At the time of Plato's Republic, the citizens lived in a unity of religion and politics. Hegel refers to this life, prior to the rending of the conscience into the exterior modern State and interior religion, as beautiful, free, and happy.
Perhaps the nostalgia for the beautiful, free, and happy unity presides today over the confused attempts to “change life,” where politics and religion exist side by side and intermingle. But this unity was not possible except in the ideal of the Republic; the current confusion takes place rather in the name of a utopian non-city.