The Just City (Thessaly, #1)

by Jo Walton

perhaps it is true what Plato says, that we bring some memories from our past lives.

The Republic is about Plato’s ideas of justice—not in terms of criminal law, but rather how to maximize happiness by living a life that is just both internally and externally. He talks about both a city and a soul, comparing the two, setting out his idea of both human nature and how people should live, with the soul a microcosm of the city. His ideal city, as with the ideal soul, balanced the three parts of human nature: reason, passion, and appetites. By arranging the city justly, it would also maximize justice within the souls of the inhabitants.

“There’s practically nobody here from the Enlightenment because they didn’t want this. The crown of the Republic is to get everything right, to produce a system that will produce Philosopher Kings who will know The Good.”

For the first time in the Enlightenment, they had the idea of progress, the idea that each generation will find its own truth, that things will keep on changing and getting better.”

“What city could be better than this?” I asked. “A free city, Lucia, where we could use our own names, and would not be forced into the molds of others.”

“Christianity is harmful to the Republic because it offers a different and incorrect truth. We want them to discover the Truth, the real Truth that a philosopher can glimpse. That’s important. We don’t want to clutter it up with irrelevancies. Christianity would just get in their way. So no Madonnas and no crucifixions.”

Plotinus made the presentation. “We have decided that the best method is to send out ships to purchase slave children. They will be freed, and be glad to be rescued and be here.”

There was a vigorous debate, ending in a vote, in which we narrowly decided to buy children, making sure they knew that they were free as soon as they came aboard our ships.

The first children ran away the first night, ran off into the woods and had to be recaptured. After that we guarded the sleeping houses until the children were settled.

“Ideally,” I kept saying, every time we had to compromise.

Is there nobody here but masters and children?” “Unless you count the workers,” I said. “They are mechanical, but they seem to have purpose.” “They’re just devices,” Pytheas said. “They don’t will what they do.” “Do you know that?” Sokrates asked. Pytheas closed his mouth, looking dumbfounded. After a minute said: “It’s my opinion and what I’ve been taught.”

“They have their own imagination of who you are, but you are not that,” Kebes said. “Now that’s true,” Sokrates said. “And perhaps what I shall teach is not what they expect me to teach.”

Time was inexorable and unstoppable. I had always known that, but it had taken me fifteen years as a mortal to understand what it meant.

Athene and I certainly didn’t imagine it would really work the way Plato described it. We knew too much about the soul to hope for that. What was interesting was seeing how much of it could work, how much it really would maximize justice, and how it was going to fail. We could learn a lot from that.

“Until today I wasn’t sure whether the gods truly concerned themselves with us, and I only knew that they existed as part of a set of logical inferences which turn out to be based on a false assumption,” Sokrates said. “What false assumption?” I asked, curious. “That they were good,” he said, looking directly at me unsmilingly for a long moment.

But the point at contention is this—can we speak freely in pursuit of the truth? Can we trust that you’re not going to report what we’re saying?”

“You don’t believe rhetoric could harm the city?” Sokrates asked. “If rhetoric could harm it then it isn’t the Just City and it deserves it,” she said. Sokrates beamed at her like a proud father, then he glanced back at me. “They’ll be using my methods for thousands of years, you say?” I nodded. “Then what are we doing here?”

“Some might put individual happiness above social confusion.” “Is happiness the highest goal?” Kebes asked. “Is it a goal at all?” I asked.

This was the Just City, of course it was, we had always been told that. But why justice, not happiness, or liberty or any other excellence? What was justice really?

Nobody reads Plato and agrees with everything. But nobody reads any of the dialogues without wanting to be there joining in. Everybody reads it and is drawn into the argument and the search for the truth.

But sometimes I wonder if we should have stayed in our own times and fought for the Republic there. If we should have tried to make our own cities more just.”

Know yourself. You are worth knowing. Examine your life. The unexamined life is not worth living. Be aware that other people have equal significance. Give them the space to make their own choices, and let their choices count as you want them to let your choices count. Remember that excellence has no stopping point and keep on pursuing it. Make art that can last and that says something nobody else can say. Live the best life you can, and become the best self you can. You cannot know which of your actions is the lever that will move worlds. Not even Necessity knows all ends. Know yourself.

If you haven’t read Plato and you now feel the urge, I suggest beginning with the Apology and the Symposium, rather than diving straight into the Republic

Human nature is always the problem when it comes to living with ideals.