Introduction  (449a-450c)

• Book Five represents something of a digression---albeit an important one---in the argument of the Republic.  

  • At the end of  Book Four, Socrates was in the midst of discussing the four types of defective cities, when he is challenged by Polemarchus to explain what he meant when he said that the guardians will hold women and children in common.

• The discussion of defective cities will be put off until Book Eight.  Book Five, then, returns to the question of the lifestyle of the guardians, developing Plato's own radical approach to politics.

  • What we will discover in this book is that Plato takes very seriously the idea that the Guardians will hold everything in common.

  • It should be noted that Plato's communalism concerns only the Guardians, and not to rest of the populations.  Plato believes that unity of the city can only be assured if the Guardians, who control the city, are themselves united (465b).

• Women, Socrates argues, are equal to men in all ways except in strength.  They should therefore have the same responsibilities as men.  If they are to share the responsibilities of being Guardians, then they will need the same type of education and training as male Guardians (451d).

  • Female guardians would therefore need to be trained music and gymnastics as well as the art of war alongside the male counterparts

  • Socrates anticipates the objection that the sight of women exercising naked with men might very well seem ridiculous according to conventional Greek customs.  If, however, such an arrangement is advantageous to the city as a whole, it doesn't matter if it flies in the face of custom  (452).  

• Socrates presupposes a conservative objection to his belief in the fundamental equality of women  (253a-c).  The argument that he raises is something like the following:

  • Premise 1:  According to the principle of specialization, each person should work according to his/her own nature.

  • Premise 2: women and men have different nature

  • Conclusion:  Therefore they should have different functions in society

    • e.g., men, who are aggressive by nature, should act as rulers and warriors, and women, who have nurturing natures, should act as mothers and teachers

• Socrates is presupposing that  others may very well accuse him of contradicting himself, since the principle of specialization seems to preclude the equality of the sexes  (453b).  In his response, therefore, he needs to demonstrate, that, despite their different anatomies, men and women do not have different natures.   His argument (453e-454c) is as follows:

  • do bald men and hairy men have different nature?  no:  the difference between them is accidental (superficial), not essential

  • the same therefore can be said of men and women:  the difference between them is not essential to their abilities to do the work of ruling and protecting the polis.

    • Plato is using the term nature here as a kind of aptitude, or the ability to do a certain kinds of work.  A physician and a carpenter, according to this view, would have different natures, and therefore should play different roles in the polis (454d).

    • gender, on the other hand, is irrelevant to men and women's abilities to do the work demanded of Guardians

• The only real objection that can be raised to having women in the ranks of the guardians is that they have the possibility of having children, and raising children is a full-time job that preludes all other kinds of work.

  • Plato's solution to this problem, as we shall see, is to devise a radically model of child raising that can free women to perform other kinds of work in the polis. 

The Guardian's Family Life  (457b-466d)

• Socrates now moves to the question of family life of the guardians, which he has hinted will be completely communal in nature.

• If male and female guardians are working and living together, it is inevitable that there will be some degree of sexual intimacy among them.  The danger of this is that sloppy interbreeding may occur (the best reproducing with those who are less desirable).

  • The analogy that Socrates uses is that just as you wouldn't want your prize terrier reproducing with anything other then another excellent pure-breed, so too the leaders of the polis wouldn't want their best and brightest reproducing with inferior human beings (459a).

• The rulers of the society, therefore, will have to be diligent about arranging marriages between equally suitable partners.  To get everyone to go along with this, they will have to employ yet another lie:

  • in this case, the rulers of the polis will tell the guardians that the selection of partners is done by lottery in order to prevent any kind of resentment from arising (459c-460a)

• The children who are the products of these unions will immediately be place in a nursery and cared for by nurses. 

  • Parent, therefore, won't know who their own children are (460d)

  • Incest will be avoided though the careful management of the rulers (461d-e) 

  • children with defects and those that are products of unsanctioned unions will be left to die (460c, 461c)

• Plato's aim in devising the communal raising of children is to keep the city unified  (462a-c)

  • the greatest good, he maintains, is that which binds the city together and makes it one; the greatest evil is that which tears it apart

  • a city will be unified if its citizens feel pleasure and pain about the same things, and when no one makes a distinction between what belongs to him and what belongs to others 

  • Because they possess everything in common, there will be no dissension among the guardians, and they will better be able to keep the city together.

  • Because they think of everyone as their brother/sister, father/mother there will no lawsuits or voilence among them, nor will they be included to split off into factions  (464d-465b)

• Socrates now readdresses the complaint of Adeimantus (419a) that the communal lifestyle of the guardians wouldn't seem to make them very happy (465c-466c).

  • Even though the guardians will have to sacrifice a great deal for the good of the polis, Socrates is convinced that their lives will ultimately be much more satisfying than that of the craftsmen.  

  • In the first place, they won't be force to engage in the vulgar business of supporting a household (465c), and they will have the satisfaction of knowing that, by their labors, they have preserved the good of the entire city (465e)

War and Peace  (466d-471c)

• Women will also share with men the task of waging warfare.

  • So that children will gain experience in battle, they will be permitted to observe warfare---though every effort will be made to assure their security (467a-d).

  • soldiers who display cowardice on the battlefield will be eliminated from the ranks of the guardians and demoted to a craftsman or farmer; those guardians who are left alive in battle will be abandoned to the enemy.  But those who demonstrate courage will be granted honors (468a-469b)

• In 469b-471c Socrates discusses the standards the will be adopted in warfare.

  • Citizens of other Greek city-states will be treated as potential friends; while non-Greeks (barbarians) will be treated as strangers and potential enemies.

  • Plato here is trying to broaden his conception of justice to extend beyond the walls of the individual city.  Because he views all Greeks as being "related" to one another, some common practices in warfare would not apply to them (e.g., taking slaves, ravaging their lands, etc.), and warfare between Greek cities would be viewed more as a kind of civil dissension.