As Plato explains in his Republic, the Good City is the natural city. For, in manifesting the good, it reflects nature and harmonizes its parts with the whole. However, in human society "good things are hard," and, ironically, the natural city is also, in some ways, the least likely to materialize.

According to Plato, human society originates in natural conditions. The primary condition is that of individual need. As he states, "a city...comes into being because each of us isn't self-sufficient but is in need of much" (369b). The pursuit of our sustenance, coupled with our natural limitations, leads us to look outside of ourselves, and thus "one man takes on another for one need and another for another need, and, since many things are needed, many men gather in one settlement" (369c). This arrangement is encouraged by the fact that "each of us is naturally not quite like anyone else, but rather differs in his nature; different men are apt for the accomplishment of different jobs" (370b). In this sense--because of the need of all and because of the disparity in individual capabilities--the origin of all cities is natural.

The defining quality of the Good City is found in what it does with these natural conditions. For natural objects, "the work of each thing is what it alone can do, or can do more finely than other things" (353a). The virtue of such objects, then, is the product of each doing its own particular work, (for example, the virtue of eyes is sight). Analogously, the virtue of the individual, in the context of the city, requires "that each one must practice one of the functions in the city, that one for which his nature made him naturally most fit" (433a). Thus in the Good City, each is assigned to his own work, and the result is the virtue of a city, justice. The Good City is the Just City. In the Good City, justice is the principle of order that harmonizes the parts into a unified whole. As Plato explains, "each man, practicing his own, which is one, will not become many but one; and thus, you see, the whole city will naturally grow to be one" (423d).

In this harmony, the Good City reflects nature, which is itself an expression of the good. Nature is comprised of tangible phenomena that are rendered intelligible by their forms, which are themselves illuminated by the ontological light of the good. Plato explains that, for natural forms, "being known..., existence and being are in them as a result of [the good]"(509b). Insofar as a city implements this harmony of each doing its own according to its natural form, it manifests the good. In this way, the Good City is the natural city. The Good City partakes of the cosmic order and brings "the immortal and what is always" down into the political order (see 592b). The proportionality that pervades the whole is reflected in the particular, and thus the city is harmonized within, becoming a "community of pain and pleasure," and without, as it is reassimilated into a natural relation with the whole of nature.

However, while the Good City is the natural city, it is not "natural" in the sense that it is what comes to be as a matter of course. Socrates repeatedly says of the Good City: "it is hard for it to come to be" (502c). If, as he later says, "regimes arise...from the dispositions of the men in the cities," then this difficulty is traceable to the human element (544d). Plato contrasts the soul of man "[as] he was by nature" with its present "maimed" condition (611d). Indeed, the need for extensive education in the creation and perpetuation of the Good City testifies to the "unnatural" state of human nature. In explication of this education, Plato offers us the allegory of the cave as an "image of our nature" (514a). This image, though, leaves us with the question: Why are the people chained in the cave in the first place?

Plato presents the imperfection and difficulty of good human society as an observation of fact, and does not engage in extended speculation as to its cause. This disjunction in the human condition between ideas and their instantiation in particulars is unparalleled in nature, and the closing of this gap (i.e., the expression of the good) is the most difficult task facing those who would work towards the realization of the Good City. Plato notes, "So hard is the condition suffered by the most decent men with respect to the cities that there is no single other condition like it" (488a). Where men are involved, it seems that there is an extra, strenuous step in the connection from the being of that which is to the becoming of tangible particulars.

Within the allegory of the cave, philosophy is represented as "that ascent to what is" (521c). This is a necessary pursuit in the establishment of the Good City. For, though we can see many good things, we do not thereby know the good; and until we can know in what way the particulars are good, "no one will adequately know the just and fair things themselves" (506a). For all good things, Plato holds, there is a good itself: the single, eternal idea of the good. This idea is the good that really is, and does not come into being. A knowledge of this idea is somehow necessary for the practical realization of good things. Thus, for the philosopher, who is best fitted to order the city according to nature, "the idea of the good is the greatest study" (505a).

The idea of the good is known by "the power of dialectic alone" (533a). Dialectic is the attempt "by means of argument without the use of any of the senses--to attain to each thing itself that is" (532a). Dialectic, which Plato also explains as "discussion" and "argument," does not refer to the mere conversational sense of these endeavors. It refers to the process of juxtaposing and comparing objects of thought (hypotheses) in order to get behind them, to the intelligible idea that underlies them. Most sensible objects "seem to be adequately judged by the sense," and thus their investigation does not lead deeper, to a true knowledge of their being (523b). Rather, the non-philosophical understanding of them is left in the realm of pistis, a sort of "trust" in their being. For example, Plato writes, "the soul of the many is not compelled to ask the intellect what a finger is" (523d). There are, however, things that are "apt to summon thought" (524d). These are those objects and sensations that cause relative judgments such as "bigness and littleness" (523e). Our sensation of these objects leads to comparison, and thereby to intellection: we transcend the relative hypotheses and grasp the idea that lies behind them. To use Plato's example: we perceive bigness and littleness as distinct opposites, but also as proportional expressions of the same thing. Thus, through our contemplations of bigness and littleness we know the idea of size. Dialectic is the only means of seeing things in their true condition, for "only the dialectical means of inquiry proceeds in this direction, destroying the hypotheses, to the beginning itself in order to make it secure" (533c).

This philosophical means of inquiry, while difficult, is the only means to what is. Unless one knows the idea of the good, one cannot have true knowledge of the good things, including the Good City. Unless we know what each is, we cannot assign each to its own. Thus the Good City cannot come about except through such philosophical knowledge, and because of the difficulty of the process of dialectic "it is impossible...that a multitude be philosophic" (494a). For this reason, Plato asserts the need for rule by the philosopher, though he recognizes that this assertion is "not a small or an easy one" and represents "the biggest wave" (473c). Only through this admittedly difficult construction can the city become a natural manifestation of the good; only then will it partake of the proportionality of whole and harmonize the soul, city, and cosmos. Thus, ironically, the "natural" city, the Good City, is also the most difficult to realize.

[Parenthetical citations are to the sections as numbered in The Republic of Plato, translated by Allan Bloom (Basic Books, 1968).]

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