Abstract
When Plato envisioned an ideal republic in the fifth century BC he imagined a society in which men and women mated for eugenic breeding purposes, relinquished their children to state officials, and were even forbidden knowledge of who their children were. Plato reckoned that citizens did not have a special right or claim to found a family, and that any blessings that private family life conferred were incompatible with the good state.
The number of marriages we shall leave to the rulers to decide...so that our city shall...become neither too big nor too small....There will have to be some clever lots introduced, so that at each marriage celebration the inferior man...will blame chance but not the rulers....The young men who have distinguished themselves in war or in other ways must be given... more abundant permission to sleep with women, so that we may have a good excuse to have as many children as possible begotten by them....As the children are born, officials appointed for the purpose... will take them....The children of good parents they will take to a rearing pen in the care of nurses...the children of inferior parents...they will hide...in a secret and unknown place....if a man...unites with a woman...without the sanction of the rulers; we shall say that he brings to the city an unauthorized and unhallowed bastard.1
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Jecker, N.S. (1993). Founding a Family. In: Humber, J.M., Almeder, R.F. (eds) Biomedical Ethics Reviews · 1992. Biomedical Ethics Reviews. Humana Press, Totowa, NJ. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-59259-446-7_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-59259-446-7_6
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