ABSTRACT
There is still something missing from our analysis. The contention that Plato’s political programme is purely totalitarian, and the objections to this contention which were raised in chapter 6, have led us to examine the part played, within this programme, by such moral ideas as Justice, Wisdom, Truth, and Beauty. The result of this examination was always the same. We found that the rôle of these ideas is important, but that they do not lead Plato beyond totalitarianism and racialism. But one of these ideas we have still to examine: that of Happiness. It may be remembered that we quoted Crossman in connection with the belief that Plato’s political programme is fundamentally a ‘plan for the building of a perfect state in which every citizen is really happy’, and that I described this belief as a relic of the tendency to idealize Plato. If called upon to justify my opinion, I should not have much difficulty in pointing out that Plato’s treatment of happiness is exactly analogous to his treatment of justice; and especially, that it is based upon the same belief that society is ‘by nature’ divided into classes or castes. True happiness 1, Plato insists, is achieved only by justice, i.e. by keeping one’s place.The ruler must find happiness in ruling, the warrior in warring; and, we may infer, the slave in slaving. Apart from that, Plato says frequently that what he is aiming at is neither the happiness of individuals nor that of any particular class in the state, but only the happiness of the whole, and
this, he argues, is nothing but the outcome of that rule of justice which I have shown to be totalitarian in character.That only this justice can lead to any true happiness is one of the main theses of the Republic.
