Philosophic Classics From Plato to Derrida

82 PLATO

“And in this way they’d keep themselves and the city safe. But whenever they

possess private land and houses and currency, they’ll be heads of households and farm

owners instead of guardians, and they’ll become hostile masters instead of allies of the

other citizens, and spend their whole lives hating and being hated, and plotting and

being plotted against, fearing those inside the city instead of and much more than the

enemies outside it, as they and the rest of the city race onward, already very close to

destruction.

“For all these reasons, then,” I said, “we’ll declare that’s the way the guardians

need to be provided for in the matter of housing and the rest, and we’ll set these things

down as laws, won’t we?”

“Very much so,” said Glaucon.

BOOKIV

“Your city, son of Ariston,” I said, “[has] now be founded. So after that, take a

look around in it yourself, once you’ve provided a light from somewhere, and call in

your brother and Polemarchus and the others, if in any way we might see wherever its

justice might be, and its injustice, and what differentiates the pair from each other, and

which of the two someone who’s going to be happy ought to get hold of, whether he

goes unnoticed or not by all gods and human beings.”

“You’re talking nonsense,” said Glaucon. “You took it on yourself to search for it

because it’s irreverent for you not to come to the aid of justice in every way to the limit

of your power.”

“It’s true,” I said, “as you remind me, and so it must be done, but you folks need

to do your part too.”

“Well that’s what we’ll do,” he said.

“Then I hope to find it this way,” I said. “I imagine our city, if in fact it’s been

correctly founded, is completely good.”

“Necessarily,” he said.

“So it’s clear that it’s wise and courageous and moderate and just.”

“That’s clear.”

“Then whatever we find in it from among them, the leftover part will be what hasn’t

been found?”

“Of course.”

“Then just as with any other four things, if we were looking for a particular one of

them in whatever it was, whenever we recognized that one first that would be good

enough for us, but if we recognized the three first, by that very means we would have

recognized the thing we’re looking for, because it’s obvious that it couldn’t any longer

be anything else than the thing left over.”

“You’re saying it correctly,” he said.

“So for these things too, since they happen to be four, they need to be looked for

in the same way?”

“Obviously.”

b

427c
d

e

428a