimon polis has this meaning at 420b-42Ic. But Taylor thinks that the phrase eudaimon polis is ambiguous, and in his second sense the happiness of the polis is constituted by 'social harmony' or 'perfect organization'(l986, 22), i.e., what I will call' goodness of structure'.

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beautiful does not depend on its parts being severally beautiful'.3 Popper 1962, 169 is the most notorious defender of the second view, although he uses vaguer language: 'Plato says frequently that what he is aiming at is neither the happiness of individuals nor that of any particular class in the state, but only the happiness of the whole' (see also 79-80).

These two alternatives do not, however, exhaust the possibilities. Rather, they constitute the extreme ends of a wide spectrum of possible accounts. There are an indefinite number of ways in which the happiness of the city could fail to be identical with the happiness of the citizens; and could even fail to coincide with or supervene on the happiness of the citizens (a very strong yet weaker thesis); and nonetheless have some definitional or causal relationship to the happiness of the citizens, so that the two are not entirely independent. The variety of possible accounts of the relationship between the happiness of the city and that of its citi­zens which postulate a partial dependence is very large.

Despite the massive response to Popper's book and some excellent recent scholarship, I believe that the various questions in this area have not yet been dis­tinguished with sufficient precision, let alone adequately answered. My aim is (l) to make several sets of distinctions which should enable the issues to be approached more precisely; (2) to present my own view on how the happiness of the city is related to the happiness of its members; and (3) to defend this view through an interpretation of certain well-known, crucial texts.

1. Some questions

Within the general topic of individualism vs. holism are several more specific questions. First, the 'ontological' question:

(1) How is the polis ontologically related to its individual members? (Is it, e.g., identical? supervenient? emergent?)

Next, several questions about evaluative properties: (2) What is the relationship between the happiness of the polis and the happi­ness of its individual members? (3) What is the relationship between the well-being of the polis and the well­being of its individual members? (4) What is the relationship between virtue of the polis and the virtue of its individual members?

These three questions each inquire about a different object or property how it is related to its correlate at the component level.4 We may find it natural to ask about the relationship between a certain property at the level of the polis and the same property at the individual level. But it can also be valuable to ask about the relationships between different properties. For example:

3 Taken strictly, William's remark only applies to the property 'sublimely happy', but it would be odd not to extend the doctrine to plain 'happiness' as well.

4 None of these four questions, as stated, is fully determinate. For example, the significance of the question will vary depending on how 'identity' is understood.

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(5) What is the relationship between the happiness of the polis and the well­being of its members?

Our answer to one of these questions may not determine our answer to others. For example: Suppose the polis is not identical with its component individuals, but is some kind of emergent entity. This by itself tells us nothing about the eval­uative properties of the polis. The fact that the polis itself is emergent does not imply that all of its properties are emergent. Thus even if the polis is an irre­ducible whole, the happiness of the polis may still reside entirely in the happiness of its members.

2. Happiness and well-being

I assume that when Plato describes a polis as 'happy' or 'just', he means it lit­erally, and not 'metaphorically'. That is, Plato means to be ascribing a genuine property, e.g., happiness, to a genuine subject of such properties. Thus he is not using what Vlastos 1983 called 'Pauline predication'; that is, when Plato describes a polis as happy he does not simply mean by this 'all the members of the polis are happy'. 'A polis is happy if and only if all its members are happy' makes a substantive claim about the relationship between two properties, and is not true by virtue of meaning or definition.5

By 'well-being' I mean 'how well-off one is'. 'Utility' and 'welfare' are some­times used to express this notion, and 'well-being' has other uses.6 Whatever word one uses, the crucial idea is that people can be better or worse off, and can be judged by others to be so. Once that idea is in play, and is widely applied in evaluating a variety of people in a variety of settings, pretty soon the notion of a scale of being better and worse off, ordered from the very, very badly off to the very, very blessed, with lots of stages in between, is implicitly or explicitly at work. And this is just the 'scale of well-being' .

This scale is objective: how poorly or well-off one is, is an objective matter. (This is so, even if the scale should contain subjective elements, such as pleasure or satisfaction.) Thus as I use the term, if there are no objective values, there is no such thing as well-being. (Of course there will still be various people's concep­tions ojand opinions about well-being.)

Whether the scale of well-being has gaps in it or not, and whether all persons are strictly comparable in their well-being, is not automatically implied. (But unless there are lots of different degrees of well-being and lots of comparability around, the notion cannot do its work.)

The phrase 'well-being' is used in two different ways. When we inquire about someone's well-being, sometimes what we want to know is that person's level of well-being. We want to know 'how well-off the person is; we want to know that person's position on the scale.

5 This thesis is argued for in L. Brown 1998. 6 E.g., Griffin 1996, I uses 'well-being' in a way that is roughly equivalent to 'what eudaimonia

consists in'. He equates our notion of well-being to 'what it is for a single life to go well' .

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Sometimes, however, what we mean by 'well-being' is the feature or features of a person or her life in virtue of which she has the level of well-being that she does. 'Her well-being resides in friendship and financial security.' 'His misery consists in chronic illness.' Call this the content of well-being.

By 'happiness' I mean eudaimonia. Notoriously, the ordinary English word 'happiness' does not mean the same as eudaimonia, and there is debate about how closely they overlap. 'Happiness' is however the traditional translation, and so I shall use it simply as a stand-in for eudaimonia.

Eudaimonia or happiness is not the same property as well-being, although the two are related. Happiness is 'a satisfactorily high' level of well-being. Imagine that the scale of well-being is laid out from left to right, with positions further toward the left being worse off and those further toward the right being better off. In that case, 'being happy' will be 'being far enough over on the right hand side' of the scale. By 'satisfactorily high' I mean not a level of well-being that (subjec­tively) leaves one satisfied and content, but rather a level that (objectively) enti­tles or justifies this sense of satisfaction. The Greek concept eudaimonia carries with it the implication that a happy person is entitled to be generally satisfied with and feel good about her life, and that others ought to regard a happy per­son's life as an enviable or desirable life.

'Happiness' is employed as an on-off concept. We ask: is he happy, or is he not? (Is his level of well-being on the right hand side of the boundary, or not?) On the other hand, it was and is perfectly normal usage to speak of degrees of happiness. The important thing is to be happy; but once one has achieved happi­ness, it is rational and appropriate to try to become more happy, rather than less. In this comparative use of the term 'happiness,' the scale of happiness is identical with the 'right-hand side' of the scale of well-being'?

Just as with well-being, we may ask, 'What constitutes the happiness of the polis?' 'In what does its happiness reside?' Different possible answers to this question might include: 'its wealth and military power'; 'its fertile soil, favorable climate, and friendly neighbors'; and "the virtue of its citizens'. These answers specify the content of happiness.

