Feast Without Relishes
From the City of Sows to the Feverish City
How can affluence host justice?
Injustice today invites affluence into potentially uncharted territory: hospitality, rather than productivity. Meaning, I will strive to be a host to the one in need, rather than a distant provider. Hospitality, where money isn’t transacted, and the poor aren’t helped just because others live in luxury, but where currency is vitality, beauty, care, and attention. Culture, renewed.
In Book II of the Republic, numerous dialogues are held on this question of justice and affluence. Thrasymachus, one of Socrates’ main challengers on the topic of justice, states that “the just is the advantage of the stronger, and the unjust is what is profitable for oneself” (344c). He asserts that affluent people are served by justice. Justice, then, is defined by the powerful and serves their interests. While this is a cynical take on the role of justice, today it is easy to observe that it holds: those who live in luxury and hold power are most free to wield justice and injustice as they please.
Socrates posits that a just society can be created based on the bare minimum. He proposes a city that includes life’s necessities: food, clothing, trade, market, currency, and workers. No rulers, no affluence. Also, no culture. This is referred to as the “city of sows” (372d), or the “healthy, simple city.” This invites tension between affluence as enabling the “performance” of justice, as Thrasymachus suggests, and simplicity as the essence of justice, as Socrates proposes.
They are interrupted by Glaucon, who is dissatisfied with this simple city. He claims that they “make these men have their feast without relishes” (372b). He wants more couches and desserts. This contradiction serves as a turning point in Plato’s Republic.
Glaucon’s dissatisfaction alters Socrates’ expression of his intention. “All right,” he says, “we are considering not only how a [just] city, but also a luxurious city, comes into being” (372e). Socrates makes it clear that “the true city is, in my opinion, the one just described—a healthy city,” but suggests looking at this “feverish city” (372e). His use of “healthy” and “feverish” emphasizes the potentially dangerous nature of desires beyond one’s basic needs.
Why is a “feast without relishes” problematic for Glaucon? On the one hand, we can criticize him and call him gluttonous. On the other hand, very few of us today are feasting without relishes. In this sense, we must identify ourselves with Glaucon, accepting that his wish to feast on relishes leads to a more complex unfolding of justice. It invites hospitality into the picture, where relishes can be shared in a non-transactional manner. I can host your questions and your striving in conversation. I can host your pain by tending to you. Moreover, feasting with relishes includes culture, which Socrates excluded from his simple city, and which we are certainly steeped in right now. I can host you in a classroom or a theater.
Plato was, of course, deeply suspicious about culture’s relationship with justice—especially regarding poetry. He did not trust art in society. In one sense, Plato was right to be suspicious: today, there are also culture wars. But now that we live in a world that absolutely includes such things as education, the arts, and medicine, I am less interested in dwelling on his suspicion and more focused on the reality that we engage with these “relishes” daily.
The dialogues in the Republic go on to show how, with man’s desire for more and the invocation of a luxurious city, great lengths are crossed to achieve satisfaction, and the outcomes potentially undermine the dignity of the human being. After turning toward affluence, the dialogue addresses slavery. “The city must be made bigger. And so we’ll need more servants too” (373b). Furthermore, Socrates and Glaucon mention the necessity of war in an affluent society:
“Then we must cut off a piece of our neighbor’s land…”
“Quite necessarily, Socrates.”
“After that, won’t we go to war…?”
“Like that” (373d-e).
War is brought up as a consequence in the luxurious city. Socrates says, “We have…found the origin of war” (373e).
Today, we are at war. Today we live in a feverish city.
But let’s not forget that, while Glaucon’s comment on relishes serves as a metaphor for our desire to consume, it also serves as a metaphor for our desire to add art and vitality to our lives. The desires beyond our basic needs that are advertised left and right invite a new ethical dilemma: Do I help those in need by fulfilling their desires? Or, do I work with the reality of abundance to renew culture in service of the future? We have culture now, and it is curdling. How to keep it fresh?
If injustice is a consequence of living in a more complex and affluent world, the task at hand involves new agreements about what it is we create. Productivity can grant luxuries, but what sort of creation are we responsible for continuing? More stuff? More comfort?
Our feverish world concretely demands that we host those in need with immaterial relishes, rather than simply providing the bare necessities. This means building relational bridges with those in need, so that conversation comes before handing them money. This means using beautiful, developed spaces as venues for a truly shared culture to begin. This is getting to know the human being I am caring for, rather than handing them a pill. If the integrity of the human soul requires relishes, but not only ones that can be quantified or possessed materially, what kind of currency could originate there?