Guardians, citizens and the prohibition of private possessions in Plato’s Republic
In Book V of The Republic, Plato likens the community of pain and pleasure in a single human being to a community of pain and pleasure in the city, reaching the normative claim that “the best governed city is one that is most like a single human being” (Plato, 462d). He goes on to outline the empirical necessity for the guardians of the city to share all sources of pain and pleasure such as houses, children, and women in common (464 b-c). In this essay, I aim to advance the claim that Plato’s analogy of the best governed city as a single human being only has implications for the internal political structure of the city and not also for its social organisation. That is, I will argue that the analogy only prescribes a certain organisation of relations amongst the guardians, such that the guardians are prohibited from private possessions. This does not imply that the relations amongst citizens themselves must also be organised in a way that the citizens also share all sources of pain and pleasure in common. I will then present an alternative interpretation that argues that private property amongst citizens leads to the development of private interests that creates factions in the city. Because Plato wants to prevent factionalism in the city, he must also be prescribing that the citizens should hold all sources of pain and pleasure in common. I go on to argue that this interpretation makes the mistake of taking all the parts of a whole to be equally important in ruling it and preserving its unity, while Plato’s analogy takes the logismos in the single human and the guardians in the city to be responsible for ruling the whole they are a part of. By prescribing a particular political structure of the city that checks the rule of the guardians, without also prescribing a social organisation with the same checks on individual citizens, Plato necessitates that the guardians relinquish the pursuit of private goals that individual citizens continue to seek, and this explains why he is invested in the careful cultivation of the guardians for them to be willing and able to perform their function in the best way.
That the best governed city is analogous to a single human being is argued by Plato in the following way. In the case of a human being, when a particular part of them, say their finger, feels pain, then that pain is shared by the entire “community,” inclusive of the body as well as the soul, by virtue of being a unitary entity that is “under the ruler within it” (462d). As the single human being is entirely ruled by the same part within it and the pain felt by any one of the parts is apprehended as pain felt by the entire collective, such a community of pain and pleasure is what the city must also aspire to achieve in order to be the best governed one. Plato then claims that the community of pain and pleasure in the city will be caused by the guardians holding all sources of pain and pleasure in common. To perform their function, which is to be the ruling part over the other parts, the guardians must be interested not in private possessions but in the happiness that is derived from the happiness of the city. A city governed by such guardians will be one where the guardians themselves are free from faction and act as one body, resulting in a city that itself does not “divide into factions over the possession of money, children, [women] and relatives” (465e).
On the interpretation that I aim to advance, the analogy of the best-governed city as a single human being is intended by Plato only as a tool to persuade Socrates’ interlocutors in the dialogues, and thus Plato’s own readers, that the relations shared by the guardians with their fellow guardians and the citizens of the city are to be organised in a way that they perform their function of guardianship in the best way. This is to avoid corruption of authority or the splitting of the city into factions. In the city considered in Plato’s dialogues, the relation amongst the people of the city, that of being “fellow citizens,” is the same as any other city (463a). What distinguishes the city from others is the fact that in Plato’s city the rulers share a relation of being “fellow guardians,” while the relation between rulers and the ruled is that of the rulers being “saviours and auxiliaries” to the ruled, and the ruled being “wage givers and supporters” to the rulers (463b). The function of the guardians is to be the ruling part of the city, mastering the desires of the other ruled parts. The relation of being fellow guardians can only be ensured if the guardians share all possessions in common, without owning them privately.
Private ownership would introduce the concept of particular pain or pleasure being privately important, resulting in a situation where a guardian derives a private pleasure out of something that causes pain to another guardian. If the guardians begin to hold different things to be privately important, they split up into rival factions with rival interests. Furthermore, even if the guardians are not divided amongst themselves, they may as a group pursue goals that give pleasures only to the guardians, without being in the interest of the citizens of the whole city. In both cases, the city is itself further divided into factions, not functioning as a single entity and thereby disintegrating, only because the guardians cease to perform their role. Therefore, Plato uses the analogy of the city and the single human being only to argue for a political structure where guardians perform their role of ruling the desires of the ruled parts without having private desires of their own. This requires them to not hold any possessions such as children, women, or housing in private, and to apprehend the pain and pleasure of every single citizen of the city as that of the entire collective.
