Historical Background

We’ll be looking at the theory of Justice that Plato set out in the Republic (The State) and how it was related to his view of human nature. But I think that it’d help us to understand Plato’s argument if we understood something of the motivation for the argument. So I’m going to start by explaining something about the political situation that prevailed in the times in which which Plato wrote, and the history that got Greeks to that point.

To begin with, in Classical Greece, the standard form of political organization was the city-state or polis. We have to imagine a culture where Singapore or Hong Kong was the normal territorial size of an independent state, but with far fewer people, so that almost everyone could be on terms of acquaintance with almost everyone else. Only in the barbaric lands beyond the Greek world would you find empires like Persia , Assyria, and Egypt .

Each of these cities had their own government and, naturally, their governments were of various kinds. At the time that we’re looking the standard classification made each city one of three types. (Though these are idealizations and it’s not always obvious where any particular city should be classified.)

1.                   All the power is concentrated in a single man. If the city is run well then it might be called a monarchy but the general and pejorative term was tyranny. This was a system that appealed to the big man and his close friends, but not to many others.

2.                   Or all the power might be held by a small number who would not let any one person become too important. In most oligarchies the few were usually seen to be the representatives of the wealthier, land-owning, nobles. If this system was working OK it might be called an aristocracy (as if it were run by the ‘best’/aristos people) but the general term used is oligarchy (from oligon/few) You can imagine that the decent, cultured, educated, leisured people in all the Greek states – the sort of people who might have the time and inclination to spend their day in the town square talking to a philosopher like Socrates, for example – might very well look kindly upon a system that seemed to guarantee them a greater say in the affairs of the state. Those who weren’t amongst the few or their friends had less reason to like the system.

3.                   Or, finally, it might be a democracy where the common people were empowered to run things in their own interest. As you can well imagine, the idea of taking the power from the wealthy or the nobility was pretty generally popular amongst the non-wealthy, non-noble populations of the Greek states. Athens had been a kind of democracy for about 80 years when Plato was born.

Each city, naturally, had its own interests, and the history of Greece sometimes looks like an interminable series of petty military squabbles and ever shifting alliances for temporary advantage. It’s rather as if the whole world of the twentieth century had been struck by a shrink ray and dropped in the Eastern Mediterranean . But, just as was the case in the 20^th C, there were, amongst all the local causes for enmity and instability, some global features. And chief amongst these was the ideological struggle between the pro-democrats and the pro-oligarchs. Democratic cities, when they were in trouble with an oligarchic city, could appeal to other democratic cities to save their freedom. And democratic cities were inclined to stir up the powerless people of oligarchic states in order to cause dissension within for their own advantage – or sometimes just because they thought it was the right thing to do. Oligarchic cities would do the same thing. They’d appeal to other oligarchies to save them from the ravening mobs of their cities, and they’d appeal to the elites of democratic cities to stir up trouble therein. So you can see that the conditions were right for there to be endemic civil strife within the cities between the two main classes, and people’s loyalty might sometimes be to their ideological partners in foreign cities rather than with their own co-citizens of another class. As a consequence, the story of too many sieges in this period usually ends with ‘… and then the city fell because the gates were opened to the enemy …’

You might wonder how, with all this going on, the Greeks managed to create the most brilliant civilisation that has ever been seen. Well, it does seem that political strife is no barrier to cultural vitality. In fact, quite the contrary. There’s a good line from Orson Welles in ‘The Third Man’ relevant to this.

"In Italy , for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed — they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland , they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."

