Plato IV
Professor William R. Long
Book IV, 427d-445
In approaching the last two major sections of Book IV (427d-435a and 435a-445), I do so not only with an interest in following the flow of Plato's argument, but with the awareness that I am coming to some tentative "conclusions" about the Republic that I want to introduce. It certainly is a "classic" because it lays down influential thought in areas of epistemology, political philosophy, psychology and educational theory, but it is open to some criticism/questions as it relates to its understanding of justice and law.
Introduction--Three Critiques
First, I would stress that there is a certain formal rigidity in Plato's categories that may be aesthetically pleasing but is open to criticism. For example, after finding three classes of people in the kallipolis, he also just happens to find a tri-partite soul, with each part of the soul corresponding to a class in the city. In addition, when he searches for justice in the kallipolis, he does so from the perspective that such a city instantiates the four Greek virtues: wisdom, courage, moderation and justice and so asks where in the city each resides. We get the impression that life is being pressed into pre-established categories of thought. Does that bother you or do you feel it is an effective way for Plato to argue?
Second, Plato, at least in the Republic, seems to have either a lack of interest in or a real naivete about law and its function in a society. Because he is interested in the "internal" role of justice, he seems to suggest that law is really unnecessary in the kallipolis. The Stoic philosophers a few centuries later will celebrate the person who is the "living law;" i.e., a person who so possesses within him/herself all the virtues that s/he is a reflection of the structure of the universe. No doubt they derive their inspiration from Plato, but there really is quite a jump from someone who is a "living law" to adjudicating contractual disputes.
Third, as a sort of balance to the previous point, justice is a very vigorous and powerful concept for Plato. Justice is to be understood in two ways--through the ordered structure of society and through the harmonic balance of impulses within the self. I will write about each of these below.
The problem with a utopian work is that it is utopian--that it refers to life in "no place," even if the hope is to make it real. But, do you see Plato's work as being so "out there" that it is impossible to instantiate? If so, perhaps the work is little more than a frustrated hope, a paean of sadness to shattered expectations. Maybe he is just saying, as we often do, "If I were king/queen, life would be like this...." but he is being more eloquent about it. Well, to the text.
Finding Justice in the City--427d-435a
Once the city is "completely established," we are ready to search for justice in it. Then we can revert to the individual to discover the nature of justice in the soul. The completely established city will be "wise, courageous, moderate, and just (427e)." These are the basic four-fold Greek virtues, and it is not unexpected that Plato would like to find them in the city. Wisdom is a sort of knowledge, he claims, that isn't knowledge of any particular matter but about the city as a whole (428d). This knowledge is knowledge of "guardianship, and it is possessed by those rules we just now called complete guardians (428d)." Thus, the city is wise, and wisdom rests primarily in the guardian class.
What about courage? Courage is redefined as a "kind of preservation" (429c) and is an ability to stand firm in life and not abandon oneself "because of pains, pleasures, desires or fears (429d)." He finds courage in the auxiliary class (can you see patterns developing?), which knows through their education what sort of things are to be feared. He then tells the story of the wool and the dye to emphasize that "even such extremely effective detergents as pleasure, pain, fear and desire wouldn't wash it out"--that is, wouldn't wash out the auxiliaries' courageous commitment to the City.
Plato claims that moderation, the third virtue, is a "kind of order, the mastery of certain kinds of pleasures and desires (430e)." Unlike bravery and wisdom, however, "moderation spreads throughout the whole." It creates a sense of unanimity and agreement between the "naturally worse and the naturally better."
Finally, he turns to justice. The language is humorous--they need to station themselves like hunters to discover it--and a prayer is offered, since the search for this most important virtue is possibly the most difficult. And then, lo and behold, they "discover" justice right in their midst. It is nothing other than doing one's own work. "Then it turns out that this doing one's own work--provided that it comes to be in a certain way--is justice (433b)." It is the power that makes it possible for the other three virtues to grow in the city. Thus, justice is defined as the situation where "every child, woman, slave, freeman, craftsman, ruler, and ruled each does his own work and doesn't meddle with what is other people's (433d)." The definition is repeated twice more. What then is the greatest harm that can happen to the city? "Meddling and exchange between these three classses (434c)."
What do you think?
Finding Justice in the Soul--435a-445
Though one could easily spend as much time writing about justice in the soul, suffice it to say that now that justice is found in the city, he is ready to try to discover it in the soul. It will be a difficult task however (435c), and what needs to be done is to discover the nature of the soul and its parts in order to discover where justices lives in the soul. Thus, the next several pages of the Republic discuss Plato's psychology.
Noteworthy is Plato's attempt to generate this psychology from "scratch" so to speak. The argument is difficult and unconvincing, in my judgment, but he does isolate the appetites and the rational part immediately (437-439). There is a "class of things called appetites" whose clearest examples are hunger and thirst (437d). The rational part of the soul is that which forbids the appetites from acting always just to satisfy themselves. Most dififcult for Plato is to come up with the "third something," which he will call the "spirited" part and which he believes is allied with the rational part of the soul (440e) in the "civil war in the soul."
After establishing his psychology, he now is ready to ask the question of where justice is found in such a person. Not unexpectedly, he posits justice in the whole. "Moreover, Glaucon, I suppose we'll say that a man is just in the same way as a city (441d)." Thus if each part is doing its own work the person will be just. (441e). It is the mixture of music/poetry and physical training that makes the two parts (the rational and spirited) harmonious. 442a is then his summative statement about the way that the two, the rational and spirited parts, will ally to govern the appetitive part of the soul. The final summary of what Plato considers the "internal justice" appears in 443d-e. Read this passage and be ready to comment on it.
Conclusion
Thus it would be fair to say that even though Plato will be an idealist, which means that he believes in eternal forms of justice and the good, for example, he does differentiate between law and justice. Justice is a most important trait in the state and in the individual, but it doesn't seem to have much relation to law. When we turn to one of Plato's last dialogues, The Laws, we will see his approach to the role of law in a society. The next page summarizes the argument of The Laws.
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Copyright © 2004-2007 William R. Long
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