La politica dei piaceri: tutti gli uomini della kallipolis

At the beginning of Book 4 of the Republic, the Platonic Socrates commits himself to guarantee happiness to the kallipolis, implying that this promise involves the necessity to make all men just and happy. The following inquiring process succeeds in fixing an isomorphic correspondence between city and soul’s order. But natural differences among human types pose many problems in order to apply the same functional model of harmony to different people. A “historical” debate has been developed from the thesis of B. Williams on the non-applicability of the qualification of «just» to subjects that are not autonomously lead by the rational part of the soul; and this idea seems to imply as well the negation of happiness for all the non-philosophers. The author of this essay proposes a different view, claiming that Book 4 solves the question of the harmonic integration of the individuals in the city (but only insofar far as virtue is concerned), while Book 9 gives a new possible way-out with regard to happiness, with an unexpected reappraisal and a new settlement of the question of pleasure.