We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 January 2009
At the beginning of Book II of the Republic, Glaucon and Adeimantus ask Socrates to tell them what it is to be just or unjust, and why a man should be the former. Socrates suggests in reply that they consider first what it is for a polis to be just or unjust—a polis is bigger than an individual, he says, so its justice should be more readily visible. Now if we were to view in imagination (logōi) a polis coming into existence, he goes on, we should see also its justice and injustice coming into existence, and this might help us to discover what these qualities are.
1 369b–c, Cornford's, F. M. translation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1941).Google Scholar I have inserted the numbers for ease of reference.
2 Cross, R. C. and Woozley, A. D., Plato's Republic (London: Macmillan, 1964), 80.Google Scholar
3 Ibid., 82.
4 Ibid., 91.
5 Ibid., 93.
6 Ibid., 97.
7 In this I follow Adam, J., The Republic of Plato (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1902), Vol. I, ad 369b16.Google Scholar
8 Analysis of an existing polis would not help us to understand what it is for a polis to be just or unjust. A polis, like an individual, is just if it ‘does its own’; its justice is that underlying structural property which leads to its ‘doing its own’; this turns out to be the ‘doing their own’ of its three constituent elements. (See my article ‘The Argument of Republic IV’, Philosophical Quarterly 26 (1976Google Scholar). ‘Doing one's own’ is G. Vlastos' rendering of ‘to ta hautou prattein’ in ‘Justice and Happiness in the Republic’, Platonic Studies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973)Google Scholar) To identify this crucial property, Socrates must describe a polis that ‘does its own’, i.e. an ideal one. An ideal polis will be ipso facto just. (See 427e and 434e, and cf. also 420b–c.) Plato cannot make this explicit, however, for at the individual level he is supposed to be showing that justice is a virtue, and a necessary condition for happiness.
9 (1) and (2) in the passage quoted.
10 tōt logōi. If, following Cornford and Lee, you translate this as ‘in imagination’, it does not greatly affect my point.
11 369C
12 There is also, of course, the need for security, to meet which the Guardians are first introduced.
13 The system of education of Books II–III is introduced through the question: how should military specialists be educated for their profession? Socrates usually refers to the pupils as future Guardians. (But cf. 389d, 414d.) Nevertheless it becomes clear that what is being described is in fact an education for virtue, necessary not only to make certain people better functionaries, but for its own sake, and thus by implication for everyone. It seems to me obvious that if Plato had thought about it, he would have agreed that the general principles he enunciates must apply to the education of all.
14 Cf. 434a–b.
15 358e–3S9b
16 377a–b.
17 377c.
18 401d, Cornford's translation.
19 429d–430b.
20 490ff.
21 501b–c, Cornford's translation.
22 592b.
