  Just as Socrates develops an account of a virtuous, successful human  being and contrasts it with several defective characters, he also  develops an account of a virtuous, successful city and contrasts it  with several defective constitutions. So the Republic  contributes to political philosophy in two main ways. I will take  them up in turn, starting with four disputed features of Socrates’  good city: its utopianism, communism, feminism, and totalitarianism.