Paste your essay in here…Plato’s Healthy and Feverish Societies
INTRODUCTION
In Plato’s Republic, Plato suggests two cities – Healthy and Feverish cities. These cities are different in many ways, such as socially and politically. Some people might argue that Plato violates the fundamental principles on which his construction of the ideal society is based. In this paper, I will argue that Plato’s Feverish city does not satisfy Plato’s own requirements for the ideal city. Therefore, it can also be argued that Plato’s shift form the Healthy city to Feverish city does indeed, violate the principles for an ideal city.
PLATO’S HEALTHY CITY
In the Republic, Plato and his interlocutors try to construct and ideal city and argue about what it should be like. Plato believes that justice exists in a city the way it does in an individual. That is to say, an ideal city must contain wisdom, courage, moderation and justice.
He then constructs a city where people’s needs consist of only basic human things, such as food, shelter, clothes. He believes that as individuals have many different kinds of needs that should be satisfied, human beings are dependent on each other in order to have those needs met. (369c) Thus, individuals should “contribute their own work for the common use of all”. (369e) In this society, there is no individuality. Furthermore, according to the principles of division of labor, every individual should do only one job for which he or she best suits for. (370c)
Plato thinks that the city must only provide the barest human necessities, which means that luxurious things should not be allowed. (369d) Moderation and temperance are preferred in this society. For example, Socrates says that people will have good food, such as desserts, figs, chickpeas, but eat and drink in moderation. This way, they will live a healthy life and pass on a similar life to children. (372d) He calls this city the Healthy city.
PLATO’S FEVERISH CITY
Later, Plato suggests the Feverish city, the city they construct when they reason that the life in the Healthy city will not satisfy some people. (373a) The Feverish city leads people to acquiring more wealth than they need. (373d) Things that were banned in the Healthy city, such as entertainment and luxurious stuff are now allowed. Such acquisition of wealth creates the need for owning more lands. This, later, leads to making wars with the neighboring countries. There are three classes in the city: the Guardians, the Auxiliaries and the Producers. The Guardians are the philosopher rulers, the Auxiliaries are the soldiers who are needed for the protection of the city and the Producers are farmers and artisans who produce things. The Guardians and Auxiliaries are very important for the city. Therefore, they must be musically and physically trained in order to become suitable for these professions. (377a) Plato also specifies what kind of music, poems and stories should be allowed to be taught to children. Only stories in which gods and kings are described in a positive way are allowed to be narrated. Feminine, sad sounding music should be prohibited. Also, poems in which the pleasures from eating, drinking and sexual relationships are praised, should not be allowed. Plato and Socrates think that these things damage their souls and make young people less capable of having self-mastery and temperance. (390c) Socrates considers temperance in the city important. He says that temperance is obedience to kings and” ruling over the pleasures of drink, sex and food for themselves”. (389e)
Furthermore, the information and education are highly controlled. For instance, people should not know that once in the history, there was hatred in the society. He believes that speaking about such things might ruin the social structure of the city. His view on women and children is even more controversial. Although, he thinks that women should be allowed to receive the same education as men and become Auxiliaries, he also believes that they should be shared. Furthermore, he also thinks that babies should be separated from their parents and raised by specialized people. Mothers still have the duty of nursing different babies as they are their own children. This ensures that people will treat all children as their own and each other as family. Thus, there is no divisive potential in the city that could make people treat each differently. He also tries to control the reproduction in the city. That is to say, in order to produce the most suitable human beings for the city, people with the best genetics should mate with their counterparts. Meanwhile, the children of the inferior people should be taken away and killed.
Socrates considers the possession of wealth good, and being dependent on a son, brother bad, by saying “a good person is someone who is most self-sufficient when it comes to living well and is distinguished from other people by having the least need of anyone or anything else”. (387e)
Socrates thinks that the body “is altered by food, drink, labors” and by some other things is considered an unhealthy body, whereas the “healthiest and strongest is least altered”. (381a) According to this analogy, the person “who is knowledgeable and courageous is least disturbed by outside influence” (381a). That is why, they think that children of the upper two classes should be carefully educated with the education that is best suitable for the interests of the city’s political system.
THE CITY’S VIRTUE
Socrates reasons that “justice is doing one’s own work and not meddling with what is not one’s own” after finding the three important features in the city which were temperance, courage and wisdom. As you can see, this justice exists in both of the cities.
ANALYSIS
Socrates says, justice also rivals wisdom, temperance and courage in its contribution to the city’s virtue. (433d) However, in the Feverish society there is no temperance and moderateness, as it exceeds its basic needs by acquiring excessive wealth and conquering other territories. On the other hand, the Healthy city has only basic necessities. As I mentioned above, temperance is valued in the ideal city. From this point of view, the Healthy city is healthy and the true city.
There is no ruler, a ruling class and a political system in the Healthy city. Plato denies that there needs to be any institutional structure to society at all as he says “It is not appropriate to dictate to men who are fine and good. They’ll easily find out for themselves whatever needs to be legislated about such matters” (425d) Therefore, again the Healthy city can be considered the real one. Because the Feverish city is ruled by kings and laws.
However, I think that the Feverish city has more harmony and order. As Plato believed that justice is order and harmony, the Feverish city is more harmonious, both socially and politically.
In my view, both of these cities have characteristics of the ideal city that Plato would want. However, a city like the Feverish one definitely does not meet most of the requirements for the ideal city.
CONCLUSION
Above, I described and compared the two cities that Plato suggests. I tried to prove my argument that Plato violates his requirements for the ideal city when he suggests the Feverish city.