Plato: Justice

Polus admires orators for the tyrannical power they have. However, Socrates argues that orators and tyrants lack power worth having: the ability to satisfy one's wishes or wants (boulēseis). He distinguishes wanting from thinking best, and grants that orators and tyrants do what they think best while denying that they do what they want. His account is often thought to involve two conflicting requirements: wants must be attributable to the wanter from their own perspective (to count as their desires), but (...) wants must also be directed at objects that are genuinely good (in order for failure to satisfy them to matter). We offer an account of wanting as reflective, coherent desire, which allows Socrates to satisfy both desiderata. We then explain why he thinks that orators and tyrants want to act justly, though they do greater injustices than anyone else and so frustrate their own wants more than anyone else. (shrink)

Contents 1 Introduction / 2 The Timaeus on dignity: the Demiurge’s speech / 3 Justice as a virtue / 4 The content of just actions / 5 Justice of the law and justice of the state / 6 Equality / 7 Some key issues in Plato’s conception of justice / 7.1 What is more excellent—justice of the soul or justice of action? / 7.2 Which activity is best and what is its best object? / 7.2. Just actions over contemplation / (...) 7.2. The Timaeus and Plato’s teaching on justice / 7.2. The elderly Cephalus on justice: foreword as epilogue / 7.3 The sharing of wives: testing the interpretation on a ‘hard case’ / 8 Conclusions. (shrink)

Η παρούσα διατριβή πραγματεύεται τη σχέση που συνδέει την μυθική σύνθεση και την διαλεκτική μέθοδο στο πλατωνικό έργο. Οι περισσότεροι μελετητές, βασιζόμενοι στις ποιητικές κριτικές του Πλάτωνος στην Πολιτεία, υποστηρίζουν ότι ο φιλόσοφος εξορίζει την ποίηση και την τέχνη εν γένει, από την ιδανική πολιτεία του, και, κατά συνέπεια, δεν θα έπρεπε ο ίδιος να συνθέτει και να χρησιμοποιεί μύθους. Ενάντια σε αυτή τη θεώρηση, επιχειρώ να δείξω, αφενός, ότι ο Πλάτων διακρίνει δύο είδη ποιήσεως· το ένα το υιοθετεί, το (...) άλλο το εξορίζει. Στην πρώτη περίπτωση, η ποίηση είναι ωφέλιμη, διότι καθιστά αρμονικές και ενάρετες τις ψυχές των πολιτών, τρέφοντας στον κατάλληλο βαθμό το ενδιάμεσο ψυχικό τμήμα, δηλαδή το θυμοειδές, και συναρμόζοντας το με το ανώτερο, ήτοι το λογιστικό. Στη δεύτερη, είναι επιβλαβής, επειδή ενσπείρει σε αυτές τη δυσαρμονία και τη διαφθορά, ενδυναμώνοντας υπερβολικά την υποδεέστερη ψυχική δύναμη, που είναι το επιθυμητικό. Βάσει της ανωτέρω διάκρισης, υποστηρίζω ότι τα πλατωνικά μυθολογήματα συνιστούν πρότυπα της απλής και ωφέλιμης μυθολογίας και ότι η χρήση τους αποσκοπεί στην εγχάραξη της αρετής στις ψυχές των αναγνωστών/ακροατών τους. Εισηγούμαι, επιπλέον, ότι ο μύθος, ως πλατωνική σύνθεση, εμφανίζεται μετά την εισαγωγή της θεωρίας της ανάμνησης και της υποθετικής μεθόδου στον Μένωνα, γεγονός που καταδεικνύει ότι η λειτουργία του πλατωνικού μύθου είναι, θεμελιωδώς, συνυφασμένη με την πλατωνική μέθοδο. (shrink)

This book is the first comprehensive study of Plato’s conception of justice. The universality of human rights and the universality of human dignity, which is recognised as their source, are among the crucial philosophical problems in modern-day legal orders and in contemporary culture in general. If dignity is genuinely universal, then human beings also possessed it in ancient times. Plato not only perceived human dignity, but a recognition of dignity is also visible in his conception of justice, which forms the (...) core of his philosophy. Plato’s Republic is consistently interpreted here as a treatise on justice, relating to an individual and not to the state. The famous myth of the cave is a story about education taking place in the world here and now. The best activity is not contemplation, but acting for the benefit of others. Not ideas, but individuals are the proper objects of love. Plato’s philosophy may provide foundations for modern-day human rights protection rather than for totalitarian orders. (shrink)

