by Roy Jackson
THE CONVENTIONAL VIEW OF JUSTICE
In Republic, Plato, through the character of Socrates, begins by asking what justice is of an old and wealthy man by the name of Cephalus; a man shaped by the traditions and conventions of his time and who, indeed, presents a very conventional view of justice: telling the truth and giving back what one has borrowed. But Socrates quickly points out a problem here:
‘Now let’s talk about this very thing, justice: shall we say, as you’ve suggested, that it’s simply a matter of telling the truth, and of giving back when one’s received something from someone; or is it in fact possible to do those very things justly, now unjustly? Here’s an example for you. I imagine everyone would agree that if one borrowed weapons from a friend when he was in a state of mind, and he went mad and then asked them back, they shouldn’t be given back to him in such circumstances, and the person who did give them back – or for that matter wanted to tell the whole truth to someone in that condition – would scarcely be just.’
Plato, Republic, 331c
The above is typical Socratic method: ‘is it in fact possible to do those very things justly, now unjustly’. In other words, when defining justice it is a problem when it turns out to be both one thing, yet also the opposite. In order to give a true definition of justice it cannot be qualified in any way.
Cephalus is very limited mentally; his notion of doing right consists of following a few simple rules such as ‘don’t lie’ or ‘give back what isn’t yours’. He achieves tranquillity, not because of his temperament, but because he is well off and can pay his debts so he is not afraid of what will happen to him in the next world. What matters to him are external actions, in making sacrifices to the gods. He really has no need for philosophy and seems to only want Socrates’ company in the belief that it will encourage his family to visit more if they know Socrates is present.
Cephalus, too old to change his ways or have his comfortable life and views disrupted, quickly chooses to leave the discussion and hand over to his son, Polemarchus.
Both Cephalus and his son Polemarchus are portrayed as morally complacent. Polemarchus looks for an answer by reference to the traditional texts and the revered poets of his day, and quotes the poet Simonides, who says that you should give every man what is due. This is essentially the ‘eye for an eye’ view of justice: if someone does good to you, then you should return this; if someone does you bad, then you should do bad to him. This is how Socrates responds to this view:
• Socrates wonders whether it is ever right to harm others. Long before the leader of the Indian independence movement Mohandas Gandhi (1869–1948) stated that an eye for an eye only makes the world go blind, Plato questioned whether a morality could really be based upon harming others. Of course, it may be expedient to do so, but this does not make it morally right.
• Socrates talks of each person possessing what is called arete, which can be translated as ‘excellence’ or ‘quality’. He points out that if you harm a horse you make it less excellent than it was before and this could be applied to people. Harming them does not make them better people, but worse.
• Socrates then presents an important analogy. He compares the ruler to that of a physician. It is an analogy Plato makes throughout Republic. The physician takes the Hippocratic Oath: do no harm. What if this oath were applied to rulers? A political ruler is like a physician; his role is to look after the wellbeing of his citizens.
• For a state to be a moral state it is important to elicit the moral qualities in each individual. Here, Plato is also presenting his educational agenda: you cannot force people to be good, to be excellent (arete); you must teach in a way that brings out the individual’s distinctive qualities. Teaching is a process, not something that is inflicted upon the individual. It is essentially through the Socratic method that this is achieved.
• Therefore, can it be right conduct (dikaiosune) to detract from the individual’s special excellence (arete)? The state, in its role of educator, would have nothing to gain and much to lose if it were to force or intimidate its people into being good.
Cephalus
Cephalus is not an Athenian citizen but a ‘resident alien’ from Syracuse who has grown rich from trade and manufacture. In fact, primarily from arms dealing! There is irony here in the text because when Plato wrote Republic his audience knew that Cephalus’ family was ruined after Athens had been defeated by the Spartans. Polemarchus had been executed and the family fortune lost. This shows that, despite Cephalus’ belief that his wealth can protect him morally, the possession of money can be temporary and the security it seemingly gives illusory. Money can’t buy you love, but it can’t buy you a good soul either.
THRASYMACHUS AND THE UNCONVENTIONAL VIEW OF JUSTICE
‘Listen to this, then,’ he [Thrasymachus] said. ‘What is just, I say, is nothing more than what is in the interests of the stronger. Why aren’t you applauding? You simply won’t, will you?’
Plato, Republic, 338c
Having silenced Polemarchus, the important character of Thrasymachus presents his radical and unconventional view of justice. Thrasymachus was a real historical character, a Sophist and a skilled teacher. He believed that there are no eternal truths and that our beliefs and values are relative to the time and place we live in. As a relativist, he denies tradition. In this way, Thrasymachus can be seen as the antithesis of Polemarchus.