But since happiness is a status, one achieved by a certain level on the scale of well-being, we might also ask a different question. We might want to discover the boundary between happiness and unhappiness, to learn what it takes to be happy. We might then ask, 'What are the necessary and sufficient conditions for the polis to be happy?' I shall call this the question of the conditions of happi­ness.

Sometimes discussions of individualism vs. holism in the Republic focus on the conditions of happiness. Thus when one asks, 'What is the relationship

7 One might object: but we can compare the happiness of scoundrels or wretches, so this distinc­tion between well-being and happiness does not work. My reply: we cannot compare the happiness, in the sense of eudaimonia, of scoundrels or wretches, except to say that neither of them has it. But we might compare how well they fare, how well their lives are going. And that, in the terms I am using, is their level of well-being.

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between the happiness of the polis and that of its individual members?', what one might want to know is 'How happy must the individual members be, in order for the polis to be happy?' This question will lead to such more specific questions as: 'Is the happiness of the polis compatible with none of its members being happy?' and 'Does the happiness of the polis require that all of its members be happy?'

It should now be easy to see why the various questions I distinguished earlier have answers that are at least partially related. Question (2), whether the well­being of the polis is identical to the well-being of its individual members, asks about how one thing's position on a scale of value maps onto the positions of a number of other, smaller, things on analogous scales. A common answer to this question about well-being is the additive answer: the well-being of a social whole is equal to the sum of the well-being of its members. When scholars affirm or deny about Plato's Republic that 'the well-being of the polis is identical with the well-being of its members', one thing they might mean by this is that 'the level of well-being of the polis is equal to the sum of the well-being of its members'.8

Since happiness is a certain satisfactory level of well-being, the phrase 'a per­son's happiness' can be used, in English as well as Greek, to refer to 'the well­being' of a person who is happy. Thus when we ask of a polis and its members all o/whom are happy, 'What is the relationship between the happiness of the polis and that of its members?', and 'What is the relationship between the well-being of the polis and that of its members?', these two questions can amount to the same.

If the question about happiness is taken this way, where 'happiness' is under­stood as 'the well-being' of a polis or person who is happy, then it might make sense to answer that 'the happiness of the polis is equal to the sum of the happi­ness of its citizens'.9

But if what we want to know, when asking about between the happiness of the polis and of its members, is what condition of its members is necessary or suffi­cient to make the polis happy, the additive answer is not available. 'Happinesses' can be counted, but cannot be summed. Nonetheless a proportional answer might be available: e.g., '80% of the individuals must be happy in order for the polis to be happy'.

3. Holism

Any discussion of holism and related issues is made difficult by the lack of a philosophical consensus on what the issues are, or even how terms should be used. Take a simple example: is a triangle 'identical' with the three lines that make it up? Some would say 'Yes', some 'No'. So is the triangle 'something over and above' the three lines? Again, people's answers differ.

In what follows I shall try to use a simple and non-technical vocabulary to

8 Brown 1998, 20 plausibly interprets Vlastos' view in 1977 as implying this claim. For a denial, see Grote 1888, iv 139.

9 I leave aside here the important question whether happiness can successfully be construed as additive. There are many who doubt that it can; but the project is not nonsense.

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make clear the type of theory Plato held. This vocabulary will not be what every philosopher would use (no clear and consistent vocabulary meets that standard), but I hope that it is clear enough.

Concerning the triangle, I would say that being a triangle is a structural prop­erty of the three lines, which is not identical with any properties of the lines, indi­vidually considered. Being a triangle is an 'emergent' and 'non-additive' property of its constituent lines in the sense that it 'depend[s] not only upon the presence of the parts but also upon how they are arranged and how they interact' (Wimsatt 1986, 287). But since the term 'emergent' has also been used in other, much stronger senses by philosophers (see, e.g., Nagel 1961), I prefer to call properties of the whole which depend on the arrangement and interaction of its parts 'structural' properties.

I assume that the polis is not reducible to its members. The polis of the Repub­lic is instead a structured whole, composed of citizens in certain institutional relations.lo Some properties of the polis are holistic, i.e., predicated ineliminably of the polis as a whole, without being structural. For example, 'having been founded 350 years ago' is a holistic property which might be true of a certain polis, and this property is independent of the structural features of the polis (except those minimal structural conditions necessary for the polis to have existed at all). But the basic institutions of the polis, which determine the politi­cal, legal, and administrative framework within which citizens live their lives and interact with each other, are structural properties.

Aristotelian language may be helpful here. Aristotle holds that a polis consists of matter and form, where the citizens are the matter and the constitution (politeia), or basic arrangement of offices, is the form (Pol. iii 1-3). This Aris­totelian compound is not reducible to its matter or its form alone. A similar notion is implicitly at work in Plato. I I The polis I have called a 'structured whole' would be called by Aristotle 'a compound of matter and form', citizens under a constitution. 12

10 Vlastos 1977, 13 describes the ontology of the polis in a slightly confusing way: 'What then is the polis? ... [T]he polis ... can be nothing but the people themselves who are its members-all of them in all of their institutionalized relations'. Saying that the polis is 'nothing but the people them­selves' suggests the strongly reductive view that the polis is simply reducible to its members. But the phrase 'all of them in all of their institutionalized relations' implies that the polis is a structured whole. The view Vlastos probably had in mind is a methodological individualist version of the doc­trine that the polis is a structured whole. For a similar wobble, see Annas 1981, 179.

11 Some differences: the institutional arrangements crucial to Plato's polis include social and economic relations that go beyond Aristotle's 'offices' (timai). And Plato does not commit himself to Aristotle's strong conclusion about identity, that a changed constitution results in a different polis.

12 The holism implied by calling the polis a 'structured whole' is a moderate holism. This holism is compatible with methodological individualism: the doctrine that all social phenomena are to be explained by reference to facts about individuals, including facts about their circumstances and rela­tions to each other (see Lukes 1973). However, calling the polis a 'structured whole' is also compati­ble with a stronger holism: the view that structures like the legal system and administrative frameworks are irreducibly social, not explicable by facts about individuals.

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4. The sketch of a view

Recall the two alternatives: either Plato identifies the happiness of the city with the happiness of the citizens, or else he makes the happiness of the city indepen­dent of the happiness of the citizens.

I contend that neither extreme alternative is correct. The truth is more complex and nuanced. The relationship between the happiness of the polis and the happi­ness of the individual citizens in Plato's political theory is close, but not identity. The happiness of the polis is both conceptually and causally dependent upon the happiness of the citizens, but the dependence is mediated in such a way that dependence is only partial, and the two sometimes diverge.