An important argument in favour of recognising the cultural relativism and against universality of dignity and human rights, is the claim that the concept of dignity is a genuinely modern one. An analysis of a passage from the Demiurge’s speech in Timaeus reveals that Plato devoted time to reflecting on the question of what determines the qualitative difference between certain beings (gods and human being) and the world of things, and what forms the basis for the special treatment of these (...) beings – issues that using the language of today can be described reasonably as dignity. The attributes of this form of dignity seem to overlap with the nature of dignity as we know it today. Moreover, Plato proposes a response both to the question of what dignity is like, as well as the question of what dignity is. It is existential perfection, rooted in a perfect manner of existence, based on a specific internal unity of being. Dignity is therefore primordial in regard to particular features and independent of their acquisition or loss. Plato’s approach allows him to postulate that people be treated as ends in themselves; an approach therefore that prohibits the treatment of people as objects. Both the state and law are ultimately subordinated to the good of the individual, rather than the individual to the good of the state. -/- Istotny argument na rzecz relatywizmu kulturowego i przeciwko powszechności godności i wynikających z niej praw człowieka, oparty jest na poglądzie, że godność uznana została dopiero w czasach nowożytnych. Analiza fragmentu mowy Demiurga z Platońskiego dialogu Timajos ujawnia, że Platon rozwinął refleksję nad czymś, co stanowi o jakościowej różnicy między pewnymi istotami (bogami i ludźmi) a światem rzeczy, i co jest podstawą szczególnego traktowania tych istot, a co językiem współczesnym zasadnie można określić jako godność. Zbieżna jest charakterystyka tej godności z charakterystyką przyjmowaną współcześnie. Co więcej, Platon daje propozycję odpowiedzi nie tylko na pytanie, jaka jest godność, ale także na pytanie, czym jest godność. Jest ona doskonałością egzystencjalną, ugruntowanym w szczególnie doskonałym sposobie istnienia, opartym na szczególnej wewnętrznej jedności bytu. Jako doskonałość istnienia ogarnia ona cały byt, wszystkie jego cechy; jest nieoddzielalna od bytu (jest przyrodzona i niezbywalna). Jako pierwotna wobec partykularnych cech, jest niezależna od ich nabywania lub utraty. Platońskie ujęcie pozwala w oparciu o ujęcie godności formułować postulaty zbieżne z formułowanymi dziś dyrektywami nakazującymi traktować osoby jako cele same w sobie i zakazującymi traktowania osób w sposób czysto instrumentalny, przedmiotowy. Okazuje się, że – zdaniem Platona – jednostki nie wolno traktować czysto instrumentalnie dla dobra państwa; zarówno państwo, jak i prawo są podporządkowane dobru jednostki. (shrink)

The analysis demonstrates that for Plato the principal aim of punishment is not the defence of values acknowledged by the legal system nor the well being of the state, but the good of the individual – his personal development, which is, first of all, moral development. This development consists of the attainment of the greatest – situated on the level of existence – excellence of the subject, which is the virtue of justice, an inner unity based on inner regularity, order, (...) harmony and straightness. Attainment of the virtue of justice is likewise the attainment of happiness. In principle, punishment ought to be adapted and proportionate not to the act committed, but to the state of the subject, the state of his soul. It should be appropriate medicine, returning health to the soul, restoring inner order, harmony and straightness. The elements of a retributive concept of punishment become salient above all in the case of the most hardened criminals, who are internally so spoiled that no amelioration is possible, no punishment can be a suitable, sufficient medicine. Yet, the punishment is deserved, proportional to the degree of depravity of the offender, and thus possesses a deterrent value. Moreover, the suffering of the offender, since it is beneficial for others, contributes to his inner unity and his goodness. The preceding analysis concerning Plato’s conception of punishment clearly shows that the aim of punishment is not the good of the state, nor the abstractly conceived order of justice. The aims of punishment are not located beyond the individual (the individual soul). Therefore, in this conception of punishment there are no elements of thinking typical of that in the spirit of totalitarianism. The law and the state serve the good of the individual. This is an important argument on behalf of the postulate of a non-totalitarian interpretation of the Republic and the others dialogs of Plato. (shrink)

Socrates does not use the Laws' Speech in the Crito principally to persuade Crito to accept his coming execution. It is used instead to persuade Crito to examine and work on his inadequate view of justice. Crito's view of justice fails to coordinate one's duties to friends and those to the law. The Laws' Speech accomplishes this persuasive goal by accompanying Crito’s earlier speech. Both start from the same view of justice, one that Crito accepts, but reach opposing conclusions. Crito (...) cannot judge between the two appealing speeches. His understanding of justice is too confused for him to decide well how to help Socrates. His need to explain what happened the morning he visited Socrates will prompt him and others to examine this indeterminate view of justice. Socrates foregoes direct refutation because Crito will not abide that usual way of interrogation. Engaging in short question-and-answer conversation is not the only way to bring a person to aporia and the intention to examine oneself. Socrates does not here undermine his assertions in the Apology about his ignorance, lack of interest in teaching, constant philosophizing, and his belief that what he does is question, examine, and test those he talks to. (shrink)

