Socrates is impressed by the powerful challenge Glaucon and Adeimantus have made to the conventional understanding of justice. They seem to provide a more substantial obstacle to a theory of justice than anything Thrasymachus the sophist could provide. He quotes a poet who had praised them, “Sons of Ariston, divine progeny of an illustrious man!” In fact, Glaucon and Adeimantus were the older brothers of Plato, who had distinguished themselves at a battle at Megara, which may have occurred in 409 BCE.[12] So Plato is praising his own lineage.
As in the Phaedo, Plato saves the most troublesome objections to his own philosophical position to the last, building suspense and anticipation. Can an objective notion of justice be vindicated in light of popular and sophistic attacks on the very notion of moral knowledge and human capacity to act rationally and ethically?
At this point Plato’s Socrates does something very un-Socratic. Instead of asking Glaucon and Adeimantus to examine their own conceptions of virtue, he sets out to create an elaborate analogy as a kind of model for examining justice. Given that the soul is, in large degree, inaccessible to examination, a kind of psychological black box, we need to find an analog for it in which we can locate justice. He proposes constructing a city-state in which we can locate justice. If we can do this, we may be able to map the features of the city-state onto the soul and to understand what justice is in the soul.[13]
A city-state exists in order to provide the needs of life for its inhabitants, including food, shelter, and clothing. In order to do that efficiently, we need to have specialized workers who can dedicate their time and efforts to providing quality products and services. Thus we will expect to have farmers, builders, shoemakers, doctors, and so on. For economic exchanges we will need merchants, marketplaces, and money. At some point the city wants luxuries, which Socrates wants to discourage. But he concedes that it will be difficult to draw the line against luxury. He points out that the hunger for more possessions will lead to conflicts with neighboring states and thus to war. Hence the city will need an army. It will need one group of non-productive citizens, the guardians who will protect the city against hostile powers. The soldiers should practice their military skills as professionals, and thus make up a distinct class or estate.[14]
We need to choose the guardians with care, and further we need to distinguish between the guardians proper (phulakes) and the “auxiliaries” (epikouroi), who will be the actual soldiers, whereas the guardians will focus on leading and governing the city.[15] Here Plato’s model notably departs from political patterns of at least most of the Greek world. In Athens and most cities, the soldiers were citizen soldiers who were called up in times of crisis (which happened fairly often in the combative environment of competitive city-states) when another city threatened your city’s territory or its very autonomy. They were not, in other words, professional soldiers, but ordinary male citizens who were subject to being drafted for military campaigns. Sparta, on the other hand, effectively had a professional military in its ruling class, who spent most of their time either in military training or on campaign. It is the Spartan model that Plato seems to favor in his model city, with a highly skilled and dedicated military force led by a professional class of rulers, the guardians.[16]
Plato makes one more major stipulation for the guardians, and, apparently, the auxiliaries. They are not to own any private property, but to have military-style quarters in the midst of the city (presumably an acropolis), where their room and board will be provided in barracks with mess halls. They will live separate from the rest of the populace and focus their attention on leading and protecting the city, not accumulating wealth and prestige.[17] There will, in fact, be a communistic system at the top. This does not seem to apply to the general population, the “workers” of the city, who are free to own property and to enrich themselves. But it will, ideally, isolate the guardians and auxiliaries from the vices and excesses of the Many, whom they will be called on to control and manage.
Plato now has constructed at least the outline of an ideal state in which there are three classes or estates: the workers, the auxiliaries, and the guardians. Presumably the first class is by far the largest in terms of population, the second smaller and the last the smallest. And unquestionably the scheme is hierarchical, graded from the workers, to the enforcers, to the rulers. Rule will be, not bottom-up as in a democracy, but top-down as in an oligarchy, though Plato will want to call the form of government an aristocracy,[18] a rule by the best and brightest, indeed, in modern terms, a technocracy.
[12] Plato Republic II, 367e-368a; Nails 2002, s.vv. Adeimantus, Glaucon, Plato, discusses the historical and chronological information and problems of dating.
[13] Plato Republic II, 368c-369a.
[14] Plato Republic II, 372e-374e.
[15] Plato Republic III, 413c-414b.
[16] Plato Republic II, 374b-376c.
[17 In this the guardians will differ from the Spartan rulers, who were owners of large plantations, worked by serfs for their benefit.
[18] Plato Republic IV, 445d; VIII, 544e.