The key mediating concept is that of the structure of the dty. This is the arrangement of the fundamental parts of the city and the aptitude of those parts to do their job. The primary component of the happiness of the city is the goodness of this structure. (Discussion of other, lesser components can be left to another occasion.) The goodness of this structure is called by Plato the city's virtue: jus­tice, temperance, and courage in the city are aspects of the goodness of this struc­ture. In Plato, it is true of both the individual and the city that the primary component of its happiness is its virtue. 13 Moreover, in both cases virtue is suffi­cient for happiness.

When Plato contrasts the happiness of the city as a whole with the happiness of certain of its parts, what he has in mind is the goodness of the structure. 14 The aim of the statesman is to promote the happiness of the city, rather than that of any special class, and therefore he will sacrifice the interests of any particular person or group in order to promote or preserve the happiness, i.e., virtue, of the city as a whole.

Yet the city's structure mediates between the well-being of the city and the well-being of its citizens in the sense that the goal or purpose of this structure is to promote the greatest possible well-being of the individual citizens, into the indefinite future. The aim of the statesman is to promote the happiness or virtue of the city; but his aim is at the same time, though in a mediated way, to promote the maximal well-being of the citizens over time. To aim at the happiness of the city just is to promote the state of affairs in the city which will best ensure the maximal well-being of its citizens over time. The maximal happiness of the city is thus definitionally dependent on the concept of the well-being of the citizens. And the happiness of the city is also causally dependent on the happiness of the citizens, because unless many of the citizens possess a considerable degree of virtue, the overall structure of the city will be unsound.

Why not collapse the concepts, and simply say that the well-being of the city is identical with the well-being of its citizens? The 'structure' or 'virtue' is needed

13 This interpretation thus satisfies the requirement Socrates lays down for justice at 435b 1-2. that it applies 'according to the same form', whether on the larger or the smaller scale.

14 G. Brown 1983,45-47 argues that the city's being timocratic, oligarchical, and democratic are 'structural' properties. The argument he gives applies equally well to the property of happiness.

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as a mediating concept to capture the dynamic aspect of the life of the city, and the long-term nature of the statesman ' s aims. Maintaining the strength and integrity of the structure of the city may require a short- or intermediate term reduction in the overall well-being of the individual citizens, individually consid­ered. (I shall present an example in section 9.) This proves that the well-being of the city and the sum of well-being of the citizens are not identical. For under cer­tain circumstances, the sum of the well-being of the citizens must be reduced, in order to preserve the well-being of the city at the same level.

This interpretation of the relationship between the well-being of the city and the well-being of the citizens raises many difficulties. For now, the important lessons to be drawn are two. First, the distinctions between a dynamic and a static view of the relationship, and between short- and long-term consequences, must always be kept in mind. Second, passages in which Plato says or implies that the statesman will be concerned with the happiness of the individual citizens, or that the happiness of the individual citizens makes a difference to the happiness of the city, are not by themselves sufficient to prove that Plato thinks the two kinds of happiness are identical. The account of the relationship which I have sketched is one example (out of many) of a theory which ascribes to the statesman a substan­tial concern for the well-being of the individual, and allows that the happiness of the individuals makes a difference to the happiness of the city, while nonetheless keeping the two kinds of happiness distinct.

5. Textual evidence: The charge that Socrates makes the guardians unhappy (419a-420c)

Two extended passages in the Republic, 419a-421a and 519c-520a, provide crucial evidence for the question whether Plato identified the happiness of the city with the happiness of all of the individuals within it. The importance of these passages was recognized in Vlastos 1977. Vlastos argued that these texts provide conclusive evidence that Plato did identify the happiness of the city with the hap­piness of all the individuals. In fact, we shall see that taken in its proper context, each passage proves that Plato did not identify these.

At the beginning of book 4, Adeimantus raises the objection that Socrates has given the city to the guardian class, while depriving them of happiness:

How would you defend yourself, Socrates, he said, if someone told you that you are making these men not very happy and that it's their own fault? The city really belongs to them, yet they derive no good from it. Others own land, build fine big houses, acquire furnishings to go along with them, make their own pri­vate sacrifices to the gods, entertain guests, and also, of course, possess what you were talking about just now, gold and silver and all the things that are thought to belong to people who are blessedly happy. But one might well say that your guardians are simply settled in the city like mercenaries and that all they do is watch over it. (419al-420al)

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Socrates responds that the guardians probably are happy, but even if they were not, the design of the city should remain the same, since his project is to make the best city he can, and not look specially after anyone class:

I think we'll discover what to say if we follow the same path as before. We'll say that it wouldn't be surprising if these people were happiest just as they are, but that, in establishing our city, we aren't aiming to make anyone group outstandingly happy but to make the whole city so, as far as possible. We thought that we'd find justice most easily in such a city and injustice, by contrast, in the one that is governed worst and that, by observing both cities, we'd be able to judge the question we've been inquiring into for so long. We take ourselves, then, to be fashioning the happy city, not picking out a few happy people and putting them in it, but making the whole city happy. (420b3-c4)

Adeimantus' objection is that Socrates' proposal for the best city seems to make the guardians unhappy. Against the background of Socrates' debate with Thrasymachus in book 1, the point of this objection is that the guardians would be foolish to accept such a state of affairs. Since power in the city belongs to them, they would rationally be expected to relieve their misery by overthrowing the constitution that Socrates has outlined, and putting one place which favored their interests.

This objection raises a number of related questions regarding the metaphysics of value. Consider these principles:

(1) The happiness of the city is compatible with the unhappiness of one of its major classes, e.g., the guardians. (2) The happiness of the city is incompatible with the unhappiness of one of its major classes. (3) The happiness of the city is compatible with the unhappiness of some, i.e., one or more of the individuals within it. (4) The happiness of the city is incompatible with the unhappiness of some, i.e., one or more of the individuals within it.

These principles bear on the conditions of happiness. Each principle implies that some fact about the happiness of the individuals is, or is not, a necessary condi­tion of the happiness of the polis.

Socrates' reply to Adeimantus distinguishes between the aim of his project and its results. Socrates expects that his proposal for the best city will in fact make the guardians happy. But that result has not yet been reached. And Socrates' project, which is to create a happy city, leaves that question open. Socrates' answer implies a subjunctive conditional: if it should turn out that his proposal would make the guardians unhappy, he would defend it on the grounds that his aim is to construct the best city, not to look specially after the interests of one class.

To accommodate the difference between Socrates' project and its results, we need to make a further distinction within principles (1 )-(4). Consider

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(la) The happiness of the city is in principle or conceptually compatible with the unhappiness of one of its major classes. (I b) The happiness of the city is compatible with the unhappiness of one of its major classes, given the true theory of happiness.

