The Republic ultimately addresses the question of whether or not justice pays, but in doing so, the characters burn paths to other more pressing questions and answers. One of these paths is the nature of identity. Identity in the kallipolis of The Republic is fixed; it is defined by the metal that someone is born as because it guides the path of their soul, and therefore their desires. In creating a city ruled by those free of desire—that is to say full of reason—the character Socrates forces his readers to think about the lack of free thought in the name of reason in their own societies. Plato uses the character Socrates to deny the credibility of a fixed identity and therefore put the reader into a state of aporia in an effort to provoke critical thought of a real city in respect to the kallipolis.
The Republic outlines a city whose success depends on total control of its citizens. It is incapable of being implemented in a real political situation for many reasons, but the one that stands out most noticeably is the distinction between the governed and the government. In the real world, the government is comprised of the governed. There is no class of people who are educated vastly differently than those they plan to rule over. The kallipolis depends on a “restart” in order to put the right people into power for success. The real world is not afforded this opportunity and therefore the officials in power—the proverbial philosopher kings—are fundamentally the same as those being governed. They have more resources to acquire power, but the intrinsic differences that exist in the metal classes of The Republic are not present in real life. Plato’s ideal city has an abundance of rules for education, but the understood idea is that the philosophers will educate the first generation, and from there the only stories that will be known are those that the original philosophers want told. This is to say that in order for the kallipolis to succeed, “they will…[send] out into the country all of the inhabitants of the city who are more than ten years old” (537). The problem that arises with assigning identities to children, according to Plato, is that eventually philosopher kings would use their senses instead of reason to sort children into their metal category. This misidentification fault, coupled with the principle of different metals receiving different educations, would eventually provoke a civil war.
The overarching concept in the passage by Timothy Longman is also the fatal flaw of misidentification. Claudette, the first subject of Longman’s writing, suffered the crisis of not knowing what her identity truly was. She first believed herself to be Hutu, only to find out she was actually Tutsi. This revelation only created more questions in her internal quest to belong because she received the benefits from both ethnicities at some point but was believed not to suffer enough with either ethnicity to truly belong. Claudette’s situation leads Longman to his point that before European imperialism assigned ethnic identification cards in Rwanda, identity was very fluid. Longman writes, “Intermarriage was common, and identities could change. A family that gained wealth or status would come to be viewed as Tutsi within a few generations, while one that lost position would eventually be regarded as Hutu.” The ease by which people changed identities in the described past is contrasted by Claudette’s family’s story of being denounced as Hutu after entire generations of an understood identity. Longman proceeds to explain that when the revolution that put Hutu on top of Tutsi occurred, there was still no opposition to the ethnic division of the two, only that the inequality wasn’t fair. The concept of identity being fixed was wholly accepted by Rwanda, and it has historically been treated the same in other countries where it’s introduced.
The United States, for example, classifies those who are half white and half black as black. This is a distinction that stems from the time of segregation, but it is still accepted as a defining identity trait in the culture and subcultures of America. Plato’s kallipolis did not have to address this because two metals, although they can intermix, cannot have a mixed-metal child. This is another example of Plato disrupting the usual thoughts of what comprises an identity. Origin myths are what unite and divide cultures. Longman writes that most of Rwanda came to accept the origin myth of missionaries and Tutsi elites establishing the country, and that even after the Hutu rose up in defiance against the oppression of the ethnic majority, they still did not counter the myth of the country’s origin. The juxtaposition of identity in The Republic and in a real city is most apparent in the fact that identity is not passed down genetically in the kallipolis. A gold and a gold may produce a bronze; that is to say metal is not inherited. Longman’s passage clearly shows the genetic importance of identity in the case of Claudette—she was raised as Hutu, but the genetics of her grandfather dealt death to her family and persecution to herself. Plato, therefore, is creating a city-state in which identity is created instead of absorbed. While this solves the fixed state of receiving an identity from previous generations, it furthers the issue of immobile identity defining life opportunities.
Ariel Levy’s article about Caster Semenya introduces another issue of identity, and what it means to have a standard fixture of such a colossally personal trait. Semenya, since she became the world champion in the eight hundred meters, has been harassed about whether or not she is a woman. Her assigned sex is in fact female, proven barbarically again and again when her race opponents make her go to the restroom prior to competing in order to look at her sex organ. The identity of a woman is implicitly given when Levy describes what Semenya is not. She does not have a feminine waist, nor a dainty facial structure, and her torso is “like the chest plate on a suit of armor.” (Levy). Instead of celebrating her strength, however, her entire identity of being a woman is called into question. This relates back to The Republic in the way that Plato creates a norm for each metal identity. The kallipolis’ ultimate downfall, according to the character Socrates, would be that even the meticulously fixed identity of the metals would eventually be flexed through human error. The philosopher kings would sort children by their senses instead of reason, thus succumbing to desire (the antithesis of reason) and ruining the kallipolis (546-547C). Identity, therefore, is a flexible idea made solid by the ruling elite. Semenya is ridiculed as an “it” or a man is because that is what her peers have been taught. Plato spends the entirety of book three discussing what will and will not be taught in the kallipolis, thus highlighting to the reader the value of education. When knowledge and power are combined, a ruler is created. When education and power are combined, indoctrination is created. Rulers indoctrinate their people into identities that serve to control the citizens’ entire lives.
The government holds identity to be an inflexible characteristic because it is an agent of control to their agenda (I use the term ‘their’ as the universal being whose interests supersede those without power). The governed, however, understand identity to be unchangeable because they have no alternative. Plato offers the allegory of the cave to illuminate the concept of group thought (518A). When someone is removed from the cave, the illumination—both figurative and literal—burns them. When they are finally accustomed to the outside world (a metaphor for the truth), they are brutally returned to the cave, only to be ridiculed for their now ruined eyes. This is what would—and does—happen to the citizen who asserts identity (or any other regulated human form) is multifaceted and variable.
Identities are often said to create unity; in fact, in Plato’s kallipolis the guardians are so united in their classification that they share spouses. (416D-417B) The accord that is created through the origin myth of the metals in The Republic serves to unify through division. The different classes of metals are afforded very specific life opportunities, and the same practice of division through ‘unifying’ identity is present in every culture in the world. Unity cannot exist without the presence of division. The very act of uniting divides people from something else. Identity is a main factor of this uniting division, as shown in the subcultures that exist in America. There are countless China-towns and little-Italys that stem from a cultural identity separate from what is deemed ‘American’. The ability to maintain a multifaceted identity is a unique privilege that not all citizens in the world are afforded. Edward Snowden addresses the need for privacy to determine what we are and who we want to be. His point of the necessity for unanalyzed thoughts supports the idea that people have the agency to choose our identities, and we don’t because we are not aware that we can. Snowden is an advocate for the right to privacy, which is unconditionally eradicated in Plato’s kallipolis; the guardians are exposed to the point of not being allowed to have doors (416-417B). The right to privacy—or lack thereof—is essential in controlling the identity of yourself or others. Plato, therefore, illuminates the flaw in removing privacy in an effort to breed conformity through his “ideal city-state” that he repeatedly asserts is concerned not with individual liberty or happiness, but with justice (443). The citizens are under a dictatorship that, in theory, works for the good of the state. In practice, however, the startling lack of individuality is toxic to the people and if even slightly unmaintained, causes civil war. The ultimate downfall of the kallipolis is the human nature to succumb to desire in abandon of reason when making decisions that impact the entire city-state. This concept provokes critical thought of a real city in comparison to Plato’s kallipolis because while there is not absolute control, in all places there are limits to individuality, and some countries limit identity to the point of dystopia.