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from house to housing
already seen that your psychological sense of ownership was only made possible by a heavy government subsidy in the first place. Glaucon Not mine. I earned every penny, and I don’t need any help from the government, thank you very much.
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Socrates We’ll see about that. But first, we must finish with our house. Let us consider its architecture more closely. Not its style, but its logic. Where, for example, do you suppose the front door is? Glaucon I am tempted to offer a common sense answer: on the front, of course. But I suspect there’s a trick. Socrates You are learning, Glaucon. You have begun to understand that there is little that is commonsensical about today’s houses. Indeed, the front door to many of them is located not on the front (this is merely an auxiliary or ceremonial entrance) but on the side, next to the driveway, or even inside the garage. This reflects the actual intimacy between car and house. What is our architect to do about this? Tradition stipulates that the front door be located on the front, preferably behind a gracious porch. But everyday life, centered on the automobile, dictates otherwise. Does our architect recognize this and convert the garage entrance into a monumental architectural event? Or do we redesign our entire city and with it, our entire way of life, so that the car vanishes and the front door regains its place of honor on the front again? Glaucon The latter, I suspect. Socrates But beware. This is a false choice, a rhetorical device that might suit our Sophistic friends. The fact that we can even imagine restoring a nonexistent idyll built around the front porch by thoroughly transforming our transportation systems suggests that there are many more options available to us; some more dramatic, some less. My point is that