The same distinction can be made within each of the other principles. Socrates' optimism about the guardian's happiness denies at most (l b).

Socrates believes that his proposal for the best city-properly understood, in light of the true theory of happiness-will in fact make the guardians happy. But if it should turn out that his proposal would make the guardians unhappy, he would defend it on the grounds that his aim is to construct the best city, not look specially after the interests of anyone class. This defense implies (la): that (it is at least imaginable or conceptually possible that) a city could be best (and hence happy) even though one major class within it is unhappy.

Since the only class under discussion is the guardians, Socrates' remark does not-strictly speaking---even contradict (lb). Some scholars argue plausibly that although the guardians in Kallipolis are happy, the members of the lower classes are not. Since Kallipolis is happy, but lower-class citizens are not, this interpreta­tion immediately rules out the identification of the happiness of the city with the happiness of its citizens. Yet this interpretation is compatible with Socrates' statement at 420b4-5, where only the guardians' happiness is at issue.

Consider Vlastos' claim, that the happiness of the polis is 'not distinct' from the happiness of the citizens. This is a very strong claim. It is equivalent to:

(HI) The happiness of the city is identical with the happiness of its citizens. And it is plausible to take this principle as making the following general claim about the content of happiness:

(H2) The happiness of the city is a state composed of the happiness of all of its members. 15

But this implies (4a): that if even one member of the city is unhappy, the city is not happy.16

As we saw, if the lower classes in Kallipolis are unhappy, all these claims must be abandoned. But even leaving that view aside, taking the happiness of all the individual citizens to be necessary in order for the polis to be happy imposes an enormously-and implausibly-strong requirement. Slaves are presumably unhappy, but perhaps they can be excluded as not 'citizens', not 'members' of the polis, so their unhappiness does not count. But on this extreme view, the pres­ence of even one criminal personality among the citizens deprives the city of happiness. Worse yet: suppose the polis contains only one vicious person. While that person is in jail (but still within the polis) on this account the polis fails to be happy. But after that person is killed or exiled, the polis is restored to happi­ness. l ?

15 For others who endorse these principles, see n2. 16 L. Brown 1988,20 takes Vlastos' view in 1977 to imply (4a). 17 This view is the political equivalent of the Stoic view on wisdom: only the perfectly wise are

wise, and all the rest are fools. If your nose is one inch below water, you drown. If the polis contains

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Yet we have seen that Socrates' answer to Adeimantus implies the negation of that, namely (3a), that the happiness of the city is, at least counterfactually or in principle, compatible with the unhappiness of some of its inhabitants. 18 There­fore, Socrates' answer to Adeimantus turns out to be incompatible with the doc­trine that 'the happiness of the city is identical with the happiness of all individuals within the state' .19

Socrates' optimism that the guardians will be happy applies to the optimal case, KaUipolis. But his declaration of readiness to sacrifice the happiness of some for the sake of the whole has important practical consequences in sub-opti­mal cases.

An example: suppose that more people are born innately capable of being guardians than the economy will support and that this situation endures through generations. Suppose further (as some scholars argue) that only guardians are happy. Under these conditions Socrates would sacrifice the happiness of the sur­plus element, enduringly over generations, for the sake of the happiness of the city.

Vlastos 1977, 15-16 notes that throughout this passage, Plato contrasts the hap­piness of the city with the happiness of a particular group within the polis (420b6-7, c3-4, el-7, 421b5-7, cf. 51ge2-3), and that Plato never directly con­trasts the happiness of the city with the happiness of 'all the people in the city'. Vlastos 1977, 15 says that this helps make clear that what Plato means by 'the happiness of the whole city' just is 'the happiness of all the individuals in the polis' .

The failure to draw a distinction in a particular context is, in general, weak evi­dence that an author does not believe that the distinction can be drawn. In this context, Plato's concern is with the charge that Socrates is sacrificing the happi­ness of the guardians (a part) for the sake of the happiness of the city (the whole). So that is the contrast which he repeatedly draws in this passage. And as we have seen already, so long as Plato allows the possibility that the happiness of a part may be sacrificed for the sake of the happiness of the whole, he is committed to the possibility that the whole might be happy although some individuals within it are not. And this implies that the happiness of the city is not identical with the happiness of all the individuals.

Socrates' project requires that he be willing to sacrifice, if necessary, the hap-

any part which is not happy, the polis is unhappy. 18 Another argument that Plato is committed to (2a) depends on a controversial premise. Does

Plato's view imply that the lower classes in Kallipolis are happy? Scholars divide on this question. But if the lower classes in Kallipolis are not happy, and Kallipolis itself is happy, then (2a) the happi­ness of the city is compatible with the unhappiness of some inhabitants.

19 When in the Politics Aristotle criticizes the theory of Plato's Republic, he argues that the city cannot be happy if none of its component parts are happy. That is, Aristotle argues for (5) the happi­ness of the city is incompatible with the unhappiness of all of the individuals within it. In any case, nothing in Plato's Republic implies (5). As we shall see later, Plato's substantive theory in fact implies that (5) is false; a city composed entirely of unhappy citizens could not function well enough to be itself happy.

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piness of some individuals within the city for the sake of the happiness of the whole. Plato believes that the nature of 'rule' is such that the good ruler must also be willing to sacrifice individuals for the sake of the whole. Adeimantus' objec­tion makes clear that what is envisioned is not merely an occasional temporary reduction in the well-being of a few individuals. Even if the sacrifice were so great as to require the permanent unhappiness of the entire class of guardians, Socrates-and the good ruler-would be prepared to make that sacrifice, for the sake ofthe interests of the city. 20

6. A problem of two perspectives: Socrates and the rulers of the Republic

Socrates replies to Adeimantus that his, i.e., Socrates' aim is to fashion a happy city. This is a claim about Socrates' philosophical activity, and is not, or at least not directly, a claim about the aims of a city or its rulers. Here at least four different levels or points of view need to be distinguished:

(1) Socrates (or the political philosopher). (2) The ruler(s) of the city. (3) The laws of the city. (4) The 'city' itself.

In the Republic Plato makes remarks from time to time about the aims or pur­poses or proper function of each one of these. But it is dangerous to assume, without argument, that what he says about one of these holds also for the others.

For example, in this passage Socrates says that his aim is to design a happy city. A perfectly adequate defense of this claim is that this is the intellectual task he had earlier set himself. He might have chosen to design a maximally unhappy city, or a mediocre city, or the best way of governing an empire. If Socrates had made one of those other choices, the dialogue would have gone differently. But instead, he chose (for certain reasons) to try to outline the basic structure of a happy city or the best city.

