Republic Book VIII Summary

Kallipolis Decline and Character Types

• Socrates completes the description of the kallipolis and philosopher-king, returning to the argument from Book V.
• He describes four individual character types and corresponding constitutions, seen as stages of decline from the kallipolis (544d-545d).
• The decline is attributed to philosopher-kings relying on sense perception in eugenics (546b-c).

Four Types of Cities

• Timocracy: Ruled by people governed by the spirited part of their soul, valuing honor and reputation (550b).
• Second best to Kallipolis.
• Oligarchy: Ruled by people governed by necessary appetites (554a).
• Democracy: Ruled by people governed by unnecessary appetites (561a-b).
• Tyranny: Ruled by someone governed by lawless, unnecessary appetites (571a).

Conditions for Good Governance

• Wives, children, and education must be in common.
• Life in peace or war must be in common.
• Kings must be best in philosophy and warfare.
• Rulers lead soldiers and live in common dwellings.
• They receive yearly upkeep from citizens as a wage (543).

Types of Constitution

• Cretan/Laconian: Praised constitution (544c).
• Oligarchy: Filled with evils.
• Democracy: Antagonistic to oligarchy.
• Tyranny: Surpassing all, the last diseased city.
• Constitutions arise from the characters of people in the cities (544d-e).

Five Forms of City and Soul

• Five forms of city correspond to five forms of the individual soul (545).
• Aristocracy is good and just.
• Inferior ones: victory-loving, honor-loving, oligarchic, democratic, and tyrannical.
• Goal: to discover the most unjust and compare to the most just, examining happiness/wretchedness (545a).

Timocracy

• Cause of change in any constitution is civil war within the ruling group.
• All things come into being must decay (545d-546a).
• Rulers will fail to recognize the fertility and barrenness of the human species, begetting children at the wrong time (546a-b).
• The intermixing of iron with silver and bronze with gold engenders lack of likeness and unharmonious inequality, breeding war/hostility (546e-547a).
• Compromise on a middle way: distribute land/houses as private property, enslave those previously guarded, focus on war (547b-c).
• Constitution imitates aristocracy and oligarchy.

Timocratic Man

• Obstinate, less trained in music/poetry, loves speeches but not a rhetorician (548e).
• Harsh to slaves, gentle to free people, obedient to rulers, loves ruling/honor (548e-549a).
• Claims to rule based on warfare abilities, not speaking ability (549a).
• Despises money when young, loves it more as he grows older (549a).
• Lacks reason mixed with music/poetry as a lifelong preserver of virtue (549b).

Oligarchy

• Based on property: the rich rule, and the poor have no share (550c-d).
• The treasure house filled with gold destroys the constitution (550d).
• Virtue and wealth are opposed (550e-551a).
• Faults: Not one city but two (poor and rich), oligarchs unable to fight wars, same people are farmers, money-makers, and soldiers simultaneously (551d-552a).
• Admits the greatest of all evils: Allowing someone to sell all his possessions but still live in a city (552a).
• City full of beggars results in thieves, pickpockets, and evildoers (552d).

Oligarchic Man

• Timocrat's son sees his father crashing against the city, losing possessions (553a-b).
• Driven from the throne in his own soul the honor-loving and spirited part that ruled there, humbled by poverty, he turns greedily to making money(553b).
• Establishes appetitive and money-making part on the throne, reducing the rational and spirited parts to slaves (553c-d).
• A thrifty worker satisfies only necessary appetites (554a).
• Lacks education and has dronish appetites forcibly held in check (554b-c).

Democracy

• Changed from an oligarchy because of it's insatiable desire to become as rich as possible (555a-b).
• Impossible for a city to honor wealth and at the same time for its citizens to acquire moderation (555c-d).
• The poor are victorious, giving an equal share in ruling under the constitution and by assigning people to positions of rule by lot (556e-557a).
• Constitutions characteristics: They are free, and the city is full of freedom and freedom of speech (557b).

Democratic Man

• The Son of that thrifty oligarch rules his spendthrift pleasures by force (558d).
• The transformation from having an oligarchic constitution in him to having a democratic one when he tastes the honey of the drones (559d-e).
• Spends as much money, effort, and time on unnecessary pleasures as on necessary ones (561a).
• Lives, always surrendering rule over himself to whichever desire comes along (561b-c).

Tyranny

• Evolves from democracy, due to insatiable desire for freedom (562a-c).
• Democratic city gets bad cupbearers for its leaders and gets drunk by drinking more than it should of the unmixed wine of freedom(562d).
• The disease that developed in oligarchy also develops here, but it is more widespread and virulent because of the general permissiveness, and it eventually enslaves democracy (563e-564a).
• Extreme freedom can’t be expected to lead to anything but a change to extreme slavery (564a).