Disclaimer: This post was originally written in Chinese and translated into English by GPT-5.2.
Book IV of The Republic explores quite a few important issues. Almost all of them are responses to the issues raised in the first three books, and they amount to a kind of deepening.
First is the issue of justice in the polis. “Justice in the individual” and “justice in the polis”: in Book II Socrates has already drawn a distinction between them. At the time, this distinction was made in response to Adeimantus’s challenge to his account of justice, and Socrates also pointed out that “justice in the individual” and “justice in the polis” are analogous (see below). Here, the issue of justice in the polis is raised again by Adeimantus, which reflects the coherence of The Republic as a book. Adeimantus questions Socrates’ so-called education of the guardians. He believes that the result of such education comes at the cost of the guardians’ complete loss of personal happiness, because aside from faithfully performing their duties, the guardians cannot, like normal people, enjoy the pleasures of life. In other words, if the “ideal city” is built upon the unhappiness of some people, how can it be called a “just polis”? This is the essence of Adeimantus’s question. Socrates’ response still takes the social contract or social division of labor as its theoretical premise. This premise presupposes a view of the polis’s “overall happiness,” that is, the maximization of the polis’s utility. In Socrates’ own words: “Our aim in founding the city is not the exceptional happiness of any one class, but the greatest happiness of the whole; for we think that in such a city it is most likely that we shall find justice.” And precisely for this reason, Socrates further argues that, within the framework of a just polis, the happiness of each social class does not truly come from material pleasures, but rather from the “portion of happiness naturally allotted to them” that arises from each doing its own work and “doing its own job well.” Only then can the whole polis become what Rawls calls a well-ordered society; in Socrates’ terms, only then can it be, in essence, a sustainably happy “one city” rather than a merely nominal “seemingly one city.”
In discussing the above issues, Socrates also touches on two interesting viewpoints. One concerns the hierarchical differences in the polis’s class divisions, or the difference in importance among classes. Children, women, slaves, and the numerous lower sorts who are free only in name do not, in Socrates’ view, represent the wisdom and courage of a polis (see below); those who do are the guardians of the city and the auxiliaries, who are very few in number. Therefore, the latter’s failure to continue performing their duties concerns the survival of the whole state, and cannot be spoken of in the same breath as, say, a cobbler or a potter not working. From this it can be seen that the ideal city Socrates constructs is in structure actually pyramidal: from bottom to top, its numbers are inversely proportional to its importance. In this sense, The Republic devotes a great deal of attention to the education of the auxiliaries; perhaps it can be understood this way: there is not much to say about the classes below the auxiliaries, while there is no need to say much extra about the class above them, because Socrates is already speaking about the division of labor and institutions of the polis in the guise of a “philosopher-king” or city-founder—this itself is a direct demonstration. Another interesting viewpoint is that to preserve the justice of the polis—that is, the dynamic stability of a well-stabilized division of labor—one cannot borrow the means of wealth and poverty, but must instead rely on the nature of all citizens, letting each do what he can: whatever gifts someone has, assign him the corresponding tasks. Perhaps in Socrates’ view, a polis that is supremely good and beautiful, like a god that is supremely good and beautiful, must in structure and condition be stable rather than changeable. This is why he opposes wealth and poverty, because “wealth breeds luxury, idleness, and demands for change; poverty breeds boorishness and baseness, and also demands for change,” and such change would have disastrous consequences for an already perfect polis. Ultimately this is still a kind of moderation: just as in size, the best limit is “large enough to remain unified,” since excess is as bad as deficiency.
To achieve the dynamic stability of the polis structure described above, education and cultivation become major issues that must be considered. Socrates has already elaborated on this in great detail in the previous two books, so there is no need for repetition; here, two points are worth noting. First, the art forms adopted by education and cultivation must be stable, not ever-changing. This has been discussed quite a bit before; here one may take music as an example and quote a passage from Socrates to prove it: “Any musical innovation is full of danger to the whole city and must be guarded against in advance. For unless the fundamental laws of the city are altered, the character of its music will in no way be changed.” In the “Preface to Mao Poetry Zhengyi,” the Book of Songs is divided into the categories “Airs, Elegances, and Hymns” (feng ya song). Hymns are composed in a well-governed age, when the world is harmonious; thus they are made to “praise the form and appearance of flourishing virtue, and, by its achievements, report to the spirits,” and so are the highest form of poetry. As for Airs and Elegances, although some are also composed in a well-governed age, they are, after all, not literary products that a supremely well-ordered state ought to have—if we examine them by Socrates’ standards. But in any case, at the level of the ideal, literature ought to reflect a good social reality; on this point, China and the West are connected. The difference is that the Chinese side has more of a spirit of practical rationality and therefore posits the necessity of the existence of Airs and Elegances; while the Western side has more of a spirit of idealism and is enthusiastic about strict logical deduction. Second, the shaping function of education and cultivation for society is crucial and cannot be replaced by law. The construction of the “ideal city” is based on the division of labor or a social contract, but it is not entirely a social contract in the modern sense, full of legal clauses. Socrates says: “If children, starting from their first games, can with the help of music acquire the spirit of obeying the law, and this law-abiding spirit in turn opposes unlawful amusements, then this law-abiding spirit will rule the children’s behavior everywhere, enabling them to grow up healthy; and once the state undergoes any change, they will rise up and restore the old order.” From this he believes that to make into laws what education and cultivation can change is “foolish,” because in a society that possesses the spirit of obeying the law, “what regulations are needed, most of them will easily discover for themselves.” Socrates’ ideal spirit may be unrealistic and has been refuted by historical facts over the past two thousand years, but the subtle and far-reaching influence of education is something no country or people can underestimate. In this understanding, Socrates can be said to be far-sighted.