What Socrates argues is that since his aim is to construct a happy city, he would be willing if necessary to sacrifice the happiness of some part of the city in order to promote the happiness of the whole. This is a statement about Socrates' intellectual project. It does not immediately imply anything about what the ruler of the city or the laws of the city or the city itself ought to aim at or do. In itself, the statement is trivially true; if your intellectual project is to design the best city, then, if necessary, you should mold all the elements of your design to that end. The statement does not have any substantial political implications: it does not by itself imply, for example, that rulers are justified in destroying the happiness of innocents for the sake of the interests of the state.

Yet, only one simple additional premise is needed in order to generate signifi­cant political consequences from Socrates' reply to Adeimantus. This is, that the proper aim and function of the ruler is to do what he can to make the city as good

20 Thus (1 a) could be strengthened to (1 a') the happiness of the city is compatible with the enduring unhappiness of one of its major classes.

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as possible. Socrates argues for this premise.21 The goal of Socrates' intellectual project in the central books of the Republic is the same as the practical project of the good ruler of any city, namely, to fashion the best city possible. The main difference between them lies in the nature of their constraints: Socrates is free to construct the best city he can imagine, whereas actual rulers must try to fashion the best city they can given the materials at hand. But since their projects are for­mally the same, both Socrates and the good ruler of a city will, on Plato's view, be willing if necessary to sacrifice the happiness of any part of the city for the sake of the whole.

7. The statue analogy

Socrates continues defending himself against Adeimantus by appealing to the analogy of a statue:

Suppose, then, that someone came up to us while we were painting a statue and objected that, because we had painted the eyes (which are the most beautiful part) black rather than pur­ple, we had not applied the most beautiful colors to the most beautiful parts of the statue. We'd think it reasonable to offer the following defense: 'You mustn't expect us to paint the eyes so beautifully that they no longer appear to be eyes at all, and the same with the other parts. Rather you must look to see whether by dealing with each part appropriately, we are mak­ing the whole statue beautiful. (420c4-d5)

This analogy helps clarify Plato's reasons for thinking that a sacrifice might be necessary. What if someone were to object that by painting the eyes of a statue black, instead of purple, we are not making the eyes as beautiful as they can be, although they are intrinsically the most beautiful part? The defense Socrates offers is that the job of the artist is to paint each part, not with an eye to it alone, but so as to make the statue as a whole beautiful.

In this analogy, Socrates presupposes that, considered in isolation, a purple eye is more beautiful than a black eye. The eye, considered in itself, would be more beautiful if it were purple. But a purple eye would be too bright and attention-get­ting, thus destroying the harmonious beauty of the statue through being painted black. Being painted black involves a sacrifice of the eye's own maximal intrin­sic beauty. However, in being painted black the eye does best fulfill its function as a contributor to the quality of the whole.22

The beauty of the statue is a gestalt quality; it results from the harmonious rela-

21 In the famous 'craft argument' of book I. 34Icl-345e2. In this passage Plato does not make explicit whether the correlative object of the statesman's art is the city or its inhabitants. But at 342e and 345d, the fact that the object of the art is grammatically singular suggests 'the city' .

22 L. Brown 1998,24 interprets the statue analogy as implying that one's true happiness consists in one's social role. On my reading it shows the opposite. The most beautiful color (individually con­sidered) for the eye is not the color which contributes most to overall beauty. Similarly, the greatest happiness for an individual citizen may not be what contributes most to society.

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tions between the parts of the statue, and is not identical either with the beauty of all the parts separately considered, or with some simple 'sum' of the beauties of the parts. This analogy suggests that Socrates believes that the happiness of the city is also a gestalt property in this sense, consisting in a pattern of relationships among the parts, rather than any kind of 'sum' of their properties individually considered. As with the eye of a statue, if a reduction in the happiness of an indi­vidual person is required in order to improve the overall pattern of civic life, the job of the person, qua citizen, is to accept or carry out the lesser life. The job of the politician is to see to it that all individuals, including those whose interests need to be sacrificed, do their jobs.

In making this analogy, Plato does not exactly commit himself to the claim that the happiness of the city requires the sacrifice of the interests of some part. What Plato does seem committed to, here and elsewhere, is the thesis that the well­being of the city-like other evaluative properties such as beauty-is a gestalt property, constituted by the pattern of relationships among the parts. Given that, it is impossible to rule out a priori the possibility that maximizing the pattern might require a sacrifice one or more of the parts. Whether and to what extent the interest of the whole will require sacrificing the interests of some of the parts cannot be laid down in advance; that will depend on the details. As Socrates says a little later: 'In this way, with the whole city developing and being governed well, we must leave it to nature to provide each group with its share of happiness' (421c3-5).

8. Application of the statue analogy

After presenting the statue analogy, Socrates applies it to the question of the happiness of the guardians:

Similarly, you mustn't force us to give our guardians the kind of happiness that would make them something other than guardians. We know how to clothe the farmers in purple robes, festoon them with gold jewelry, and tell them to work the land whenever they please. We know how to settle our potters on couches by the fire, feasting and passing the wine around, with their wheel beside them for whenever they want to make pots. And we can make all the others happy in the same way, so that the whole city is happy. Don't urge us to do this, however, for if we do, a farmer wouldn't be a farmer, nor a potter a potter, and none of the others would keep to the patterns of work that give rise to a city. (42Od5-421a2)

In this passage, Plato considers the idea of giving the members of each class in the city a happiness that is greater than the happiness normally allotted to their class. However, this unnaturally high level of happiness spoils them at perform­ing their function as members of that class. Imagine that we go through the entire city, making each person especially happy in this way, 'so that indeed the whole city might be happy' (420e7).

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According to Vlastos 1977, 16, this last phrase shows Plato collapsing the hap­piness of the whole city into the happiness of the citizens. If all the citizens could be made happy in this way, then the whole city would be happy.

There are two main problems with this claim. First, Plato's remark at 420e7 is, at best, evidence that he thinks the happiness of all the citizens is sufficient for the happiness of the city: if they are all made specially happy in this way, then the whole city will be happy. But the doctrine that the happiness of the city and the happiness of all the citizens are identical requires that the happiness of all the cit­izens be both necessary and sufficient for the happiness of the city. And we have already seen that Plato does not regard the happiness of all the citizens as a nec­essary condition for the happiness of the city. So even if this pI ,~;lge did estab­lish that Plato thought the happiness of all the citizens is ,u rrlcient for the happiness of the city, this would not be enough to establish identity.

Whether Plato believes that the happiness of all the citizens is sufficient to make the city happy is nonetheless an interesting and important question. At first glance, this passage seems to show that Plato does believe this: if everyone in the city were made especially happy in this way, then the whole city will be happy. But we must be careful, for in this passage Socrates is relating a line of argument couched in the terms of his objector. Socrates does not believe that giving gor­geous robes to farmers and putting on banquets for potters will really increase their happiness, any more than he thinks that giving the guardians land and homes and gold and silver will make them happy.