In Republic II Glaucon assigns to Socrates the task of praising justice for itself. What it means to praise justice for itself is unclear. A new interpretation is offered on the basis of an analysis of Glaucon's division of goods. A distinction is developed between criterial benefits, those valuable consequences of a thing which provide a standard for evaluating a thing as a good instance of its type, and fringe benefits, valuable consequences which do not provide such a standard. Socrates (...) is expected to praise justice by describing the benefits it constitutes as a valuable activity of soul. He may also use the criterial benefits of justice but not its fringe benefits. This account of Socrates' task is superior to those interpretations which rule out all use of valuable consequences in praising justice and to those interpretations which fail to preserve the distinction between the second and third classes of goods. (shrink)

To understand Plato’s Republic as a whole, we must know his notion of injustice as well as that of justice, since he makes a comparison between the life of justice and the life of injustice. Prior to his detailed analyses of injustice in Books IV, VIII, and IX, Plato discusses injustice philosophically even in Book I. In this paper I deal with 351b-352b where Plato clarifies the function of injustice by appeal to the analogy between city and individual. According to (...) Plato, injustice in the city causes hatred in each citizen, which results in the civil war and fighting among them, leading to the destruction of the city. Analogously, Plato discusses the function of injustice in the individual, showing that hatred is the most fundamental function of injustice. Plato’s analogy, though, includes two remarkablediscrepancies between city and individual. First, justice in the individual causes a conflict among beliefs and desires, which makes him incapable of doing anything, while social injustice still allows the city lacking its unity to do something. Second, hatred or hostility social injustice engender in each citizen is directed toward others, whereas injustice in the individual produces self-disgust of the whole soul, functioning as the destructive principle of the soul. This is howthis argument serves to foreshadow Plato’s analyses of injustice in the remainder of the Republic. (shrink)

Interpretations of Plato’s consideration of poetry often see his position either as a rejection or an admittance of only a certain kind. This article offers a more complex analysis: questions concerning the nature of justice and poetry should be taken as mutually illuminating inquiries. This constitutes Plato’s hermeneutics which shows how understanding poetry ideally effects a metanoia (new understanding) that requires the harmony between ethical deliberation and narrative self-understanding. The dialogue is a mimesis of this process, and the conclusion in (...) Book X does not represent Plato’s final position but the trajectory of the dialogue when such a metanoia is incomplete. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: The Situation of Republic II What Kind of Good is Justice? The Origin and Nature of Justice The Tale of Gyges Life Choices Socrates' Reaction and Ours.

