Oikeion and Allotrion in the City and Soul

Abstract

Chapter 7 examines the psychology of the virtue that moral education is designed to produce, as well as the psychology of civic unity that Socrates’ social, political, and economic policies for the Kallipolis are designed to foster. The main thesis is that at both the intrapsychic and the interpersonal levels, Plato’s proposals are designed to exploit the two primitive faces of spirited motivation: its aggression toward the allotrion, and its fondness, protectiveness, and friendship toward the oikeion. His educational program produces psychic harmony in large part by making correct reason “familiar” to spirit and vicious appetites “foreign” to it, and his policies on family and private property promote political harmony by instilling emotional bonds of familiarity and friendship among citizens.