When Plato was 24 years old democratic Athens , the teacher of Greece , first amongst the democracies, was utterly defeated by the Spartans, an uncouth, militaristic, oligarchic state from the Peloponnese in Southern Greece . This was the final end of the so-called Peloponnesian war (or maybe the 2^nd P. W,) in which the whole Greek world had been involved, which had lasted for about 30 years with a few years’ intermission, and in which the Spartans represented (on the whole) the side of the oligarchies and Athens represented (on the whole) the side of the democracies. Think of it as the Greek equivalent of the 2^nd WW or a hot version of our Cold War. During that war Athens had been devastated by plague and military disasters and massacres, and had lost its best leaders, leaving the city at the mercy of demagogues, incompetents, and place men. After their victory, the Spartans established in Athens a compliant regime of local nobles run by a group known as the Thirty Tyrants whose chief was a gentleman called Critias, who happened to be Plato’s cousin. Their self-proclaimed task was to promote virtue and prevent vice, but they became corrupt and brutal in short order, killing potential opponents in order to steal their money. They tried to implicate Socrates in their atrocities, but he just went home and ignored them. Many others were not so upright. When they were overthrown after a year the Athenians managed to re-establish their democracy, but Plato then saw them kill Socrates.

[See Dr. J for a useful timeline]

You might imagine that Plato thought that there was considerable room for improvement.

Diagnosis

Plato notes the characteristic failings of the various forms of government

a.                    Tyrannies

selfishness

The leader accumulates wealth for himself and has no compunction about beggaring the people in order to maintain his power. This leads to general unhappiness and oppression of the people.

It’s also a particularly galling system for the noble or free citizenry who generally despised subordination of any kind. So much so that their businesses – when they could lower themselves to engage in trade – had to be run by slaves or freedmen because no real Greek would be employed like that.

b.                    Oligarchies

group-interest

Oligarchs were notoriously eager to use the power of the state for their own interest, and the interest of the general populace got no more consideration than was required to keep them pacified. Plato had seen how even well-intentioned oligarch’s could be corrupted – and how quickly – by unbridled and undirected power.

He had seen also in other states the tendency of oligarchy to encourage factionalism between the low and the high in a state, and within the gentry as factions competed for power.

But Plato would also have noticed that Sparta was a type of oligarchy – which, of course, was why its sympathy was with the anti-Athenian forces – and it had triumphed over Athens . Sparta ’s success in the war may well have looked to Plato like a vindication of some parts of its system (by comparison with the behaviour of the Athenian political class anyway.)

And, in fact, there were features of the Spartan system that did tend to prevent the standard dangers to an oligarchy. After the gentry had been scared by the nearly successful revolt of their serf populations, the constitution had been altered for the deliberate effect of creating a military power strong enough to keep them down Everything was directed at that end. Because the Spartan gentry were aware that they were vastly outnumbered by their unhappy subjects, and because they had so nearly been overthrown by them, there was little patience with factionalism. Even more important to their survival was the complete militarization of their society. Sparta rejected the use of money. All their children were raised in institutions as cadets under military discipline. They were deliberately inculcated with the patriotic virtues. Art was useful and valued for that alone – and so it withered and died there. They continued to live communally in their army formations as adults and even after marriage. Wives could be visited occasionally for conjugal relations – if there was nothing important happening. Women have more equality in Sparta , but  not much worth.

The behaviour of the Spartans once they were released from this discipline, however, would have impressed no one. Their governors quickly became brutes and voluptuaries of the worst sort.

c.                    Democracies

Dilettantism and busybodiness.

In the Athenian system that Plato would have been most familiar with many of the offices of the state could be filled by lot, a random selection from the registered citizen population. Others, happily some of the more important ones, were open to election. As long as these more important positions were filled by intelligent and honourable people, people who were competent to fill those positions, things were fine. But after the great leader Pericles died early in the war there was no one of equal worth to replace him, and the offices began to be filled by incompetents and demagogues. This was disastrous. The war policy of the state was then set according to the whims of the Athenian mob. It was decided, for example, to attack Sicily – when the people clearly had no idea how large Sicily was. It led to the rejection of peace offers. It led to the victimisation of military officers by court procedures motivated by vindictiveness or political interest.

One can easily imagine Plato’s distaste for the social disorder that this undisciplined democracy led to: the attitude of his class is captured in the speech given to a foreign audience by someone we know as the Old Oligarch – who may even have been Critias (later leader of the 30) himself:

Slaves and non-citizens are extremely undisciplined in Athens . You are not allowed to hit them, and a slave will not get out of your way. But I will tell you why. If it were allowed … one might easily strike an Athenian by mistake for a slave; they are no better dressed and no better in appearance.