Thrasymachus’ new premise is this: might is right. There is no eternal standard of justice, only a standard of power. It is the rulers who define justice, for they have the most power. In fact, Thrasymachus goes even further than this by presenting another, related premise: the person who is unjust is the happier person. Thrasymachus presents an image of the ‘superman’, a powerful figure who is self-assertive, establishes his own values and defies conventional morality. Consequently, the unjust are not only happier, they are more successful.
This cynical view of justice is a powerful one, but it is important for Plato to refute it for the implications would be a society that has no absolute standards of morality and is concerned only with the pursuit of power and happiness. How does Plato’s character Socrates respond?
• Socrates re-introduces his analogy of the ruler and the physician. The physician’s primary concern is with the interests of the patient, not only his own. Granted, the physician exercises his power over the patient’s body, the power of knowledge, but he does not use this selfishly for personal gain. Remember, he must follow the Hippocratic Oath: do no harm.
• Why, Socrates argues, shouldn’t politics be just as professional as medicine? Medicine has knowledge, it is a science. Physicians practise their science for the common interest. Why cannot there be a political science?
• Plato suggests that you can achieve the same kind of professionalism in politics that you have in medicine. Politics would not just be a matter of opinion, but of knowledge. It is possible to turn politics into a noble profession.
Plato is arguing here that politicians should be like physicians, not that they are. The whole of Plato’s response hinges upon the belief that there are eternal standards (the Forms). That political rule and, it follows, the practice of right conduct, of justice, can be based on knowledge, not just opinion, and that rulers, if they should possess this knowledge, would use it wisely and for the common good. When Plato makes reference to the science, or skill, of the doctor the word techne is used (see Chapter 5). In the same way that the doctor has the techne to heal, the carpenter to make wood, the horse-trainer to train horses, and so on, the politician can have the techne to rule.
Glaucon and the Myth of Gyges
The next character to take part in the discussion is Glaucon, who in history was one of Plato’s brothers. Glaucon presents a refashioned version of the Sophist view, but of a lighter temperament than Thrasymachus. He has sympathy with the view presented by the character of Socrates, but is not entirely satisfied with it. Rather than attacking Socrates in the rather dogmatic and
insulting manner of Thrasymachus, Glaucon prefers to play devil’s advocate, to attempt to refine the arguments presented so far and put forward a series of propositions. Glaucon believes that what we need to do is to understand the origins of justice, before we can then determine its nature.
First, Glaucon rejects the view of Polemarchus that our ideas of justice come from the Gods, or from some eternal realm. He presents a social contract theory: mankind formed into a society and all agreed to conform to certain laws as a form of mutual protection. People followed justice not because it is an eternal truth, but because it is convenient to do so; it provides security and protection. People behave because they are afraid. If they go outside the law then they know they may get caught and punished. Justice, then, is a compromise between what is most desired (being unjust and avoiding punishment) and what is undesired (suffering injustice without any redress).
And so, Glaucon is presenting a view of human nature not unlike that of Thrasymachus: it is human nature to be selfish, but right conduct is a product of a selfish act in the sense that there is an awareness that it is a convenient way of maintaining order in society.
Although this might appear a selfless act, the individual would, if he could get away with it, be unjust! Being good, Glaucon suggests, goes against the grain of human nature. To demonstrate this, Glaucon recounts the Myth of Gyges. One day an earthquake caused a huge chasm to appear in the ground where Gyges, a shepherd in the service of the king of Lydia, was tendering his flock. The shepherd descends into the chasm where he finds, among many other things, a corpse. From the finger of the corpse he takes a ring and makes his way out. At a meeting of fellow shepherds, he was fiddling with the ring when his companions started to talk about him as if he wasn’t there. Eventually, he realized that twisting the ring in a certain way caused him to be invisible. Appreciating the power this gave him, Gyges used it to seduce the queen, murder the king and seize the throne for himself.
Glaucon then asks Socrates to imagine that two such rings existed; one for the man who had spent his life being unjust, and one for the man who had spent his life being just. In this experiment, Glaucon wonders, would the just man really be able to resist the temptations that the ring gave him? The fact that he could steal things from the market, murder people without being discovered and generally act like a god? Would not the just man behave the same way as the unjust man so that the two could not be distinguished from each other? The just man would soon learn that injustice is the happier option.
The soul of the state
Plato now has to prove that justice is preferable, not because it leads to success and material benefits, but because it is a good in itself. In other words, the true nature of Man, his very soul, is to be just. It is at this point that Plato launches into his description of the ideal state, of his ‘republic’. For, he argues, to understand the soul of the individual you have to understand the soul of the state that is the individual writ large. Since justice can be a characteristic of the individual and society, it will help, Socrates argues, to look first to the state – like placing a magnifying glass over justice to make it easier to identify – and then to find something similar in the individual.
