The nature of justice is the central question around which the Republic is structured. [1] In his greatest work, Plato discusses the nature of justice, defends its reality, and indicates the kind of society and polity he views most likely to produce a just social order. Plato was primarily an ethical and social philosopher. His metaphysical speculations were driven by an interest in achieving a good and righteous life amid the fluctuations of political fortunes and the temptations and pressures of practical life.
Plato was born around 348 B.C. into a prominent family. His father was descended from the last king of Athens, and his mother was descended from Solon, the great lawgiver of Athenian history. It was Solon who gave a form to the democratic constitution of the city-state. In a famous letter, Plato describes his various political activities and the disillusionments that resulted from his life experiences. [2] There is no question but that these experiences impacted Plato’s views on Justice.
Justice in the Time of Plato
Before dealing with specifics of the argument in the Republic, it is useful to look at the meaning of dikē, the ancient Greek word for “justice.” By Plato’s day, Dikē was largely replaced by its cognate, dikaiosynē, the word used for Plato’s cardinal virtue, justice. Important for understanding Plato is that Heraclitus used the term “justice” to refer to a proper balance among the forces of strife which he thought fundamental to the functioning of the universe. [3] This is a view held by other Greek philosophers.
In the New Testament, dikaiosynē refers to righteousness and often translates the Hebrew term “tsadique”. To the traditional Hebrew mind, a just or righteous person follows the law of God (the torah) and the teachings and wisdom of the past regarding proper behavior between people. This traditional usage is close to what might have been the traditional view of the Greeks as to the nature of justice. Perhaps more importantly for understanding Plato, the traditional world implies that justice must be achieved despite political life’s flux, change, and strife.
Three Views of Justice in the Republic
In the Republic, Plato outlines several competing theories of Justice:
Traditional Group Ethics. The dialogue of the Republic begins with the views of Cephalus, an elderly friend of Socrates who represents the traditional wisdom of the Greeks. For Cephalus, justice is speaking truthfully and giving each person their due. It is roughly equivalent to what Jewish wisdom literature considered just or righteous in a human being. A just person gives to each what is their due in society and their social and personal relations. After Cephalus leaves the conversation, his heir, Polemarchus, defends a more sophisticated version of the traditional view. “Justice” for Polemarchus is doing good to your friends and harm to your enemies. This may seem a harsh and limited sense of justice until one understands what Polemarchus is defending. We might call him a defender of a “group” or “tribal” loyalty. [4]For Polemarchus, a just person acts righteously towards family, social class, friends, fellow workers, church, neighborhood, city, and perhaps the nation. Justice is a social virtue practiced within a particular society, in the case of ancient Greece, the city-state.
Socrates argues that this is not necessarily true. For example, if my neighbor should give me some explosives to store in my barn and then later comes and asks for them so that he can blow up his place of employment, justice would not dictate that I give him his due despite our bond of friendship. The argument, which may seem obvious, points to a limitation on any tribal standard of justice: There are times when we are faced with a call to do justice greater than our loyalty to those closest to us. Therefore, no traditional, tribal, or group ethics can be an infallible guide to action, not even our loyalties to those most important to us.
Power Ethics. Thrasymachus, a prominent sophist, then states his view, which should be familiar to modem people. For Thrasymachus, justice is what those in power say it is:
This, then, is what I say justice is, the same in all cities, the advantage of the established rule. Since the established rule is certainly stronger, anyone who reasons correctly will conclude that the just is the same everywhere, namely the advantage of the stronger. [5]
According to this argument, justice is simply that which those in power hold to be in their best interests.
Socrates attacks this argument by stating that the stronger and those in authority do not always know what is in their best interests and make mistakes of judgment, which we all call “injustice.” [6] It simply cannot be that justice is whatever those in power consider it to be at one moment, whether it is a king, a group, or the people.
