At the end of book IV, the challenge posed by Glaucon and Adeimantus in Book II has essentially been met. Socrates has constructed a picture of the ideal state in which there are three classes, the workers, the auxiliaries, and the guardians. He has shown that there are three parts of the soul, the appetites, the temper,[22] and the reason. And he has established a parallelism according to which the place of justice in the state is analogous to the place of justice in the soul.
He now embarks on another detailed exegesis of how the ideal state is to be arranged and managed, one that goes beyond the strict requirements of an explication of justice. Plato is, we may observe, interested in the ideal state not merely as a model for the soul, but also as a matter of vital interest to promoting the good life in practice. Plato has never ceased to dream of inventing a better form of government. A study of the ideal state provides the platform he needs for reforming politics in Athens and the Greek world.
At the beginning of Book V, Socrates is reminded that he has spoken of the community of women and children in the ideal state, but he has not explained what he had in mind. He now explores with relish this radical idea of family relations. He notes that women are typically consigned to housekeeping and raising children, as indeed they were in the ancient Greek world. But what if they were allowed to associate with men in the latters’ activities? Do women and men really have different natures, or do they just have different roles in procreation? Do some women belong, for instance, with in the guardian class? And if so, why not let them participate in the activities of the class, including getting an advanced education and applying that education in leadership functions? What a radical idea!
In order to free up women to realize their potential, they should not permanently live as a wife and mother in a household, but be assigned periodically to a man for reproduction. Their children will not be raised in a family residence, but in a common nursery with other children. Infants will be removed from their mothers and raised, presumably by professional caregivers. They will not know their parents, nor will the parents know their children. Parents will be expected to treat all children of the same age as their own offspring as their children.
Meanwhile, women of the guardian class who are of childbearing age, specified as between twenty and forty years of age, will receive the same education as men, receive the same work assignments, and participate with them in all activities. This much sounds very modern and enlightened. Plato’s Socrates notes that women can do anything the men can do, except for being weaker in general. But this fact should not preclude them from participating fully in what was in ancient Greece a man’s world.[23] Here the remarkable thing is not that Plato says women are weaker, but that he sees no obstacle to their inclusion in the work of managing and ruling the state.
Plato never explicitly says so, but it is evident that this communism of women and children is not meant to apply to the class of workers. He does explicitly extend the practice to the auxiliaries from the guardians.[24] So the upper two classes will have communal family relations, but not, presumably, the workers, who will have traditional families and own private property, which will provide the motivation for them to work hard at their occupations.
Given these principles, Plato argues that men and women should be educated together, they should perform strenuous activities such as hunting together, and they should go on military campaigns together. They should even take some of the older children along on their expeditions.[25] These ideas of co-education and full cooperation among the sexes would have seemed revolutionary to Plato’s contemporaries. Plato’s observation that women are weaker than men does not for him disqualify them from sharing fully in the tasks traditionally assigned to men, including military science and government leadership.
Plato seems to assume that government regulations and official propaganda can replace traditional family roles and responsibilities, that children can be removed from their parents without fuss and bother, and that regimented living of infants and young children in a state nursery, presumably without love or intimate personal interactions from their caregivers, will produce a well-adjusted and obedient generation of prospective philosopher-kings and -queens.
For the fortunate few, Platonic eugenics means a government-run dating service without long-term commitments or parental responsibilities. But Big Brother is watching, and he wants your children.
[22] Plato’s thumos is difficult to translate. It involves anger, assertiveness, and the promotion of self-interest, and in some cases could be called the ego. The English word ‘temper’ is tricky; it can signify both restraint (compare ‘temperance’) and the absence of restraint. Notably, the phrase ‘lose one’s temper’ signifies properly losing self-control. But, by association, ‘temper’ has come to mean ‘anger.’ It is in this sense, or, more precisely, the capacity to respond with indignation, that I use the term here.
[23] Plato Republic V, 453e-456b.
[24] Plato Republic V, 464a-c.
[25] Plato Republic V, 466c-e.25