‘I think we should approach the subject as if we were in the sort of situation where someone had told a collection of not very sharp-sighted individuals to read something in small letters from a distance, and then one of them noticed that the same letters were to be found somewhere else, only bigger and on something bigger – in such a situation, I imagine, it would be a godsend to read these first and so be in a position to examine the smaller letters and see if they really are the same.’
Plato, Republic, 368d
Socrates does agree with Glaucon that there is a ‘Gyges gene’ in all of us, but there is also a tremendous capacity to be rational and good. The fact that individuals may behave like Gyges is not because individuals are naturally inclined to behave that way, but because society has made them that way.
What Plato aims to show is that for man to be true to himself, to be able to exercise his true arete, he must be allowed to do so through the encouragement of the state, his educator. What is at fault is Athenian society for producing people who selfishly pursue their own interests, whereas the ‘natural state’ would be one that would allow the individual to act according to his nature; self-discipline through the dominance of reason. Athens is a corrupt city and it must be ‘purged’ through three waves of change that sweep away the old system.
The ideal state
Although many Athenians saw their city-state, their polis, as the perfect ideal, emphasizing the city’s cultural and military achievements, Socrates had taught Plato to be wary of a community that gives no place to those who have expertise in politics. Plato, also, was only too aware of the darker side of Athens: its contempt and cruelty towards other states, its own arrogance, its serious political and military mistakes, and injustices towards its own citizens, especially towards Socrates. For Plato, Athens could hardly be considered the Greek ideal. Yet, the fact that there might well be an ideal – Plato’s ‘City of the Forms’ – encouraged Plato to study and teach political science. In Republic especially, Plato constructs a detailed account of a new society; the ideal polis. To create this new society, three major changes have to take place. These are the three ‘waves’ that will wash away the old, corrupt society and replace it with the new:
1 A new ruling class of Guardians must be established who will be Philosopher-Kings.
2 These Guardians will consist of men and women.
3 The Guardian class will have no private property and will live communally.
These three measures were not only radical for their time, they can also be seen to be so in more recent times. Plato has still yet to define what he means by justice. He believes, however, that if we look at the principles that make up a just state we can then transfer these to the individual. Plato, through the character of Socrates, begins by considering the basic requirements to create a social structure.
The ‘City of Pigs’
Socrates rejects Glaucon’s social contract theory. Rather, men are not born self-sufficient and they cannot satisfy their needs alone. Socrates describes the formation of the state in the following stages:
• A state is when a group of people gather and settle in one place who have different various requirements.
• This gathering engages in mutual exchange, depending upon the needs of each individual.
• The most important of these needs is food, followed by shelter and clothing.
• In order to satisfy these demands, the individuals will take on various tasks: one will be a farmer, another a builder, a third a weaver, a fourth a shoemaker, and so on.
• In this state it is more logical and sensible that each person should do his specific task according to his abilities. The farmer should develop his farming abilities, providing food not only for himself but also for the others in the community. Likewise, the shoemaker should concentrate on shoemaking for the whole community. This is better than the farmer only producing food for himself, then having to spend the rest of his time also making shoes for himself, building a house, etc.
• Socrates then goes on to explain this community in more detail – needs for craftsman, shepherds, tradesmen, a marketplace and a currency, and shopkeepers.
• Finally, Socrates presents a community that satisfies all the basic needs, consisting of a relatively small number where each has his allotted trade in life.
Plato here presents a very idyllic, romantic vision of society. But Plato’s brother, Glaucon, describes it as a ‘city of pigs’ (372d) because it does not satisfy the needs of the civilized man. Where are the comforts and luxuries? What Plato pictured was a state that satisfied the basic economic needs, without any mention of a political structure. In fact, Plato saw this basic polis as the ideal because people would live long due to a healthy diet, and, most likely, there would be no need for a government –
it is effectively self-governing. Conflicts can be settled through rational arbitration, although it would be such a moral community anyway that there would not be much need for forceful policing.
Also, as a philosopher, Plato would have felt that there would be no need for luxuries. Indeed, Socrates himself lived a very frugal life. What is envisioned is a community of philosophic-minded people who have no interest in acquiring wealth and possessions, or in satisfying one pleasure after another. They would only require the essentials of life and live a love of Truth. The material world, for Plato, was a transient one, and so why would you want to load yourself up with material things that distract from the pursuit of the awareness of the Realm of the Forms?
However, in order to determine how injustice occurs in society, Plato is prepared to paint a picture of society with the luxuries of life, obviously believing that it is these elements that disrupt the healthy and ideal polis.