Vlastos 1977, 16 recognizes that Plato would not endorse the example-that Plato thinks the hypothesized circumstances would result in 'disastrous llnlwppi­ness'. But he argues that this does not affect the point, since Plato here admits that 'if all the people in the polis could be made happy in this crazy way, then the whole polis would be happy'.

However, just as we must be careful before assuming that Plato endorses the hypothesis in this argument, we must be careful before assuming that he endorses the conclusion, or rather the inference from the hypothesis to the conclusion. After all, Socrates begins by saying that we must not give the guardians the sort of happiness that makes them anything but guardians (420d5-6). Somehow the ensuing argument is supposed to show why that would be a bad idea. But if pro­viding the guardians with this special happiness (on the assumption that this is real happiness) ipso facto increases the happiness of the city, why should we not be obligated to provide them and everyone else with their special happiness? After all, Socrates' announced goal is to design a happy city.

The answer has to be that Plato does not believe that the inference is valid. He does not believe that giving each person in the city a special happiness, one which is greater than his normal happiness but is incompatible with his perform­ing his function, will result in a happy city. The answer has to be that Plato does not endorse the drawing of the conclusion at 420e7. Just as in the claim that ban­quets will make the potters happy, when Socrates makes that inference he is speaking in the spirit of his objector.

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What is wrong with the inference? Plato does not tell us-after all, the hypoth­esized situation is meant to be absurd, and one does not belabor a joke. (That job is left for scholars.) One initially plausible explanation is that Plato does not think it is possible to increase a person's happiness in such a way that his ability to per­form his function in society is destroyed or badly harmed. Since any 'sort of hap­piness' that would render a guardian no longer a guardian cannot be a real happiness, and so on for the other classes, the resultlllg 'happiness' of the whole city is not a real happiness either. On this interpretation, Plato thinks that the con­clusion 'the whole city would be happy' is absurd, because the only conclusion which would properly or literally follow is that 'the whole city would be pseudo­happy-i.e., unhappy'.

8.1 Happiness is not identical with social role

What reason might Plato have had for believing that it is impossible genuinely to increase peoples' happiness in a way that corrupts their social function? The simplest and most elegant reason would be that a person's happiness is identical with his function or social role. If a person's happiness just is his function, then any attempt to increase his happiness which interferes with his social role is ipso facto counterproductive, and is bound to fail.

I believe, but have not space to argue here, that in the Republic Plato treats the investigation into individual happiness and virtue and the investigation into civic happiness and virtue as separate investigations (see esp. 435e). If that is right, then Plato does not simply identify a person's happiness with that person's social role. The thesis that a person's happiness is identical to or coextensive with his social role must be established by a substantive philosophical argument.

It seems unlikely that at this relatively early stage in his argument (the begin­ning of book 4), Plato would rely on such a controversial and not-yet-established thesis to carry his point. Moreover, the thesis that peoples' happiness is substan­tively identical to their social role is subject to counter examples such as the fol­lowing.

Suppose that the distribution of talents within a society does not match up with the distribution of tasks which the economic circumstances (resources, state of technology, etc.) require to be performed. Suppose that 90% of the population had the intellectual gifts and innate character that would make them eligible to become philosophers, if they were given the right education and opportunities, but that the economic circumstances of society require that 90% of the popula­tion engage in manual labor in order to furnish adequately the basic material necessities of life. In those circumstances, suppose that a renegade member of the ruling class transferred a half-dozen of these talented farmers into full-time edu­cation in the liberal arts. This act of civic vice on the part of the ruler would result in a manpower shortage on the farms, with attendant food shortages. Moreover it would not only prevent these half-dozen farmers from exercising their function as farmers during the time they are in school. By educating them or giving them a taste for higher things, it would also spoil them from being good farmers in the

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future, e.g., if the renegade rulers' act were later discovered and an attempt were made to send these people 'back where they belong'. Yet, it seems on Platonic principles to be undeniable that the happiness and well-being of these newly-edu­cated young farmers has been increased. (Remember that there has been no act of disobedience or rebellion on their part, they are simply doing what the proper authority-so far as they know-told them to do.)

I conclude from this counterexample that it would be a mistake, on Platonic principles, to claim that it would never be possible to increase peoples' genuine happiness while at the same time depriving them of, or rendering them unsuitab!t: for performing, their proper social function. Whether Plato himself actually real­ized that this would be a mistake is a more difficult question. A dc.:p problem for both Plato's and Aristotle's political theories is that both of them optimistically and naively and quite unjustifiably assume a basic coincidence between the natu­ral distribution of innate talents and characters in a society, and the tasks that need to be done. Neither of them explicitly acknowledges the need for this assumption, and of course neither of them defends it, but it is crucial for both.23

In the Republic, Plato sorts the young people into different classes on the basis of differences in innate disposition-and he never considers the possibility that eco­nomic conditions might require a different sorting to be made. Aristotle's doc­trine of 'natural slaves' has many problems, but one of them is that unless the proportion of natural slaves in a society coincides with the proportion of man­power that needs to be devoted to natural slave-like tasks, the resulting society will be, by his standards, unjust.

Confronted with this problem, Aristotle might try to defend his optimism about the distribution of talents by appeal to the general teleology of nature: nature itself just sees to it that the distribution comes out right. This is a rather weak defense. And Plato, lacking Aristotle's strong conception of the teleology of nature, cannot take refuge even in that. The most likely explanation why both Plato and Aristotle overlooked this assumption, which is crucial to both their the­ories, is that the habit of paying attention to, and thinking seriously about, eco­nomic conditions and economic-as opposed to political-organization was not yet strong.

8.2 Static vs. dynamic analysis

Let us recall how this discussion of a possible mismatch between the distribu­tion of talents and characters and the distribution of social roles was introduced. The question was how the passage at 420d5-e7 should be interpreted so that the entire inference-and not just the hypothesis-comes out absurd. One diagnosis was based on the idea that Plato assumed a substantive identity between a per­son's happiness and that person's social role. However, that has turned out not to

23 In one passage Plato does consider the possibility that there might be too few people qualified to be guardians. At 546. a shortage of qualified guardians initiates the decline from Kallipolis to tim­ocracy

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be a very attractive option. A more promising diagnosis makes use of the distinction between a static and a

dynamic analysis. Suppose that it were possible to increase the genuine happi­ness of everyone in the city in a certain way that interfered with their civic func­tion-for example, by permitting everyone to engage in some activity higher than the one to which they had been assigned. At the moment of 'liberation', and for a short time afterwards, everyone would be better off. But-if the interpreta­tion I offered earlier is correct-the city would not be better off, because its basic structure would have been destroyed--each and every citizen would be doing something other than his civic duty, other than what needed to be done. Recall that the civic structure of the city, the organization of civic duties and social roles, is designed to promote the maximal well-being of its citizens over the long term. Therefore, while the particular disruption of the civic structure would result in a short-term increase in the well-being of each of the citizens, individually considered, the result of this disruption would be social chaos leading in rela­tively short order to increasing deterioration in the conditions of life. Short term benefit, medium and long-term disaster.

