Book Five of Plato’s Republic covers Plato’s treatment of women, children, family in the
ideal city, and also introduces character of philosopher-king.
Book Four ended with Socrates defining justice, and turning to the five different types of
cities, and how one develops into another.
In Book Five, he is about to enumerate the different constitutions, when Glaucon and
Polemarchus interrupt, and ask him to discuss sex relations in the ideal city.
Socrates had mentioned before that the Guardians would hold all women and children in common.
Now, they want him to elaborate practical steps for how this will be handled.
This begins a digression that will last for about a hundred pages.
Socrates won’t return to the five types of city until Book Eight.
Socrates protests that this is a troublesome topic, but agrees to tackle it.
He makes two points in this section.
First, he says, men and women Guardians will perform the same tasks.
Thus they must receive the same education and training.
The prospect of co-ed naked physical training will seem absurd or ridiculous, he says, but
he thinks social customs and aesthetic judgments will adapt.
We should be guided here, as in all things, by reason and argument, including in our judgments
of bodily beauty.
Socrates considers one objection at length: That men and women should not do the same tasks,
because they have different natures.
His answer is that there are no sex differences that are relevant to the tasks of governing the city.
Natural talents, he seems to think, are distributed more or less randomly among women as well as men.
Therefore women guardians must share in all education and tasks of male guardians, with
allowances for their inferior strength.
His second point is that the Guardians will have wives and children in common.
Just as they can have no private property, there will be no private family life among them.
Socrates must prove that this arrangement is both desirable and feasible.
First, he discusses its benefit or desirability: To ensure the health of the ideal city, we
will need breeding rules for male and female guardians, he says.
These rules should be rational.
As with animals, the best should be bred with the best.
But this eugenics program will require lies and deception, Socrates says.
In order to succeed, the breeding program must be concealed from the Guardians themselves.
He suggests numerous pretexts, including lotteries and other staged events, to make the Guardians
think their mating habits are governed by chance, rather than being intelligently directed.
The children of the best will be reared by special professional nurses, in a different
section of the city.
Children of inferiors will be exposed or murdered, for the good of the city, Socrates says.
Guardian women will nurse, but will not know their own children.
The burden of parenthood on them will be kept as light as possible.
Socrates discusses how the institutions of piety and shame can be used to discourage
unauthorized mating and parenthood among the Guardians.
My comment on this program is that for Plato, reason governs all, even intimate relations.
Natural desires and custom must bend to what reason tells us is best for the city.
After making these two points, Socrates presents his argument that this is the best system
of family life for the Guardians in the ideal city.
This system of shared children and spouses leads to the widest possible sharing of pleasures
and pains, of the greatest overlap of Guardians saying “mine” about the same objects.
Under this system, the community of Guardians should be free from strife and conflict.
There will be no lawsuits or factions among them.
The second half of Book Five, starting at about 466d, tackles the question of whether
this system of family life is feasible.
Socrates begins by discussing the rules of war, and the role children and family attachment
will play in combat.
He suggests that both parents’ affection for offspring and their reverence for the
dead can be used to make the Guardians into better warriors, for the city’s benefit.
When challenged to get to the point of how such a city could be realized, Socrates distinguishes
between the ideal and the actual city.
This city is a model only, he says, and should be judged as a model.
Furthermore, it is not possible to prove everything in practice, as much as in speech.
If we can show a close approximation of such a city in practice, this will be enough, he says.
So he begins with a queston: What changes in present cities would lead to our ideal city?
And he answers that one change only is needed, in his famous quote at 473d: “Until philosophers
rule as kings in their cities, or those who are nowadays called kings… become genuine
and adequate philosophers… cities will have no rest from evils…”
This is a controversial proposal, so in the final pages of Book Five, Socrates begins
to specify the character of the philosopher-king, a task that he will continue into Book Six.
The philosopher-king will have to be someone who loves the whole of wisdom and learning,
not just part of it.
This distinguishes him from craftsmen and practical people.
The difference between philosophers and others turns out to reflect the difference between
beauty itself (which the philosopher sees) and beautiful things (which are all the craftsmen can see).
This in turn reflects the difference between being or what is, and becoming, or what both
is and is not.
This metaphysical divide allows us to see the difference between the philosopher’s
knowledge of reality, and practical people’s mere belief about reality.
This is a division that will be developed more in the image of the Divided Line, in Book Seven.
That brings us to the end of Book Five of Republic.
Thanks for watching today; goodbye.