But at least the Old Oligarch recognises the strength of a democracy:

A city so run may not be ideal; but that is how to preserve a democracy. The people do not want a well-organized city with themselves in subjection, but freedom and power. Disorder is a minor consideration; what you consider disorder is the very foundation of the people’s strength and freedom.

We make the same claims for our own democracies. But Athens fell and the the nature of Athenian democracy was part of the reason. Let us hope that our own claims are better justified.

Plato thinks these failings are all plausibly species of injustice.

·                     Selfishness                    obviously unjust (by tradition),

·                     Group-interest             probably just a type of selfishness,

·                     Dilettantism                  doing what you’re not cut out for.

being where you shouldn’t be and stopping those who are better qualified from doing their thing.

·                     Busybodiness               making your opinion count where it isn’t qualified to function well

putting your opinion where it has no business being. 

Erroneous Conceptions of Justice

Plato proposes that injustice is rampant in the body politic. We must establish justice. But what is justice? To begin with we need to note that we’re talking about a philosophical debate that occurs in a different language and culture from our own. The Greek word that we are translating as ‘justice’ is actually ‘dikaiosune/dikaiosunh’ and seems to mean something like equitable, righteous, even, and so on. Whether this word is properly translated as justice – whether it is close enough to our concept for us to be happy about using it – is a matter for debate and judgement. In fact it’s clear from the criticisms he made of the various political systems that Plato already has a pretty clear idea of what’s going to count as Justice for him: it is the idea that everyone has a proper place and people should mind their own business. Plato never says this here and claims to believe that the nature of Justice needs to be established. Let’s take him at his word, and see how he goes about justifying his understanding of Justice.

He begins by canvassing the types of answers that people give to that question.

1.                   Cephalus and  Polemarchus propose a ‘traditional’ answer.

Justice is the art of following the rule ‘Do good to your friends (who do you good) and do wrong to your enemies (who do you harm).’

Incidentally, these aren’t just funny names; they’re real people. C and P were resident aliens in Athens . They ran an armaments business and were very, very wealthy. When the Thirty found that they needed more money, they decided that they could claim that the foreigners were getting above themselves and made a list of 10 people – including 2 poor people for form’s sake – and arrested them. Polemarchus was one of them. He was forced to drink hemlock and the Thirty took his money. (Burn p. 301)

Although this is presented as traditionalism, Plato’s arguments are not those against relativism, as would be expected. They are two-pronged, attacking:

a.                    the idea that the mere ability is itself justice,

-on the ground that an ability is morally neutral and it can be used for Justice or injustice.

and

b.                    the rule of tit-for-tat as a guide to justice,

- on the ground that tit-for-tat is only a guide to interpersonal relations and says nothing about one’s place in the polis as a whole. Plato wants more than that from Justice. tit-for-tat is the sort of thing that a strongman would support.

2.                   Thrasymachus proposes that ‘…justice is really the good of another, the advantage of the stronger and the ruler, and harmful to the one who obeys and serves. Injustice is the opposite, it rules the truly simple and just, … and they make the one they serve happy, but themselves not at all. You must look at it as follows, my most simple Socrates: a just man always gets less than an unjust one.’ (Republic, 343c-d).

This is a fairly popular point of view amongst young and newly sophisticated cynics. But it also has some similarity to the primitive-Marxist view that ‘bourgeois morality’ is a cunning plot against the proletariat.

This position also has at least two aspects:

a.                    The ruler or the state operates in its own interest.

But: Plato argues that the proper role of a ruler is to aid the ruled as the proper role of a doctor is to aid the doctored, etc.

b.                    If Justice is whatever you can get away with, then that applies to everyone. The wise man therefore does the conventionally ‘unjust’ thing and only the unwise are bound by conventional justice.

But: Plato thinks he can prove that the wise man is just because he is moderate and will get a better outcome. (Look in the Gorgias for more on this argument.)