Up to this point, Socrates’ construction of the ideal city is basically complete (involving division of labor, structure, principles, institutions, and so on). He believes that such a polis can already be regarded as “correctly founded,” and then, by definition, “it should be good.” Socrates then thinks: “Then it follows, surely, that this city must be wise, courageous, moderate, and just.” This marks a shift from stipulating the polis to describing it. But for the reader, the key issue is how to determine that these four characteristics of the polis already constitute all the dimensions of the ideal city that has been constructed. For Socrates assumes that these four characteristics are distinct from each other, and that we can fully use the method of elimination: find one and exclude one, leaving the other undiscovered characteristics until, in the end, all characteristics are fully described. This implies that these four characteristics were obtained by complete induction; but as to how this is induced and how one can ensure it is complete induction, there is a total lack of clear evidence, and it is even unprovable (empirically, we do not deny that these four characteristics are characteristics an ideal city ought to have; but whether they are all of them cannot be guaranteed). Therefore here, in a certain sense, Socrates’ description of the characteristics of the ideal city is, rather than aiming at complete induction, likely intended for something else; his real intent may lie in, conversely, confirming the justice of the division of labor and, conversely, proving a theoretical hypothesis proposed in Book II—namely, that “justice in the individual” and “justice in the polis” are analogous. This makes it necessary for us to briefly introduce the four characteristics Socrates assigns to the ideal polis.
The wisdom of the polis refers to its deliberation: a wise polis is so because it has good deliberation, and can manage “the great affairs of the whole state and improve its internal and external relations.” In Socrates’ view, this is the knowledge of the guardians of the city, not possessed by other social classes. The courage of the polis refers to its capacity to protect the polis’s own security and sovereignty; this is entirely the responsibility of the auxiliaries. The moderation of the polis refers to the polis’s capacity for coordination or harmony: it is “a kind of good order or control over certain pleasures and desires.” Moderation “runs through the whole body of citizens,” maintaining unity and stability within the polis. The justice of the polis, according to Socrates’ method of elimination, refers to the bringing about and maintenance of the above three characteristics of the polis; in his own words, justice “is that which produces moderation, courage, and wisdom in the city, and, after they have been produced, preserves them.” From this Socrates affirms: “Each person must perform in the state one function that is best suited to his nature … justice is doing one’s own work and not meddling with that of others … justice is having one’s own things and doing one’s own business.” “Justice in the individual” and “justice in the polis” are here unified.
In order to prove that “justice in the individual” and “justice in the polis” are the same thing differing only in size but identical in essence, Socrates also tries to confirm this from “the individual’s qualities,” verifying it from small to large. Socrates holds that in the polis there are three kinds of people: businesspeople, auxiliaries, and deliberators (the latter two are in fact the auxiliaries and the guardians of the city, while the former are practitioners of concrete social affairs); and in the human soul, likewise, there are three parts corresponding to them respectively: the appetitive part, the spirited part, the rational part (proof omitted. This classification in fact also encounters the difficulty of how to verify that it is complete induction.). So Socrates concludes: “What exists in the state exists in the soul of each individual also, and in the same number.” And according to the principle that “things related to themselves are related only to themselves, and things of a certain nature are related to things of a certain nature,” the analogical nature (or to say directly, the identity) of “justice in the individual” and “justice in the polis” is self-evident!
As repeatedly emphasized in this essay, Socrates’ proof is, after all, unreliable at the logical starting point—that is, his major premise is highly controversial—but his line of problem analysis is very interesting and worth attention. From Book I’s raising of the problem of justice, Book II’s raising of the problems of individual justice and polis justice, Book III’s raising of the problem of constructing a just polis, to Book IV’s response to all the above problems, this can in fact be said to embody this Socratic line of problem analysis. Cyclical and rigorous in logic, yet highly uncertain at its starting point, and therefore unable to obtain a final answer in its conclusion. Any answer can ultimately only be a directional guidance derived from the most essential secular experience, rather than a determination specific down to concepts. This should also be the significance of Book IV.
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