8.2: The Timocratic City

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See 547b-548d. When the various people in the city start disagreeing with one another, those who are especially strong in the appetitive part of the soul (“iron and bronze”) pull the city towards economic development and the pursuit of wealth while those especially strong in the rational and spirited parts (“the gold and silver types”) pull the city “towards virtue and the old political system.” Socrates speculates that the city ends up compromising, with the former auxiliaries taking over as rulers. This is a compromise because the spirited values of honor and victory, involving as they do earning the respect of other people, fall between the narrowly self-centered consumer values of the appetitive part and the rational part’s fully informed love of the good. After owning no private property at all in the aristocratic city, the former auxiliaries take possession of all the land and houses, and distribute them in the manner of feudal lords. Then they enslave the city’s workers, “those whom they had previously guarded as free friends and providers of upkeep,” and turn their attention, in foreign affairs, to war, and in domestic affairs, to guarding against uprisings of the people. Socrates describes the domestic situation as enslavement because the workers are no longer working for the harmonious flourishing of the whole city. Instead, they are compelled to be part of the timocratic war machine. Although the rulers value above all else the hard-earned honors of warfare – “timocratic” means honor-ruled – this does not prevent them from indulging their appetitive desires in private; for as far as the spirited part is concerned, what goes on in private doesn’t matter much as long as it remains discreet and doesn’t surface to besmirch one’s reputation. What happens to the philosophers under this constitution is unclear. They presumably desire to return to contemplation of the forms, but they have to find some way to make a living, and the rulers are not going to pay them to undermine their reputations. (Maybe the philosophers end up researching new weapon systems.) The paradigmatic timocracy in Socrates’ day was Sparta, Athens’ primary adversary in the Peloponnesian War. Examples from later chapters in history include Rome under the Republic with its profound concern for timocratic dignitas, and the feudal societies of Europe and Japan with their codes of honor (chivalry and bushido respectively).

How would the life of a worker in a timocratic city be different from the life of a worker in an aristocratic city? Would there be any noticeable difference?
Were timocratic societies more common in the past than they are at present? If so, why might this be so?