But there’s a more fundamental objection to all those sorts of theories of Justice which Glaucon now introduces: that is, they all make it look as if Justice is merely an imposition on free men – something which it isn’t unreasonable for them to feel that they are not bound by. Glaucon makes this point by telling the story of the Ring of Gyges, which you can read in the Histories of Herodotus. Gyges was a simple, normal fellow who found a ring that made him invisible. By using the ring Gyges could commit crimes (or sins) in the certain knowledge that he would not be caught or punished for them. Glaucon wants to know whether there’s any reason why we should be ‘good’ and ‘just’ and so on if there’s only material advantage from injustice and, apparently, no material disadvantage. Why, in short, be Just if we don’t have to be?

Is it possible to determine Justice by reason or to observe it openly in nature? Could it be an internal rather than external thing? Plato all along has treated Justice as having to do with how people should live together. This he thinks will depend on how people actually are. So Plato’s investigation of Justice depends upon a certain view of human nature. He has a ‘psychology’ that underlies his political philosophy.

Psychology

Once again we need to talk about the terms we use in this discussion, because the conceptual world of Ancient Greece was very different from the conceptual world of Modern Australia. In the language of the time the word psyche (yuch) was used to talk about the sorts of things that we talk about by using the word ‘mind’. Unfortunately it is also sometimes used to mean ‘Life’ and ‘Soul’. If we intend something significantly different by ‘Mind’ and ‘Soul’ we may be confused by some of Plato’s statements.

Psyche is contrasted with soma (swma) meaning ‘body’. We are familiar with this contrast.

Psyche is, in general terms, for Plato and others, that which survives the body after death. Plato’s ideas on this matter were developments of the ideas of the Orphics and Pythagoreans (Greek cults that we don’t need to talk about here.) who believed in personal immortality, but also in the supremacy of the spirit. Psyche was seen as a prisoner of the body. The development seems to be: psyche is ‘life’; psyche is what is lost at death; psyche is like an animating spirit for the body that escapes like a gas at death, and flies away squeaking like a bat; we are essentially our psyche and the body is merely its vehicle; psyche is our mental life; psyche is our immortal personhood; etc. All these ideas are current at the same time.

(Relevant dialogues are: Phaedo, Phaedrus, Laws, Epinomis, Timaeus, Republic. They are not entirely consistent. Plato changed his ‘psychological’ views over time.)

The Tripartitie Soul

He eventually settled upon a view of the soul as consisting of three parts somehow operating together. The view is first found in the Phaedrus, where we are told that souls are the source of action in self-activating organisms – such as men, gods, stars, animals, and plants. We also hear that the soul can be thought of as a winged equipage of two yoked horses ‘passion’ and ‘desire’, driven by the charioteer ‘reason’.

In the late dialogue Timaeus Plato develops this idea in terms of the immortal and the mortal parts of the soul – a division in which the immortal part is assigned the capacity of reason (and located in the head) while the mortal part is assigned sense-perception (61c8) and the passions and desires (and located in various parts of the body). The mortal part is divided into two parts (69 et seq.); the better of which is assigned emotional states such as anger (and located in the chest), while the worse is assigned primitive drives such as hunger and lust (and is located in the stomach and the genitals).

In the Republic, however, the soul’s divided thus:

a.                    rational (logos/logoV)

b.                    appetitive (epithymia/epiqumia)

        to do with desires and lower passions

c.                    spirited (thymos/qumoV)

        think of it as ‘honour’

Their separate existences are demonstrated (and we get an idea of their supposed roles) by a series of examples of ‘conflicts’ in motivations. Rational and appetitive elements of the psyche can be seen to have incompatible motivations from the difficulty of the man (with dropsy, presumably) who wants to drink water but knows that it would be bad for him (439a-d). Similarly, appetitive and spirited parts conflict in the story of Leontius (439e-440a) who wants to see a corpse but is angry with himself for indulging this appetite – at least, this seems to be the point of the story, perhaps a more apt modern example would be of someone who both desires to view pornography and condemns himself for having this desire; and Odysseus reasons himself out of anger (441a-c) showing the independence of rational and spirited motivations.

