Justice as the Advantage of the Stronger
In Book I of The Republic, Thrasymachus
sets up a challenge to justice. Thrasymachus is a Sophist, one of
the teachers-for-hire who preached a creed of subjective morality
to the wealthy sons of Athens. The Sophists did not believe in objective
truth, including objective moral truth. They did not think, in other
words, that anything was absolutely “right” or “wrong”; instead
they viewed all actions as either advantageous or disadvantageous
to the person performing them. If an action was advantageous then
they thought you should engage in it, and if it was disadvantageous
then they thought that you should refrain. Taking this belief to
its logical conclusion, some of them went so far as to claim that
law and morality are nothing but mere convention, and that one ought
to try to get away with injustice and illegality whenever such action
would be to one’s advantage. Plato meant to combat this attitude
in The Republic.
Thrasymachus introduces the Sophist challenge by remarking that
justice is nothing but the advantage of the stronger. He does not mean
to define justice with this statement, but to debunk it. His claim
proceeds from the basic Sophistic moral notion: that the norms considered
just are nothing more than conventions which hamper those who adhere
to them, and benefit those who flout them. Those who behave unjustly
naturally gain power and become the rulers, the strong people in
society. Justice is the advantage of the stronger because when stupid,
weak people behave in accordance with justice, they are disadvantaged,
and the strong (those who behave unjustly) are advantaged.
An alternate reading of Thrasymachus’s bold statement makes
his claim seem slightly more subtle. According to this reading (put
forward by C.D.C. Reeve), Thrasymachus is not merely making the usual
assertion that the norms of justice are conventions; he claims further
that these mores and norms are conventions that were put in place
by the rulers (the “stronger”) for the purpose of promoting their
own interests. Conceptions of justice, in this reading, are the products
of propaganda and tools of oppressors.
Regardless of the interpretation we give to Thrasymachus’
statement, the challenge to Socrates is the same: he must prove
that justice is something good and desirable, that it is more than convention,
that it is connected to objective standards of morality, and that
it is in our interest to adhere to it. His attempt to meet this challenge
occupies the rest of The Republic.
The Principle of Specialization
Before he can prove that justice is a good thing, Plato
must first state what justice is. Instead of defining justice as
a set of behavioral norms (as the traditional Greek thinkers did)
Plato identifies justice as structural: political justice resides
in the structure of the city; individual justice resides in the
structure of the soul. The just structure of the city is summed
up by the principle of specialization: each member of society must
play the role for which his nature best suits him and not meddle
in any other business. A man whose nature suits him to farming must
farm and do nothing else; a man whose nature best suits him to building
objects out of wood must be a carpenter and not bother with any
other sort of work. Plato believes that this is the only way to
ensure that each job is done as well as possible.
The principle of specialization keeps the farmer from
carpentering, and the carpenter from farming. More important, it
keeps both the farmer and the carpenter from becoming warriors and
rulers. The principle of specialization separates society into three
classes: the class of producers (including farmers, craftsmen, doctors,
etc.), the class of warriors, and the class of rulers. Specialization
ensures that these classes remain in a fixed relations of power
and influence. Rulers control the city, establishing its laws and
objectives. Warriors carry out the commands of rulers. Producers
stay out of political affairs, only worrying themselves about the
business of ruling insofar as they need to obey what the rulers
say and the warriors enforce. A city set up in this way, Plato contends,
is a just city.
The Tripartite Soul
Just as political justice consists in the structural relations
among classes of society, Plato believes, individual justice consists
in correct structural relations among parts of the soul. Paralleling
the producers, warriors, and rulers in the city, Plato claims that
each individual soul has three separate seats of desire and motivation:
the appetitive part of our soul lusts after food, drink, sex, and
so on (and after money most of all, since money is the means of
satisfying the rest of these desires); the spirited part of the
soul yearns for honor; the rational part of the soul desires truth
and knowledge. In a just soul, these three parts stand in the correct
power relations. The rational part must rule, the spirited part
must enforce the rational part’s convictions, and the appetitive
part must obey.
In the just soul, the desires of the rational, truth-loving
part dictate the overall aims of the human being. All appetites
and considerations of honor are put at the disposal of truth-loving
goals. The just soul strives wholly toward truth. Plato identifies
the philosopher (literally “truth lover”) as the most just individual,
and sets him up as ruler of the just city.
The Sun, the Line, the Cave
Explaining his idea of a philosopher-king, Plato appeals
to three successive analogies to spell out the metaphysical and
epistemological theories that account for the philosopher’s irreplaceable
role in politics. The analogy of the sun illuminates the notion
of the Form of the Good, the philosopher-king’s ultimate object
of desire. The line illustrates the four different grades of cognitive
activity of which a human being is capable, the highest of which
only the philosopher-kings ever reach. The allegory of the cave
demonstrates the effects of education on the human soul, demonstrating
how we move from one grade of cognitive activity to the next.
In the allegory of the cave, Plato asks us to imagine
the following scenario: A group of people have lived in a deep cave
since birth, never seeing any daylight at all. These people are
bound in such a way that they cannot look to either side or behind
them, but only straight ahead. Behind them is a fire, and behind
the fire is a partial wall. On top of the wall are various statues,
which are manipulated by another group of people, laying out of
sight. Because of the fire, the statues cast shadows on the wall
that the prisoners are facing. The prisoners watch the stories that
these shadows play out, and because this is all they can ever see,
they believe that these shadows are the most real things in the
world. When they talk to one another about “men,” “women,” “trees,”
“horses,” and so on, they refer only to these shadows.
