On Sovereignty, Choice, and the Cost of Authorship

Plato: Socrates, I have been troubled by a question. Can a city(country) remain sovereign while seldom exercising sovereignty?

Socrates: Let us ask first, Plato: what do you call sovereignty?

Plato: The right of a people to govern themselves.

Socrates: A right, you say. Tell me—does a man remain strong merely because he possesses arms, even if he never lifts them?

Plato: No. Strength unused fades.

Socrates: Then perhaps sovereignty, like strength, is not preserved by possession alone, but by practice.

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Plato: Yet many cities appear peaceful and prosperous precisely because they avoid costly decisions. Are these not signs of good governance?

Socrates: Peace and prosperity are goods, but tell me—are they ends, or conditions?

Plato: Conditions, I think.

Socrates: And can conditions replace purpose?

Plato: No, they depend upon it.

Socrates: Then a city that arranges its policies only to preserve comfort may mistake the scaffolding for the structure.

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Plato: You suggest that hardship has a role in sovereignty. This seems counterintuitive.

Socrates: Only if one believes sovereignty means ease. Tell me, when a city chooses a path that costs it dearly, yet claims it as its own—what is revealed?

Plato: That the decision is authored, not inherited.

Socrates: Just so. The cost is not the failure of sovereignty, but its proof.

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Plato: Then what of cities that rely on stronger powers for protection and trade? Are they vassals?

Socrates: Answer me this: do they still imagine refusal?

Plato: Often they do not.

Socrates: Then their dependence is not merely material, but imaginative. A vassal is not one who obeys commands, but one who no longer rehearses dissent.

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Plato: You speak of imagination as a political faculty.

Socrates: Indeed. When a city can no longer picture itself bearing the cost of saying “no,” sovereignty survives only as ceremony.

Plato: Like a word recited without understanding.

Socrates: Or a vow never tested.

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Plato: Is this why some cities rearm, diversify, and accept friction—to recover authorship?

Socrates: Yes. They seek not conflict, but the capacity to choose even at a price.

Plato: And those that avoid friction?

Socrates: They may live well for a time, but they grow unused to judgment.

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Plato: Then sovereignty is not lost suddenly, but forgotten gradually.

Socrates: Precisely. It withers as habits wither—through disuse.

Plato: And when a grave moment arrives?

Socrates: The city discovers it still has rights, but lacks practice. Sovereignty then feels harsh, even immoral, because it demands what has long been avoided.

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Plato: So the true danger is not domination, but comfort.

Socrates: Comfort without authorship, yes.

Plato: Then the sentence we have circled—“This course costs us, yet it is ours”—what is it?

Socrates: It is the litmus of a sovereign mind. A city that can speak it has not guaranteed success, but it has preserved meaning.

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Plato: And a city that never speaks it?

Socrates: It may remain peaceful, prosperous, and polite—yet it will slowly forget how to mean it.

Plato: Then sovereignty, in its highest sense, is not freedom from cost, but fidelity to chosen cost.

Socrates: Well said, Plato. Sovereignty is the courage to remain the author of one’s burden.

Plato: And philosophy, it seems, is the rehearsal of that courage.

Socrates: Just so. For both cities and souls must practice choosing, lest choice itself become unfamiliar.