Abstract

Plato is often considered a founder of the humanist tradition, but I question this interpretation of Plato’s humanism via a return to the Neo-Platonic/Neo-Pythagorean interpretation of the “healthy city” of the Republic, which is more frequently referred to as the “city of pigs”. Here, in the first city Socrates describes in Book II, we see a “vegetarian republic” in which humans and nonhumans live in mutual con-cord rather than as predator and prey. Neither hunting nor animal husbandry is practiced in this first regime, and while animals are used for labor-power, Socrates’ detailed description of the diet of the citizens of the huopolis makes it clear that animals are not consumed as food. Plato’s Socrates never retracts his praise of this first regime throughout the remainder of the Republic, which implies that this city and its human/animal comity retain their exemplary status in Plato’s political theory.