property, 3. 416 E; 4. 420 A, 422 D; 5. 464; 8. 543; —of feeling, 5. 464.
Community.
[The communism of the Republic seems to have been suggested by Plato’s desire for the unity of the state (cp. 5. 462 foll.). If those ‘two small pestilent words, “meum” and “tuum,” which have engendered so much strife among men and created so much mischief in the world,’ could be banished from the lips and thoughts of mankind, the ideal state would soon be realized. The citizens would have parents, wives, children, and property in common; they would rejoice in each other’s prosperity, and sorrow at each other’s misfortune; they would call their rulers not ‘lords’ and ‘masters,’ but ‘friends’ and ‘saviours.’ Plato is aware that such a conception could hardly be carried out in this world; and he evades or adjourns, rather than solves, the difficulty by the famous assertion that only when the philosopher rules in the city will the ills of human life find an end [cp. Introduction, p. clxxiii]. In the Critias, where the ideal state, as Plato himself hints to us (110 D), is to some extent reproduced in an imaginary description of ancient Attica, property is common, but there is no mention of a community of wives and children. Finally in the Laws (5. 739), Plato while still maintaining the blessings of communism, recognizes the impossibility of its realization, and sets about the construction of a ‘second-best state’ in which the rights of property are conceded; although, according to Aristotle (Pol. ii. 6, § 4), he gradually reverts to the ideal polity in all except a few unimportant particulars.]
Conception, the, of truth by the philosopher, 6. 490 A.