You say that this city is the good life, but how can it be the good life if it takes constant divine intervention to keep it going! It can’t be the good life unless people can choose to stay or leave, and can choose for themselves how to make it better.

“Until today I wasn’t sure whether the gods truly concerned themselves with us, and I only knew that they existed as part of a set of logical inferences which turn out to be based on a false assumption,” Sokrates said.

Being a mortal was strange. It was sensually intense, and it had the intensity of everything evanescent—like spring blossoms or autumn leaves or early cherries. It was also hugely involving. Detachment was really difficult to achieve. Everything mattered immediately—every pain, every sensation, every emotion. There wasn’t time to think about things

one of the things Plato says in the Republic is that the purpose of the city isn’t to make the guardians the happiest people in the world, it’s to make the whole city just. It’s absolutely true that you might be happier if you could have one lover or if you could know which was your own child. But the whole city would be less just. Think about

How could I not have been happy? I was in the Just City, and I was there to become my best self. I had wonderful food—porridge and fruit every morning, and either cheese and bread or pasta and vegetables every night, with meat or fish on feast days, which came frequently. On hot days in summer we often had iced fruit. I had regular congenial

“The masters didn’t kill your family,” I said. “It’s like when you poked me back in the slave market, because you couldn’t reach those who could hurt you and I was there. You can’t reach the ones who hurt you, and you want revenge on those who have done you nothing but good.” “If there weren’t any buyers there wouldn’t be any slavers,” Kebes said.

“Plato’s Just City has no slaves, only citizens playing their different roles and doing their different tasks, the tasks they are fit for. Though he lived when slavery was universal, he understood that slavery itself was unjust, that the relationship between master and slave is inevitably one of injustice and inequality. He saw that slavery was bad

“Sooner or later they will have to teach us to sail them,” he said. “We will make for somewhere, either a civilization where we can live free, or a deserted island where we can found our own city.” “What city could be better than this?” I asked. “A free city, Lucia, where we could use our own names, and would not be forced into the molds of

Sokrates spoke again, and at once Athene’s eyes were back on him. “It’s a slippery argument to say that our souls gave consent before birth, because it would be possible to use that to justify doing anything to anybody. We don’t remember what our souls chose or why. We don’t know what part of our lives we wanted and what part we overlooked, or