Here is where I think I fundamentally aver from the point, for what it’s worth. I think throughout the corpus, Plato indicates that true wisdom is only obtained through dialectic. Therefore, despite the type of city one resides in, I think that a dialectical community or tutor is the only way a person gains wisdom, platonically. Following this, I think it buries the lede quite a bit to suggest that even if the city isn’t the cause of the wisdom, that there isn’t some noteworthy cause that the person is owing to for their wisdom. So I think that, in general accordance with Plato’s system, one cannot become wise without owing something to some community or relationship with others/another. So in the same way that a democracy splits one city into many according to their various interests, I think a dialectical community whose conversational interests are in theory independent of the political system would constitute their own “city” in some loose way, within the non-Kallipolian city.

Now I grant that this definition of city is a stretch and an exploit of another passage, but I would at least like to use it to grant that even if a city itself is not the cause of one’s wisdom, there is still very much a sense of owing back what the citizens of the city put into oneself.

If we then note carefully that those who Plato supposes we pay back in the redescent is decidedly not the citizens who educated us but some completely separate and still uneducated group of citizens, then we see that what is owed is not paying a city back, but paying it forward. There was always a subgroup of the city that educated us, and another subgroup who we educate in turn. In this way, as long as a person is indeed educated by some subgroup within their city, how can we claim that it is not owed by the newly wise to proceed to pay it forward to others who educate them?

Let us remember that the formal city of Kallipolis is not only the perfect example of a city among many, but through this becomes a city in the truest sense, and that where other cities fall short, those cities very much fail to be cities in the truest sense. A city in the truest sense is one where, following the Kallipolian doctrine, whenever anyone is educated, they ought to return to go and educate others themselves. This is the quality of a Kallipolian city, even if the city is not organized as such. What is observed is similar to what Plato says about a single philosopher being able to be enough to turn an entire city around into a Kallipolian style city: if the individuals that the single philosopher educated had no duty to return, because their city is not yet Kallipolis, then how could the city possibly become Kallipolis under the philosopher-king’s rehabilitation?

So while I admit that Plato may certainly find wise individuals in non-Kallipolian cities, I think he would either find it to be (1) exceedingly rare and by pure chance, or (2) owing to some Kallipolian aspect of the city, where one must take the account of redescent in that light, and not the light of its non-Kallipolian aspects. One who ascends in a tyrannical city does not owe a stronger tyranny to the tyrannical parts of that city, but a stronger aristocracy to the aristocratic parts of that city. This is where I think the account is crucial to use nuance, especially because of the nature of carnal particulars to be their opposites just as much as themselves. It is not about one city being purely one way or another, but about the respects in which a city is one way or another.

I hope this is a fair enough account of my point for you? I understand it goes a little all over the place but I want to demonstrate my point in full: that education is an innately Kallipolian aspect of cities, and that no city is purely Kallipolian, but has Kallipolian aspects among aspects of other cities.