Now he asks us to imagine that one of these prisoners
is freed from his bonds, and is able to look at the fire and at
the statues themselves. After initial pain and disbelief, he eventually
realizes that all these things are more real than the shadows he
has always believed to be the most real things; he grasps how the
fire and the statues together caused the shadows, which are copies
of the real things. He now takes the statues and fire as the most
real things in the world.
Next this prisoner is dragged out of the cave into the
world above. At first, he is so dazzled by the light in the open
that he can only look at shadows, then he is able to look at reflections,
then finally at the real objects—real trees, flowers, houses, and
other physical objects. He sees that these are even more real than
the statues were, and that those objects were only copies of these.
Finally, when the prisoner’s eyes have fully adjusted
to the brightness, he lifts his sights toward the heavens and looks
at the sun. He understands that the sun is the cause of everything
he sees around him—of the light, of his capacity for sight, of the
existence of flowers, trees, and all other objects.
The stages the prisoner passes through in the allegory
of the cave correspond to the various levels on the line. The line,
first of all, is broken into two equal halves: the visible realm
(which we can grasp with our senses) and the intelligible realm
(which we can only grasp with the mind). When the prisoner is in
the cave he is in the visible realm. When he ascends into the daylight,
he enters the intelligible.
The lowest rung on the cognitive line is imagination.
In the cave, this is represented as the prisoner whose feet and
head are bound, so that he can only see shadows. What he takes to
be the most real things are not real at all; they are shadows, mere
images. These shadows are meant to represent images from art. A
man who is stuck in the imagination stage of development takes his
truths from epic poetry and theater, or other fictions. He derives
his conception of himself and his world from these art forms rather
than from looking at the real world.
When the prisoner frees himself and looks at the statues
he reaches the next stage in the line: belief. The statues are meant
to correspond to the real objects of our sensation—real people,
trees, flowers, and so on. The man in the cognitive stage of belief
mistakenly takes these sensible particulars as the most real things.
When he ascends into the world above, though, he sees
that there is something even more real: the Forms, of which the
sensible particulars are imperfect copies. He is now at the stage
of thought in his cognition. He can reason about Forms, but not
in a purely abstract way. He uses images and unproven assumptions
as crutches.
Finally, he turns his sights to the sun, which represents
the ultimate Form, the Form of the Good. The Form of the Good is
the cause of all other Forms, and is the source of all goodness,
truth, and beauty in the world. It is the ultimate object of knowledge.
Once the prisoner has grasped the Form of the Good, he has reached
the highest stage of cognition: understanding. He no longer has
any need for images or unproven assumptions to aid in his reasoning.
By reaching the Form of the Good, he hits on the first principle
of philosophy which explains everything without the need of any
assumptions or images. He can now use this understanding derived
from comprehending the Form of the Good to transform all his previous
thought into understanding—he can understand all of the Forms. Only
the philosopher can reach this stage, and that is why only he is
fit to rule.
Plato is unable to provide direct detail about the Form
of the Good, and instead illustrates his idea by comparing it to
the sun. The Form of the Good is to the intelligible realm, he claims,
as the sun is the visible realm. (In the metaphor, the fire in the
cave represents the sun.) First of all, just as the sun provides
light and visibility in the visible realm, the Form of the Good
is the source of intelligibility. The sun makes sight possible,
and, similarly, the Form of the Good is responsible for our capacity
for knowledge. The sun causes things to come to be in the visible
world; it regulates the seasons, makes flowers bloom, influences
animals to give birth and so on. The Form of the Good is responsible
for the existence of Forms, for their coming to be in the intelligible
world.
Why It Pays to Be Just
One of Plato’s objectives in The Republic was
to show that justice is worthwhile—that just action is a good in
itself, and that one ought to engage in just activity even when
it doesn’t seem to confer immediate advantage. Once he has completed
his portrait of the most just man—the philosopher-king—he is in
a position to fulfill this aim. In Book IX, Plato presents three
arguments for the claim that it pays to be just. First, by sketching
a psychological portrait of the tyrant, he attempts to prove that
injustice takes such a wretched toll on a man’s psyche that it could
not possibly be worth it (whereas a just soul is untroubled and
calm). Next, he argues that, though each of the three main character
types (money-loving, honor-loving, and truth-loving) have their
own conceptions of pleasure and of the corresponding good life (each
choosing his own life as the most pleasant sort), only the philosopher
is in the position to judge since only he is capable of experiencing
all three types of pleasure. Finally, he tries to demonstrate that
only philosophical pleasure is really pleasure at all; all other
pleasure is only cessation from pain.
In all likelihood, Plato did not consider any of these
to be the primary source of justice’s worth. Plato’s goal was to
prove that justice is worthwhile independent of
the advantages it confers, so for him to argue that the worth of
justice lies in the enormous pleasure it produces is beside his
point. To say that we should be just because it will make our life
more pleasant, after all, is just to say that we should be just
because it is to our advantage to do so. Instead, we should expect
to find him arguing that the worth of justice lies in some other
source, preferably having something to do with objective goodness.
This is why many philosophers, from Plato’s student Aristotle down
to modern scholar Richard Kraut, believe that Plato’s real argument
for the worth of justice takes place long before Book IX. They think,
plausibly, that Plato locates the worth of justice in justice’s
connection to the Forms, which he holds to be the most good things
in the world. Justice is worthwhile, on this interpretation, not
because of any advantage it confers, but because it involves grasping
the Form of the Good and imitating it. The just man tries to imitate
the Forms by making his own soul as orderly and harmonious as the
Forms themselves.
