Abstract

In Republic II, after Socrates has constructed the smallest city answering the demands of Necessity, Glaucon dismisses it as unfit for human habitation. The lack of relishes makes life there unpalatable. Without further ado, this “healthy” and “true” city is abandoned, and Socrates spends the rest of the Republic on the etiology, diagnosis, and possible treatment of the chronic “fever” afflicting the city of luxury. Prominent commentators see nothing strange in his brisk turn away from the “true” city, taking the Kallipolis as a hardheaded alternative to Socratic pie in the sky. By contrast, I take seriously Socrates’ claim that the CP is the true city. I analyze its political-economic structure; show how this reappears in the Kallipolis; and explain the CP’s hidden role as a quasi-medical model of equilibrium, an ideal the Kallipolis never achieves, yet to which its rulers must look in exercising their craft.