Justice And Injustice Essay, Research Paper
In The Republic, Plato attempts to demonstrate through the character and discourse of
Socrates that justice is better than justice is the good which men must strive for, regardless
of whether they could be unjust and still be rewarded. His method is to use dialectic, the
asking and answering of questions which led the hearer from one point to another,
supposedly with irrefutable logic by obtaining agreement to each point before going on to
the next, and so building an argument.
Early on, his two young listeners pose the question of whether justice is stronger than
injustice, what each does to a man, and what makes the first good and the second bad. In
answering this question, Socrates deals directly with the philosophy of the individual’s
goodness and virtue, but also ties it to his concept of the perfect state, which is a republic
of three classes of people with a rigid social structure and little in the way of amusement.
Although Socrates returns time and again to the concept of justice in his discourse on the
perfect city-state, much of it seems off the original subject. One of his main points,
however, is that goodness is doing what is best for the common, greater good rather than
for individual happiness. There is a real sense in which his philosophy turns on the
concepts of virtue, and his belief that ultimately virtue is its own reward.
His first major point is that justice is an excellence of character. He then seeks agreement
that no excellence is achieved through destructive means. The function of justice is to
improve human nature, which is inherently constructive. Therefore, at a minimum, justice
is a form of goodness that cannot be involved in injuring someone’s character. Justice, in
short, is a virtue, a human excellence.
His next point is that acting in accordance with excellence brings happiness. Then he ties
excellence to one’s function. His examples are those of the senses — each sensory organ is
excellent if it performs its function, as the eye sees, the ear hears. Therefore, the just
person is a happy person is a person who performs his function. Since these are tied
together, injustice can never exceed these virtues and so justice is stronger and is the
good.
However, Socrates does not stop there. He goes on to examine the question of the nature
of justice and the just life. He identifies the four of the Athenian virtues: wisdom, courage,
moderation, and justice. For the bulk of the book, he looks at each virtue separately in
terms of the perfect city state, but our focus is on justice. But he makes the point that
justice, of the virtues, resides in man’s relations to other men, not just in man as an
individual. Thus, it is an excellence in social organization and in the organization of the
human soul. So justice is a virtue which must be connected to the function of efficient and
healthful cooperation. Justice is in one sense the greatest virtue for it is key to making the
other virtues work together for the common good. If all the parts are to work together as
a whole, each must have on function to excel at. Like the organs of the body, all
contribute to the whole, but the eyes only see, the ears only hear. They do not share
functions. Using this analogy, justice would be something like the moral mind which
guides the body in its activities. Justice, then is the head, at the top of the hierarchy in
social terms. When the other three virtues work together in orderly fashion within the
state, justice is produced. But for justice to be produced, it must come from everyone
doing his assigned function under the excellent guidance of the ruling class.
Despite his emphasis of justice as a function of the perfect state, Socrates also deals with
justice as a personal virtue.He finds that there is a parallel between the organization of the
state and the organization of the individual. Just as there are three virtues other than
justice, Socrates finds three parts in the individual soul — sensation, emotion, intelligence.
The just person, then must have balance between these aspects. Each must function in
moderation to contribute to the health of the whole. Appetite and sensation are matters of
desire. Desire must be subordinate to reason, or else they will throw the individual out of
balance and lead him into injustice and unhappiness. Emotion (spirit and will) also can
master desire.
The alliance of emotion and reason is similar, Socrates says, to the rulers and the
guardians in the state. Thus, the individual is a miniature state, and justice in the soul is
like justice in the state.
In the opposite case, the situation of the unjust, whether state or individual, desires hold a
tyranny. Because there is a lack of internal control, outside things move the unjust around
at will. Thus the unjust lives a life of fear and anxiety, the fruit of being out of control.
Socrates asserts that only the man of reason has pure pleasures. All others have varying
degrees of unhappiness. By equating the philosopher with the man of pure reason, he sets
up a situation where proof is not so much necessary for any of his points as it is to say that
the philosopher, the only one who sees clearly, says so. Interestingly, Socrates couches a
form of despotism in terms which are intended to seem benevolent. Since happiness is the
sign of justice, and pleasure is one sign of happiness, then the just person is the happy
person. Interestingly, he equates true pleasure with knowledge, the province of reason and
the philosopher.
Finally, in Book X, Socrates argues for the existence of an immortal soul. With this
concession, he makes the point that good is that which preserves and benefits. Justice is
good, so it therefore preserves and benefits in this life as well as the next. Therefore, even
though a man may wish to behave badly when no one is looking, as with the myth of the
ring of Gyges, in fact, behaving justly will have the most rewards.
Ultimately, the difficulty with Socrates’ arguments is that they rely on equating things on
to the next in a chain that eventually leads back to the original proposition. But the logic
of these connections seems built more on assumptions than on objective truth. This is in
keeping with his stance that ultimately what he says is right is right because he is a
philosopher, and therefore is by his nature right. The dialectic seems more of a game to
get the hearer to go along