2.9: Luxuries in the City

See 372c-374a. Socrates and Glaucon decide their imaginary city is to be a luxurious one. The citizens aren’t to eat just nourishing food, but to enjoy “high cuisine” (fish, sweets, and other unnecessary pleasure-foods). They aren’t to sit on just anything, but to “recline on proper couches.” They are to have “incense, perfumes, prostitutes, and pastries.” They are to have sculpture and painting, music and dance, theater and jewelry, “tutors, wet nurses, nannies, beauticians, barbers, and relish cooks and meat cooks.” And to cap it off, they are to have an army, for they will need to acquire and defend the land necessary to support such a city.

• Socrates considers the luxurious city to be “feverish” – unhealthy – and so it is a fair question why he agrees to take it on as the basis for his discussion of justice. It will eventually become clear that he has taken it on in much the same way a physician takes on a sick patient. (He describes what he is up to at 399e with a word that can be translated as “purification” or “purgation.”) But why this approach? Why, if Socrates is searching for an understanding of the nature of justice, doesn’t he focus instead on the simple, “healthy” city?

• What relation, if any, is there between wealth and force? Does ownership require an ability to defend one’s possessions?

• What, if anything, do people need to own in order to flourish and behappy?

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