The argument seems to be this. Motives to action define the psyche. If the psyche were a single thing there could be only one source of motivation, and thus no conflicting motives (‘the same thing will not be willing to do or undergo opposites in the same part of itself, in relation to the same thing, at the same time.’ (436b)); but there are, in fact, three kinds of motives which can come into conflict. Therefore there are three parts to the psyche.

On Plato’s view, in a healthy soul – the kind of soul to which we should all aspire – there is a proper balance between these parts. Each of the parts has a legitimate set of desires that demand satisfaction, and no human can be said to be properly flourishing or happy if some part of their soul is quite suppressed or not given its due. That balance is what Plato calls justice in the soul. In Plato’s view it’s also clear that the proper role of the rational part is not only to have the desires proper to the rational part but also to mediate the conflicts between the different parts. Thus he says:

(441e) Ought not the rational principle, which is wise, and has the care of the whole soul, to rule, and the passionate or spirited principle to be the subject and ally?

(442a-b) And these two, thus nurtured and educated, and having learned truly to know their own functions, will rule over the concupiscent [appetites], which in each of us is the largest part of the soul and by nature the most insatiable of gain; over this they will keep guard, lest, waxing great and strong with the fullness of bodily pleasures, as they are termed, the concupiscent soul, no longer confined to her own sphere, would attempt to enslave and rule those who are not her natural-born subjects, and overturn the whole life of man?

So, although we have a tripartite soul, one part of the soul – the rational part – should be in overall charge of the other parts of the soul.

Whether harmony in this sense would really result in a happy individual, or whether it’s merely a condition of being such a person, or whether it is in fact not related to happiness and flourishing are questions that Plato gives little thought to. We can also question whether ‘justice’ as he describes it for the soul is closely enough related to our notions of justice – which tend to be concerned with our relations with others – to merit the name.

The Tripartitie State

Now, Plato treats the actual soul as a model for the ideal state. (By contrast, he says that the shape of the ideal state will show how the soul is constructed – the ideal state is the soul writ large, or the parts of the state map neatly to the parts of the soul, and his description of psychology accordingly follows his description of the state – but we don’t need to accept that this is what he was really doing, and it’s hardly plausible that you can find out what the soul is from what the state should be, is it?) In any case, we see that just as the soul has three parts so does the state. And the three parts of the state have their assigned persons. Thus 

Psychological basis     Role                        Occupant               Plato’s terms                        

Rational                         Government          Philosophers        Perfect Guardians

Appetitive                     Economy               Workers               Farmers

Spirited                          Military                 Soldiers                 Guardians, then Auxiliaries

1.                   The Economy Plato admits as a necessary sector because any state needs to satisfy the physical requirements of food-production and tool-making and so on.

i.                     He recognises that the best organization for an economy involves specialisation so that one who concentrates on a single task can get expertise in it. Efficiency is thus improved.

For the good of the state then, someone who is good at a task ought to do it. And he should do nothing else.

ii.                   He recognises that the goods need to be distributed, and he comes up with a scheme of reciprocity (some sort of bartering). In this way he thinks that the workers will be bound to each other by their mutual interests in each others work.

2.                   The Military is necessary because any state needs to defend its citizens and protect their interests and guard their territory..

i.                     If specialisation improved the workers work, would it not also benefit the soldiers soldiering? And isn’t the latter more important to get right than the former? It is.

Typically the Greek soldier was only a soldier by occasion. Socrates fought in the war. Thucydides, the great historian, was a general. This part-time business was one of the common features of the pre-modern world, and did much to ameliorate the wars by the fact that they usually couldn’t go on too long.

Professionalism in the military had already begun to appear in Greece , and its effectiveness was becoming known.

For the good of the state then, a professional soldiery is required. They are selected for their ‘spiritedness’. They must stick to their own – and thus they can have no interest in the business of the workers or other groups.

3.                   The Government is necessary.

i.                     The Guardians love the state because they know the state (412d-e), and know that its good is their good. Thus they are immune to the damaging effect of selfishness opposed to the state interest. They act so as to maintain the unity and harmony of the state.

ii.                   Specialisation is needed here too. Choose those for guardians who are capable but who also excel in the capacity of rational affection.

iii.                 Note that these philosophers are a rare breed. And the final criterion is that they know what Justice is so that they can shape the lives of their subjects towards it doing.

