A. Held over from last lecture: the opening moves in the response to the challenge (367e-376c)

1. Socrates needs to show that there is reason to cultivate, and act in accordance with, "justice" for its own sake (not just for the sake of the consequences society attaches to acting, and not acting, that way). For this purpose, he needs an account of what "justice" is in the individual soul, so that he can argue that one can't live well without "justice." The pretext for constructing the ideal state is that it will be easier to make out what "justice" is in the state first, and then read the account back into the individual. (368c-369a, the analogy of using a large inscription to help make out a small one.)

2. He explains society in terms of individual needs (for food, shelter, clothing: 369d) and differences of aptitude between individuals, allowing for division of labor. Lee 56: "In this sense, society, with its regulations, is a 'natural' growth." In what sense? What if the environment were kinder? Living together in communities is here represented as a means to individualistic ends that, given a not very kind environment, we can't secure by ourselves. Plato conspicuously doesn't suggest that living together might be an end in itself — that togetherness itself might be a biologically based need for human beings (as it plausibly is for chimpanzees and gorillas). Any response to skepticism about the rational status of societal "regulations" that starts like this is going to be vulnerable; if someone can achieve the relevant ends by herself, without needing help from others, she will have no reason to abide by the regulations.

B. 412b-427c: the abolition of private property (in the military and ruling class)

1. The ground for the abolition is an overriding value attached to cohesiveness or unity. (See 415a-c, on the National Myth of metals in the soul; there is to be no resentment or envy generated by social stratification. And see the response to the objection of 419a; the overriding concern is with the whole, not the parts.) If people are allowed to own things, there's a risk of disruptive forces such as greed and envy.

2. Does it make sense to respond by abolishing property? Aristotle (Politics, Book II) objects that it's part of human nature to take pleasure in things we think of as our own. Property is institutionalized in different ways in different societies, but it isn't simply conventional; different societies have different ways of giving institutional shape to something natural. No doubt there are the risks Plato sees. But on Aristotle's view Plato's response to the risks would require denaturing ourselves. Rather than abolishing property, he should have looked for ways of regulating it so as to minimize the risks to cohesiveness.

C. 449a-466d: the abolition of the family

1. The ground is (a) that only so can women play the societal roles they are suited to; and (b) that the substitute scheme for producing and rearing children will foster cohesiveness. (The claim that women are suited for all the same social roles as men looks surprisingly modern. But Plato spoils his credentials as a proto-feminist by saying women are in general inferior: 455c-d.)

2. As with private property: does the proposal sufficiently respect human nature? This might express a doubt about whether it would be workable, or about whether, if so, it would be morally tolerable. Here are three arguable features of human nature, insofar as it's operative in sex, child-bearing, and child-rearing, that Plato's scheme ignores: (a) the bond between a woman and the children she herself bears ("maternal instinct": is it lifelike to suppose maternal feelings could be artificially spread out over all the children born from one mating festival?); (b) courtship as a prelude to sex (a natural occurrence in many non-human animals; culturally variable with human beings, but it's plausible to see this as a case of cultural variation in the details of how something natural gets expressed); (c) pair-bonding. (Query: is permanent pair-bonding natural to human beings, as it is to some non-human animals? If not, there isn't a point against Plato's scheme here.)

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