In the "Republic" Plato draws a distinction among goods between (1) those that are good in themselves but not good for their consequences, (2) those that are good both in themselves and for their consequences, and (3) those that are not good in themselves but are good for their consequences. This paper presents an interpretation of this classification, in particular its application to the case of justice. It is argued that certain causal consequences of justice as well as factors that (...) are not causal consequences of justice are relevant in explaining why justice is good in itself; and that it is only the reputation for justice and the causal consequences that follow from that reputation that are relevant in explaining why it is good for its consequences. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Piety, Justice, and the Unity of VirtueMark L. McPherranNo doubt the Socrates of the Euthyphro would be delighted to encounter many of its readers, offering as they do an audience of piety-seeking interlocutors, eager to mend the dialogical breach created by Euthyphro’s sudden departure. Socrates’ enthusiasm for this pursuit is at least as intense and comprehensible as theirs. We are told, after all, that he will never abandon his (...) quest for knowledge of “what the pious is” (15c–16a), since not only is this enterprise both pious and “inconceivably happy” (cf. Ap. 41c3–4) in itself,1 but coming to understand piety would allow one to “live better the rest of one’s life,” (15e7–16a4), especially should its continuation be threatened by a charge of impiety (3b–d, 5a–c, 12e, 15e–16a).2 My own search here is no less happy and ambitious, since I wish to uncover Socrates’ own, implicit understanding of piety and its relation to his claim elsewhere that “the virtues are one.”3 The account of this I shall provide will also touch on Platonic piety, although this notion obviously rests on a tendentious distinction. Nevertheless, there do seem to be some interesting differences between the way piety is treated in elenctic dialogues such as the Euthyphro and Protagoras, and the more explicitly theory-laden, constructive works such as the Republic and Laws. I shall later characterize [End Page 299] these differences, primarily in terms of the more carefully articulated, internalist moral psychology of the Republic.42. SOCRATIC PIETYThe distinct phenomena the term “religion” popularly designates for us were for the Greeks seamlessly integrated into everyday life. Thus, it is natural that the term “piety”—εὐσέβεια—carried a wider sense than our English equivalent commonly does: it concerned not only one’s immediate relation to the gods—emphasizing proper religious conduct and carrying a sense of respect and fear towards divinity (concomitant with a grasp of one’s own mortal limits)—but also often designated appropriate behavior towards parents, native land, and the dead.5 It is to this rough, inclusive conception of piety that Euthyphro appeals when confronted by Socrates on the Porch of the King (2a–6a). Moreover, and despite his own shockingly irreverent attempt at father-bashing and the subsequent elenctic drubbing he then receives from Socrates, toward the close of the dialogue Euthyphro still manages to envision piety in the quasi-traditionalist fashion with which he began—as “a knowledge of how to ensure the preservation of families and states by gratifying the gods through proper prayer and sacrifice” (14b; cf. 14c–15c).6 It is, however, precisely [End Page 300] at this dramatic juncture (14a–c) that we find—arguably—the final elements of a Socratically-acceptable conception of piety; one that builds upon Euthyphro’s initial concession to Socrates that piety and “human justice” are to be distinguished from one another (11e–12e). This, in turn, is a move that in principle forces Euthyphro to disengage from those aspects of the traditional conception of piety which would—from Socrates’ perspective—conflate the two.7 Recent challenges to this reading, however, have seen in Euthyphro’s initial holism not the heterogeneous presumptions of popular thought, but a semi-sophisticated grasp of the Socratic unity of the virtues.8 And since it does appear that the character Euthyphro is designed to serve not only as a hubristically-inflated, Homeric “fundamentalist,” but as an odd and Sophistically-influenced doppelgänger of Socrates as well—a lesson, that is, in what Socrates both is and is not—it now seems worthwhile to reexamine the view that Socratic piety is but a part and not the whole of justice.9Turning to our text, then, we discover that following the failure of Euthyphro’s initial definitional attempts to specify the nature of pious action and the resulting aporetic interlude, Socrates is willing to offer Euthyphro renewed assistance (11e1–4). This he does by asking whether all the just is pious, or whether justice is broader than piety such that piety is then merely a “part” (μóϱιον) of justice (11e4–12e5). Subsequent to his explanation of these alternatives, Socrates... (shrink)

WE SCHOLARS WHO WRITE ABOUT THE Republic have found much to say about the education of Plato’s warriors. We carefully and thoughtfully relate their virtues to those of the Republic ’s philosopher-kings, and even to those of Plato’s Socrates. We have found much less to say about Plato’s peculiar account of that for which they are educated— war. I agree with Leon Craig that war and spiritedness are central to the argument of the Republic. Indeed, I will contend, Socrates’ three (...) different accounts of war reflect and, in a way, complete the central argument of the Republic. Yet Craig and other modern scholars of the cultivation of Plato’s warriors have very little to say on Socrates’ three accounts of the city at war. (shrink)

It was with this bitter intervention from Thrasymachus, occurring halfway through the first of its ten Books, that that work begins to come urgently alive. For the remainder of Book I the Socrates of the Dialogue asks questions and raises objections, while Thrasymachus keeps urging that in fact the just become through their very justice the victims of exploitation–the suckers!

This is a fascinating and important study of ideas of justice and punishment held by the ancient Greeks. The author traces the development of these ideas from Homer to Plato, analysing in particular the completely radical new system of punishment put forward by Plato in his dialogue the Laws. From traditional Greek ideas of cursing and pollution through to Plato's views on homicide and poisoning by doctors, this enlivening book has a wealth of insights to interest both ancient historians and (...) classicists, and all those interested in the history of philosophy and ethics. `Quite simply, essential reading.'. (shrink)

Why should I be just? What have I to gain if I am decent, honest, moral, upright, fair and truthful? Other people benefit if I am just, but do I? And doesn't it seem clear that sometimes the benefit that other people receive from my being just is a benefit received at my expense? Perhaps then I have no adequate reason to be just. Perhaps if I have any sense I will not bother.

In Book II of Plato's Republic, Glaucon, after putting on the mantle of Thrasymachus, concludes that in order for Socrates to show that justice is to be valued for its own sake, he must show that the just man who appears to be unjust is happier than the unjust man who appears to be just. In other words, according to Glaucon, Socrates must show that the just man who as a result of appearing to be unjust is thrown in prison, (...) scoured and racked, has his eyes burned out and is finally impaled, presumably on a spear, is happier than the unjust man who through appearing to be just is rewarded with high office, wealth and is permitted to marry into the best of families. Adiemantus it will be noticed reaches a similar conclusion. (shrink)

The order in which Plato’s thoughts follow upon one another in the Republic is logical, but the dramatic or the picturesque medium through which he is constantly presenting his ideas disguises the logical structure of the work.