This, I suggest, is what Plato has in mind when he expects us to regard the inference at 420d5-e7 as absurd. Suppose that it were possible to make all of the individuals in the city happier in the way that corrupted their abilities to fulfill their social function. Even though the individual citizens would each be happier, it would be an absurd illusion to suppose that the city itself would be happy, or that this situation is in the long-term self-interest of the individual citizens. With no civic functions being properly performed, the citizens' evanescent bliss will come crashing down into misery.

If this diagnosis is correct, then Plato's doctrine implies that the happiness of all the individual citizens is neither necessary nor sufficient for the happiness of the city. That it is not necessary was established earlier. It is not sufficient, because Plato's theory leaves conceptual space for the possibility that all of the citizens are (for the time being) genuinely happy, yet since some of them are engaged in higher activities than those which the city needs to have them do, the city is unhappy.24

Nevertheless, Plato's view does imply that the general happiness of one

24 It should be mentioned that, on Plato's theory, this situation is only possible if several further conditions hold. (1) The citizens who are especially happy although not doing their proper jobs must reasonably believe that they are doing their jobs (Plato thinks carelessness and rebellion are incom­patible with happiness). (2) Their jobs must be important enough (either intrinsically, or because the group is so numerous) that failure to have them performed does not result merely in a slight reduction in the quality of the city's happiness, but rather in the city's becoming unhappy. I am aware of no rea­son why these two conditions could not, in principle, be fulfilled. A third condition raises a more dif­ficult problem of principle: if the citizens released to contemplation are replaced by people incompetent to do the jobs, and doing a job badly reduces a person's happiness, the contemplator's greater happiness may be matched or outweighed by their replacements' lesser happiness. However, in the case where the contemplators are not replaced, this complication does not arise.

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class-the guardians-is a necessary condition for the happiness of the polis. 25 A polis cannot be happy unless it is ruled well. A polis can only be ruled well if its rulers have virtue. And the rulers' virtue is sufficient for their happiness. Thus, a polis cannot be happy unless its rulers are happy. 26

9. The return to the cave: 519c5-520a2

One of the most famous passages in all of Plato's Republic is also an important touchstone for any interpretation of the relation between the happiness of the individual and the happiness of the city on Plato's theory. After presenting the analogies of the Sun, the Line, and the Cave, Socrates argues that the philoso­phers must be 'compelled' to return to the cave and serve there, even though they would prefer to remain outside, contemplating the Good. This appears to be a straightforward case of sacrificing the interests of individuals for the sake of the interests of the whole:

It is our task as founders, then, to compel the best natures to reach the study we said before is the most important, namely, to make the ascent and see the good. But when they've made it and looked sufficiently, we mustn't allow them to do what they're allowed to do today.

What's that? To stay there and refuse to go down again to the prisoners in

the cave and share their labors and honors, whether they are of less worth or of greater.

Then are we to do an injustice by making them live a worse life when they could live a better one?

You are forgetting again that it isn't the law's concern to make anyone class in the city outstandingly happy but to con­trive to spread happiness throughout the city by bringing the citizens into harmony with each other through persuasion or compulsion and by making them share with each other the ben­efits that each class can confer on the community. The law pro­duces such people in the city, not to allow them to turn in

25 At 456e6-7 Plato implies that the presence of the 'best people possible' is the 'best thing' for a city. At 462a2-b I he says that 'the greatest good' is what harmonizes the city and makes it one. Do these two statements conflict? Halliwell 1993, ad 462a6 resolves the problem rightly: The presence of the best people (456e) is a necessary condition for the happiness of the city. The presence of the best people, together with a political organization which ensures that the best have control of the city. yields a sufficient condition (462a). This sufficient condition is what I have called the city's virtue, or the goodness of its structure. Arends 1988, 132 argues that the happiness of the polis consists in the absence of stasis. By contrast I argue that it consists in what causes the absence of stasis. (So also Brisson and Canto-Sperber 1997, 115.)

26 Notice that the problem of the relation between the happiness of a social whole and its mem­bers recurs at the level of social classes. Suppose that what is needed for the city to be happy is that the guardian class be happy. What is required for the guardian class to be happy? [';ot that all guardians be happy-this is too strong.

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whatever direction they want, but to make use of them to bind the city together. (519c8-520a4)

This passage provides the materials for a counter-example against the conception of the well-being of the city as a kind of sum of the well-being of the individuals within it

The philosopher is reluctant to re-enter the Cave: he must be 'compelled'­whether by argument alone, or also by force, Plato does not explicitly say. Out­side of the metaphor, what this means is that the philosopher-kings in Plato's best city are reluctant to give up philosophizing in favor of the managerial tasks of ruling. Plato treats the reluctance of the philosophers to switch from philosophy to management as justified. But this reluctance is only justified on the assump­tion that the switch from philosophizing to managing constitutes, in itself, a reduction in the person's well-being. Apart from any effects due to context-they will be introduced in a moment-when a member of the class of philosopher­kings is required to stop philosophizing and start managing, that change brings with it a significant reduction in his or her well-being.

One strategy taken by commentators on this passage is to stress that, under the circumstances, the alternative for a person who is required by the city to give up philosophy for management is to refuse to obey, thereby acting unjustly and abandoning virtue. Since virtue is the primary component of happiness, a refusal to obey would bring with it a very large reduction in well-being.

This line of reasoning is sound. (We shall be taking another look at the ratio­nality of the philosopher's decision to re-enter the cave later on.). Under the cir­cumstances, the philosopher faces a much greater reduction in well-being through refusing to switch to management, than by accepting the order and doing his or her civic duty. But even though the alternative of disobedience produces a much worse outcome, nonetheless the philosopher who dutifully accepts a trans­fer from the philosophy faculty to the higher administration is accepting a lower quality of life and a reduced standard of well-being. The strong reluctance to accept the changed assignment which Plato attributes to the philosopher is expli­cable in no other way.