Eventually, therefore, the structure of the state is unified by reason.

iv.                  Plato finally decides that the system naturally requires a supreme perfect guiding rationality, and so he proposes a philosopher-king.

This aspect of the Platonic ideal state seems similar to the Iranian system. The ‘Guardian Council,’ ‘Assembly of Experts,’ and ‘Expediency Council’ – self-selected for their Koranic scholarship and piety – guide the course of the Islamic Revolution and place a check on the proceedings and appointments of the parliament, which thus plays a role similar to that of a school’s student council. The ‘philosopher king’ of the system is the Supreme Leader (Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

Communist regimes also look very similar to this. The ‘Politburo’ holds all actual power as the executive of the Communist Party that plays the role of ‘vanguard of the proletariat’

In the past, people liked to see the Platonic system in the Chinese bureaucracy – selected since the Han period by competitive examinations open to all testing the candidates familiarity with the Confucian classics – under an Emperor who was expected to be thoroughly proficient in the humanities.

Justice

Plato finally unveils what he knew all along, that the proper rule for men to follow that they may live together successfully – so that the state may flourish, and all its citizens with it – is that everyone has a proper place and people should mind their own business. This, then, is justice.

Clearly, this is to treat the State itself as a moral actor, and as the ethically definitive condition of a person’s existence. How reasonable is this? One might also question the apparent assumption that people in a flourishing state are themselves flourishing. Is that ever defended by Plato?

The Critique of Plato

We cannot leave this topic without mentioning that in recent times Plato has come in for a good deal of criticism. Many people have thought that Plato’s idea of Justice is a travesty of the concept. Even in Greece it was more common to think of Justice as somehow involving the idea of equality, respecting the dignity of others, and so on. But Plato’s State has none of this; and looks like a pretty unpleasant place for everyone but the ruling class.

Look how rigid the classes in the ideal society are. No one is permitted to go beyond the bounds of their assigned role in society, and that role is assigned to them quite without regard to their preferences. Moreover, there is no allowance for change in the citizens: it is assumed that if you were suitable for one class as a child you will always be suitable for that class – no matter your education or experiences. There is no consideration for the individual in the State, who has no recognised separate value than as a supporter of the State. The education system of the State is designed to produce a total suppression of independence in the masses:

Nor should the mind of anybody be habituated to letting him do anything at all on his own initiative, neither out of zeal, nor even playfully. … And even in the smallest matters he should stand under leadership. For example, he should get up or move, or wash, or take his meals … only if he has been told to do so.

Even less appealing are some of the ‘incidental’ features of Plato’s ideal state that he claimed were necessary in order to ensure that the State continued to work as the ideal structure indicated it should work. Features like the community of women (they can be assigned for use to deserving servants of the State). Or the community of children.

And, of course, there is no private property, for everything must be for the use of the State.

And Plato propounds the doctrine that the guardians are allowed to deceive the citizens for their own good. Thus:

(415a) All of you in the city are brothers,” we’ll say to them in telling our story, “but the god who made you mixed some gold into those who are adequately equipped to rule, because they are the most valuable. He put silver in those who are auxiliaries and iron and bronze in the farmers and other craftsmen. For the most part you will produce children like yourselves, but, because you are all related, a silver child will occasionally be born from a golden parent, and vice versa, and all the other from each other.

The ‘lies of the poets’ on the other hand can’t be justified: Art has to be heavily restricted so as to support the State and not give the subordinate classes any funny ideas.

And so on.

In fact, we’ve seen a lot of those features in some rather unpleasant States quite recently. But if you compare these features with the description I gave above of Sparta , they do tend to make the ideal State look rather like an even more totalitarian version of Sparta . And contrariwise, it seems that there is little trace in Plato’s vision of the Athens which gave us the great philosophers and tragedians and the Parthenon, and all the rest. It seems that Plato had chosen his side in the Peloponessian war and it wasn’t the side of his own city.