4.3: Wisdom in the City

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See 427d-429a. Having declared their initial sketch of the good city complete, Socrates proceeds to define its virtues, the characteristic ways in which it is excellent. Notice that there is no controversy when he states that the city “is wise, courageous, temperate, and just.” These were recognized in Socrates’ day as central moral virtues. Other virtues were of course recognized – piety, for instance, and hospitality – but these appear to have been considered secondary virtues, perhaps because they could be construed as aspects of one or another of the four central virtues. (Hospitality, for instance, could be understood as justice towards guests, and piety as justice towards the gods.) Socrates begins with the virtue of wisdom. What is it for a city to be wise? It is for the rulers to have good judgment, based on real knowledge, concerning the proper ordering of the city as a whole, both internally and in foreign policy. Although wisdom is good for the city as a whole, it is an excellence specifically of one part of the city, the rulers. The city is wise if and only if its rulers are wise. Socrates will have more to say about wisdom and the knowledge that serves as its basis in Books V-VII.

In a nation as large and complex as, for instance, the United States of America, can any politician at the federal level be wise in Socrates’ sense of the term, actually knowing what is good for the nation as a whole, and possessing good judgment about how to order things? Is anyone capable of thinking beyond the interests of certain “constituents,” a subset of the nation as a whole?
What does a person need to know to deliberate well about what is good for a city? What concepts? What facts? What values? What skills?