Socrates also argues against the sophist position by analogizing political leaders to craftsmen. Insofar as they practice their profession, all craftsmen seek something other than their advantage. For example, doctors seek the health of their patients, and if they do not do so, they are poor doctors. Artists seek to create a piece of art desired by their benefactors. By analogy, political leaders are craftsmen in the art of government. Their art involves seeking the public good. If they seek their advantage and not the public good, they are not good craftsmen or use a word appropriate to political affairs, and they are acting unjustly. Thus, justice cannot be simply those in power seeking their advantage.
In response to this argument, Thrasymachus violently argues that Socrates is merely naive. He does not understand how the world operates. Justice is created as those who can dominate others and seek their own benefit. The only people interested in justice are the weak and naïve. They become just by following the dictates of the strong. We call justice simply a name given to the norms the powerful prefer.
For Thrasymachus, Socrates simply refuses to understand that justice and injustice relate to the advantage of the stronger and the ruler. What the ruler desires is automatically just, even though it is detrimental to the subject who obeys and serves. One who serves well is just. Injustice, then, consists in not doing what the rulers desire and serving the advantage of the stronger.[7] “Justice,” according to Thrasymachus, is attributable to only the weak who must serve the strong. They are just when they serve the strong and unjust when they do not.
Socrates replies with an argument applicable to our current society. If the views of Thrasymachus were to be put into practice, the moral fiber of the society would be destroyed, for no citizen would care about justice. Those who believe, like Nietzsche, that power is everything are ultimately unwise and foolish. They destroy the state. A sound political system requires wisdom and virtue, and wisdom and virtue can only exist where there is justice. [8]
A Utilitarian View of Justice. Glaucon presents a view of justice that is communitarian and utilitarian. Originally, societies were formed at the will of the strong. This is the root of Thrasymachus’ view of justice. Human nature is such that our natural competitiveness and desire for honor inevitably cause human beings to act without reference to justice toward others. [9] Justice, then, is not a natural virtue; it exists to place limits on human injustice. As to each person, what is important is to be seen as just for social reasons, but being a just person is not necessary for human happiness:
When fathers speak to their sons, they say that one must be just, as do all the others who have charge of anyone. But they don’t praise justice itself, only the high reputations it leads to, and the consequences of being thought to be just, such as public offices, marriages, and other things…. [10]
Justice is not natural, so to speak, but social in its nature and benefits. It results from our human need to place limits on power. It is unnatural and onerous for those who seek it. [11] Therefore, justice is doing things necessary to maintain the peace in order of a society, protecting the property and rights of those within it.
A Socratic View of Justice
In the end, Socrates defends the view that justice is found in a well-ordered society. In such a society, there is social peace because people of different groups receive what they are due. Only in such a society can the traditional view of justice and a social view of justice be combined so that all people receive their due. In so doing, Socrates tries to achieve the best of the prior theories without their flaws. He rejects the view that justice is merely traditional, the result of power, or utilitarian. Justice is an independent reality based on human nature and the nature of human society.
Socrates argues that justice can be discerned by analogy to what constitutes a just person. A just person keeps the three constituents of the human person, mind, body, and soul in a rational order. By analogy, a just society exists where the major groups of society are in order. Plato divides Greek society into three classes whose characteristics mirror the human psyche: philosophers (mind), honor seekers (soul), and money lovers (body). [12] A just society is, by analogy to the human person, a society in which the instincts of each class can exist in harmony.
Socrates’ view of justice as based on reason indicates that philosophers should rule because the love of wisdom is connected to the human capacity of reason which creates order in personal human affairs. According to Greek thought, the person guided by reason and controls his mind, emotions, and appetites accordingly is righteous. Society must also be ruled by reason to achieve justice. As Socrates put it:
Therefore, when the entire soul follows the philosophical part, and there is no Civil War in it, each part of it does its own work exclusively, and it’s just, and in particular, it enjoys its own pleasures, the best and truest pleasures possible for it. [13]
This conclusion leads Socrates to a consideration of that kind of society would most frequently achieve justice. The ideal city of the Republic is Plato’s answer to that question.
