Cities and Justice: A short story
A Pastiche on Plato’s Republic and Calvino’s Invisible Cities
Eudaimoneia
Gazing beyond the isthmus separating the rust-red sandstone cliffs of the peninsula from the windswept fields of the mainland, your eyes alight upon the ancient cyclopean walls of Eudaimoneia, wherein nothing is as it seems.
In fact, everything is as it really is in and of itself, ever since, so you are told by a weather-beaten cabbage farmer over a stout at the old redwood tavern, a wise man was said to have discovered that the roof of the sky is really a floor from which he could glimpse the pattern of the perfectly just city embroidered in the actual starry heavens above; this selfsame man came down to persuade his countrymen, hitherto dreaming away their earthly lives, to build the city based on the beautiful pattern he had observed. Having witnessed and personally directed its decades-long construction, he vanished, never to be seen again.
As your salubrious drinking partner relates to you, the social stratification of the city’s inhabitants has been refined down to a science: At birth, those whose souls contain traces of gold are destined to rule with right reason, those of silver to become auxiliaries to these rulers, and those of bronze and iron to be farmers and other craftsmen in service of the former. Sexual pairing is foreordained to preclude souls whose metals are pure from being sullied and from inducing faction, the very presence of which would undermine the political unity of the city — which, by the way, knows no property ownership or familial ties. Most importantly, with these founding laws, the city needs no further legislation — for the city whose rulers constantly feel the need to legislate is one, forsooth, not inhabited by truly just people. Thus, in Eudaimoneia, all are reconciled to their harmonious lot in life, and are much happier for it.
In awe of this wondrous tale, you sit in silent contemplation of this supernal city, a simulacrum of perfect concord writ in the very heavens. Suddenly, your thoughts are broken by the clamorous din of a great procession. Rushing outside, you hail a tall, robed man — perhaps one of the golden souls. He tells you that, as luck would have it, today is the very day the wise founding father has elected to return to the city, after all these years of self-imposed exile upon the roof of the world, to relate, so it seems, that the starry heavens he once glimpsed were in fact the floor beneath an even greater roof of sky, upon which was inlaid the pattern of a city of even greater perfection.
Further reading:
About the author:
The Greek warrior-poet Archilochus calls us hedgehogs or foxes, specialists or generalists. An unapologetic fox, I seek deep structure across the disciplinary boundaries, hearken to the clarion call of the coming epoch, and share what I hear.
