Common Good

Plato’s Republic, is a thought provoking book that have guidelines to create and sustain a near utopic city, at least in Socrates’s eyes. Socrates is engaging in a noble pursuit to create a society that does not focus on the individuals or an elite minority class, but to achieve the common good for everyone who dwell in the city. In my essay, I will explore the purposes of Socrates’s city of necessity, and in contrast Glaucon’s “luxurious” city, deconstruct the Guardians, and justice in the city and soul.

Socrates metaphorically creates a city from the foundation up by using the strict and essential necessities, food, shelter, and clothing. In this settlement, it needed to be self-sufficient by having one person perform one practice, “more plentiful and better-quality goods are more easily produced, if each person does one thing for which he is naturally suited for” (370C5). The city will grow more by adding in metalworkers, carpenters, and merchants. Socrates’s community, in a sense, turns into a commune where everyone works to service each other, “Our citizens, then, must produce not only enough for themselves at home, but also good of the right quality and quantity to satisfy the needs of others” (371a). Also, Socrates believed for a healthy city the population needed to be controlled, “They will enjoy having sex with one another, but they will produce no more children than their resources allow, lest they fall into either poverty or war” (372c).

In contrast, Glaucon protest against the city of necessity, whereas he believes the settlement is designed for animals, “If you were found a city of pigs, Socrates, isn’t that just what you would provide to fatten them” (372d). Socrates then expands his healthy, simple and pra...

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...rt of the soul stops humans from giving into their basic parasitic pleasures.

In conclusion, with the leadership of the guardians, harmonizing of the city’s virtues and soul, illustrates the common good. But, there is individual element that could destroy Socrates near utopic society, which is greed. Socrates feared that a citizen who was wealthy or a popular soldier deserved to be a soldier or guardian. If these were to happen, Socrates said, “these exchanges and this meddling destroy the city” (434b). Socrates believed that the one person, one practice was key to achieving the common good in the city, “Having and doing of one’s own, and of what belongs to one, would be agreed to be justice” (434a). That means, people are naturally suited and should always stay as a guardian, or a farmer. To Socrates this was the only way to contribute to the common good.