However, on an alternative interpretation, Plato’s likening of the community of pain and pleasure in the city with the community of pain and pleasure in a single human being can be interpreted as implying that the social organisation of the city, i.e. the relations between citizens, must also be structured in a way that the citizens are required to share all property and possessions in common. A city is a single entity experiencing pain and pleasure from the same things. A city that is bound together in a way that the same things make all the citizens say “my own” and “not my own” is one that is without factions, functioning as a united entity, and is, therefore, the best governed one (462c). Allowing citizens to possess things in private leads to the development of private interests. At the same time, every citizen is a part of the city. Wherever the parts hold different things to be of their interest, the whole is bound to be pulled in the direction of different goals, until the factions no longer allow it to exist as a single entity. Therefore, citizens possessing things in private, including children, houses, and relations, leads to the disintegration of the city. As a result, because Plato wants the city to exist as a single entity, he must also be implying that the citizens, like their guardians, should also not possess anything in private, but instead share all sources of pain and pleasure in common. This would make Plato a supporter not just of checks on the corruption of the ruling part of the city by abolishing private possession for the guardians, but also of a type of society where no private possessions exist.
I argue that such an interpretation is mistaken because it takes the original analogy to mean that all the parts of a human being that constitute it have an equal role to play in its governance, thereby also having an equal role to play in preserving its unity. The ruling part is responsible for ensuring that “no one [part] has what belongs to others, and be deprived of what belongs to [it],” which implies that the ruled parts of a human being may have desires of their own (433e). What is required for the unity of the human being is for the “desires in the common many [to be] mastered by the desires and the prudence in the decent few” (431d). The epithumia (ⲉⲡⲓⲑⲩⲙⲓⲁ), the desiring part of the soul, just as the citizens in the city, may have conflicting desires and goals. What is necessary to maintain the unity of the soul is for the epithumia to be ruled by the logismos (λογⲓσμός). Likewise, in the city, it is the function of guardians to rule over the citizens and their desires. If logismos fails to perform its function, for reasons including the logismos itself being internally divided into factions or because it seeks its own interest instead of the soul’s as a whole, epithumia is left without rule. Similarly, if the guardians are split into factions or begin pursuing private interests in a way that no longer allows them to be guardians, then their corruption and division allow citizens themselves to split into rival factions (465b).
Plato’s intention then is to make sure that the ruling part continues to rule over the desires and interests of the ruled. The focus is not on denying private desires to citizens for the purpose of preserving the unity of the city. They may continue to perform their own private function and possess things in private. Citizens holding private possessions does not lead to a division of the city. This is because as long as the city is ruled by guardians that preserve the unity of the city, the private pursuits of individual citizens do not translate into the city being pulled apart in multiple directions. However, the guardians seeking happiness in a way that they stop being guardians is contrary to their function (465b-c). Hence, the analogy of the best governed city and a single human being is only meant for the guardians of the city to have a community of pain and pleasure amongst themselves, and apprehend the pain and pleasure of each citizen as that of the city’s pain and pleasure. To interpret the analogy as prescribing the prohibition of private possessions to guardians and the citizens alike is to ignore that for Plato it is the function of the guardians to rule over the desires of the citizens. Therefore, this analogy does not make Plato a supporter of a social organisation where citizens own everything in common, nothing in private. The analogy only acts as a tool of persuasion for organising the political relations in the city in such a way that the guardians are prevented from becoming corrupt or splitting apart into factions.
Arriving at the conclusion that Plato only intends to deny private possessions to the guardians and not to the citizens is consequential, because it explains why a significant portion of the dialogues in The Republic discuss how the guardians are to be carefully cultivated through early and extensive training. The guardians are in a position where they rule over the citizens of the city. Their function is to serve the whole without having any interests of their own. However, those who are naturally disposed to be guardians may not agree to perform such a function, because as citizens they can continue to pursue self-interest even if it is contrary to their natural function. This is why throughout Books III to VII, Plato’s dialogues contain an outline of the proper kind of education and training that will ensure that those naturally disposed to be guardians are actually willing and able to perform their function in the city.
In conclusion, this essay has advanced an interpretation of the analogy of the best governed city and the single human being in Book V of The Republic where the community of pain and pleasure in the city, and therefore the city’s unity, is ensured only through the prohibition of private possessions to the guardians. I have argued against an alternative interpretation, which argues that Plato’s analogy also extends the prohibition of private possession to every citizen of the city. It is only the ruling part which must not have any private interests of its own, so that it may rule over the desires of the ruled parts. Therefore, the city faces a difficulty where it must ensure that those naturally disposed to being guardians actually perform their function instead of becoming private citizens seeking their self interest. This difficulty explains why The Republic takes up the question of selecting and educating the guardians and gives a detailed account of how to ensure that the city will have the guardians who are best able to perform the function of ruling the city.
References
Plato, The Republic of Plato, translated by Allan Bloom, HarperCollins/Basic Books, 1996.