Conclusion
The sophist arguments in the Republic should be familiar to modern people, for it is implicit in all Marxist and Nietzschean views of justice. It sits behind the view of Oliver Wendell Holmes that justice is whatever the majority believes it to be. As Holmes observed in his essay on “Natural Law,” reprinted in Harvard Law Review:
I used to say when I was young, that truth was the majority vote of that nation that could lick all others. Certainly we may expect that the received opinion about the present war will depend a good deal upon which side wins (I hope with all my soul it will be mine), and I think that the statement was correct insofar as it implied that our test of truth is a reference to either a present or an imagined future majority in favor of our view. [14]
Modern people cannot ignore the views of Thrasymachus because they are the views held by many elites: “Justice is nothing other than the advantage of the stronger.” [15] The result of such thinking is evident everywhere around us. It is, as Socrates predicted, the result of a sophistic social order is “civil war, hatred, and infighting, while justice brings friendship and a sense of common purpose.” [16] For our society to heal, it will be necessary to recover belief among elites in the reality and importance of justice, not as a slogan to attain power, but as an invisible reality to seek.
Karl Popper, in his great work, The Open Society and its Enemies makes what I think is a fair critique of the limits of Plato’s analysis and conclusions. Popper points out that the Republic does not deal with certain egalitarian ideals present in Greek society and which had been upheld by its democratic leaders. He begins his critique by pointing out that Plato omits to discuss what we would consider the most important fundamental ideals of justice:
… most of us, especially those whose general outlook is humanitarian, means something like this: (a) equal distribution of the burden of citizenship, i.e. of those limitations of freedom, which are necessary in social life; (b) equal treatment of the citizens before the law, provided, of course, that (c) the laws show neither favor nor disfavor towards individual citizens, or groups or classes; (d) impartiality of the courts of justice; and (e), an equal share in the in the advantages (and not only in the burden) which membership of the state may offer to its citizens. [17]
In Popper’s view, Plato’s omission is due to his fundamentally anti-democratic view of the state, which reduces justice to the convenience and maintenance of what Plato sees as the ideal state. [18] In this sense, Popper sees Plato as fundamentally totalitarian in his view of justice. In particular, this kind of view of justice views the needs of the ruling class of society as paramount and as superior to individual claims to freedom and justice in the sense set out above.
While I agree with Popper’s critique, I would argue that Socrates’ argument in the Republic is fundamentally sound. He considers justice as an independent reality. It cannot be reduced to power, utility, or any other lesser thing. Justice is related to the creation of social peace and harmony, a harmony that requires that society be governed by reason. In this way, Plato upholds basic ideals that may be under attack in the modern world. Plato was, however, limited by his view of the ideal state, which few contemporary thinkers would view as ideal in any meaningful way. His aristocratic leanings and the development of his philosophy from an unachievable and unwise totalitarian ideal reveal his social location.
Copyright 2923, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved
[1] Plato, Republic tr. G. M.A. Grube rev. C.D.C Reeve (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 1992).
[2] The letter in question is the so-called “Seventh Letter of Plato.” Plato’s Seventh Letter, at www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0164%3Aletter%3D7 (downloaded January 30, 2023). Some scholars question its authenticity.
[3] “Justice” at/www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/dike (downloaded January 30, 2023).
[4] It is a view called, “tribal” by some thinkers today. I think this appellation is unfair. The idea is that the society to which I belong has a set of standards that are natural to it, standards that its members uphold. The weakness of this notion is only seen as my standards come into conflict with the standards of others.
[5] Republic, 339.
[6] Id, at 339d. In making this argument, Thrasymachus illustrates a problem that is causing the decline of our own democracy. His view means that tyranny, oligarchy, and mob rule are all equally able to call their decrees “just” even though they harm others. This problem is endemic to modern American politics. Those in power feel justified in doing whatever they please.
[7] Id, at 343c-d.
[8] Id, at 351d.
[9] Id, at 359b-c-d.
[10] Id, at 363a
[11] Id, at 364
[12] Id, at 581c
[13] Id, at 586c
[14] Oliver Wendell Holmes, Natural Law” Harvard Law Review (1918).
[15] Republic, 338c.
[16] Id, at 351d.
[17] Karl Popper, The Open Society and its Enemies Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 86
[18] Id.