One interesting consequence is that Plato's implied theory of well-being is closer to Aristotle's than is sometimes thought. The philosopher who accepts a transfer into management has the same abilities and propensities-the same virtues and the same character-as before. If virtue were all there was to well­being on Plato's view, the philosophers' return to the cave should have no effect on their well-being. But Plato evidently does think that giving up the activity of contemplating the truth in favor of the activity of ruling the city constitutes a reduction in well-being. The doctrine implied by his remark, therefore, is that the mere possession of a capacity or virtue is not enough for complete well-being: one is made better off by exercising it.

Aristotle famously held that complete happiness consists not just in the posses­sion of virtue, but in its exercise. The doctrine implied by Plato's remarks at 519c5-d is similar, though less explicit. It is very good to have the abilities of a

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talented and trained philosopher, but to be able to actualize and exercise those abilities is even better.

We are now in a position to see this passage provides the material for a counter-example against the doctrine that the well-being of the city is a sum of the well-being of the individuals within it. Imagine a city of the type which Socrates describes in the central books ofthe Republic. One day, the city admin­istration realizes that the current manpower devoted to the management of the city's affairs is insufficient-for example, due to this year's usually good weather, the food warehouses are full and extra attention needs to be devoted to the question of what else should be done. So the city administration taps Stilpo on the shoulder and tells him, 'Sorry, friend, but we need you to abandon your geometrical research for a few months and help with managing our warehouse problems.' Being virtuous, Stilpo agrees. Now compare the state of well-being the city and of its component individuals on the last day Stilpo spent on geometry with the next day, his first day on the new job of managing the warehouse prob­lem. Let us make the simplifying assumption that the well-being of each of the other inhabitants of the city-apart from Stilpo-individually considered, remains unchanged from the one day to the next. Stilpo's level of well-being, however, has been reduced, due to a switch from the activity of mathematical research to the activity of warehouse management. (Stilpo's level of well-being has gone down less than it would have gone down if he had committed the unvir­tuous act of refusing the transfer; but still, it has gone down.) Therefore the sum of the well-being of each of the citizens, individually considered, has also gone down.27 If the well-being of the city were a sum of the well-being of the individ­uals, then on the day Stilpo reports to his new job, the well-being of the city will have gone down, at least slightly, from the day before.

But from the point of view of Plato's political theory this seems exactly the wrong thing to say. The reason for transferring Stilpo to the new job is that the welfare of the whole city requires it. On the day before Stilpo changed jobs, there was a shortage of manpower in administration. On the next day, the administra­tive offices are properly staffed. The structure of the city has been strengthened. The correct view to take is that on Stilpo's first day at his new job, the city is bet­ter off than the day before.

Over time, the strengthening of the administrative structure of the city will result in increased well-being for the individual citizens (as compared to what it would have been if the need for additional manpower had not been filled). But the effects on individual well-being of changes in the city's structure can take

27 This assumes, plausibly, that whatever precise function is used for summing, a rise or reduc­tion in one person's previous well-being produces some amount of rise or reduction in total sum, when everything else is held constant. It also assumes that individual well-being is not directly depen­dent on societal well-being. A strongly holistic view might hold that each person shares immediately in the fortunes of the polis. (When the city wins a glorious battle, every citizen shares in that glory.) If the connection is made strong enough, cases like Stilpo will be impossible. But (perhaps pace Pop­per) there is no evidence that Plato was that kind of a holist.

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time to show up. In the meanwhile, the sum of individual well-being in the city may go down, in order that the strength and integrity of the structure of the city, its politeia, its administrative offices, can be maintained.

The Stilpo example shows that the well-being of the city and the well-being of the individual citizens are not the same. This result cannot be avoided by rei a­tivizing our judgements to a certain time frame, by saying that the short-term well-being of individuals is identical with the short-term well-being of the city, and similarly for long-term well-being. For the Stilpo example shows that the city's well-being, at a given moment or over a certain time period, may be main­tained or increased as a result of a reduction of overaII individual well-being, at the same moment or time period.

The philosopher's descent back into the cave shows Plato recognizing that the good of the city sometimes requires a temporary reduction in the overall well­being of the individual citizens. The reduction in well-being experienced by philosophers who goes back into the cave is not so large as to deprive them of happiness, since they retain their virtue, and virtue is sufficient for happiness. This temporary reduction in well-being is in their long-term best interests, since the city, now stronger, can take care of them better in the future.

10. Conclusion

I have argued that the 'return to the cave' passage provides materials for a counter-example to the thesis that the well-being of the city is identical to the well-being of its individual members. The passage has also been used as evi­dence in favor of that thesis. Recall Socrates' remark:

You are forgetting again that it isn't the law's concern to make anyone class in the city outstandingly happy but to contrive to spread happiness throughout the city by bringing the citizens into harmony with each other through persuasion or compul­sion and by making them share with each other the benefits that each class can confer on the community. (51gel-520a2)

One might think that this text contains direct evidence that Plato identified the happiness of the city with the happiness of the individuals within it. Since the law aims to make people impart to one another the benefit which they can bring to the community, benefiting 'the community' and benefiting 'each other' must come to the same thing (thus Vlastos 1977, 17-18).

However, the emphasis on mutual benefit in this passage is easily accounted for by the two-level interpretation I have put forward. At 420b, Socrates stressed that his goal, as a philosopher designing a city in words, is to create the happiest city he can. Here at 51ge, the perspective is slightly different. The objection is not: Are you not, Socrates, treating the ruling class badly?, but rather, Are not the laws of the city, in requiring the philosophers to rule, treating them badly? The well-being of the city consists (not entirely, but to a significant degree) in the goodness of its laws. The goodness of its laws consists in their ability to ensure and promote the long-term well-being of the citizens. The well-being of the city

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is nonetheless not identical with the well being of the citizens since having (at a certain time) a strong and reliable disposition to promote the well-being of the citizens in the future is not identical with the actual well-being of the citizens at that time.

Socrates' individual concern as a philosopher is to devise good laws. The con­cern of these laws, however, is to promote the well-being of the citizens. One way the laws will do this is by persuading each person to do the job by which he or she will most benefit all of the members of the city. Harmonizing the citizens and making them help each other is, on Plato's theory, a chief concern of the laws. Spreading happiness throughout the entire city, rather than concentrating on the special happiness of a few, is also a concern of the laws.

For this reason, individualist interpretations of Plato's Republic are right to say that Plato's political theory is concerned to promote the happiness of all of the individual members of the city. The holistic interpretations of Plato's Republic are wrong in claiming that Plato is not concerned with the happiness of all the members of the city. But whereas the individualists are right and the holists are wrong about the ultimate goals of social policy, the holists are right, and the indi­vidualists are wrong about the metaphysics, for the city is more than just the sum of its members, and its happiness is a structural property which is not reducible to the sum of the happiness of its parts.28

Department of Philosophy Rice University Houston TX 77025

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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24

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