Musings from the Ozone

I have decided to place a few of my college papers on the blog; they will be strictly related to the subject matter at hand, such as book critiques or of a philosophical nature. (what else?) This article was written after reading Plato's Republic.  I have condensed this article to "Justice."

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After reading Plato’s Republic, I realized that I used to have a concept of justice which was somewhat limited in its scope. I generally thought of  justice in terms of our American justice system, the Old Testament view of an eye for an eye, or of people receiving their just dues.”I thought that punishment, or reciprocation for an evil deed was somehow tied up in the term justice.

Living abroad for three years in Montevideo, Uruguay, South America, taught me that societies can interpret justice with different meanings  than what we consider, in United States, to be a fair system of justice . We would never want to come up against their justice system, because as foreigners we were automatically considered to be on the wrong side of their legal justice system.

Plato wrote of many virtues, and the virtue justice, as he saw it, was of a divine quality in the human character.  He began writing about justice using a dialogue. Socrates questioned Cephalus in areas that seemed far away from the subject matter of justice.  It is with eloquence that Socrates drew people out through questioning and managed to manipulate them to reach their own conclusions; conclusions they would think were of their own choosing. 

Plato had been agitated with the Sophist’s prevailing philosophies when he wrote this book. The Sophist and their teachings were aimed at self-satisfaction and personal edification. They promoted individualistic laws and made distinctions between natural laws and man-made laws. They taught that if  you weren't’t being watched, it was okay to be clever and do things your own way; allowing  them to be impervious to obeying their man-made laws. They taught that only natural laws couldn’t be violated.  The former strong morals of the city of Athens were becoming debased because of these teachings and the people were losing grip on their former moralistic interpretation of law and order.  When Plato wrote this book, he wanted to convince people of the correct teachings that his master, Socrates, held.  Socrates so believed in the law and even though it was a man-made, ill-contrived law that allowed him to be put to death, he obeyed it, without striving to resist it. The Apology, a book about his self-defense and acceptance of the sentence, became an immortal and classic writing of a man that obeyed the law, even to his own death.

Socrates believed in a universal law of justice.  His moral code was based on principle and was not given to the whims and changes of locale, tradition and individualistic extremes of society.  Because of the Sophist doctrines of changeable laws, Athens was on the course to ruin and shame. Plato felt he had to write this book in order to attack or remedy the situation . Without some proper concept of justice, people would just do what was convenient for the moment.

The dialogue began with Socrates drawing out Cephalus about his own theory of justice. Cephalus spoke of his wealth as allowing him to be relaxed and comfortable in his old age. Socrates leads Cephalus on in the dialogue, to a point where he says wealth can save a person from having to cheat or deceive people, or flee when they owe someone money and have none to repay the bill. Socrates rejoins this with more questions about justice, such as, is it just that we are able to speak the truth and pay whatever debts we have incurred? Socrates was able to show Cephalus that it might not work if the person we owed should be insane and we would return his deadly weapons to him. We couldn’t define justice by just repaying what was owed and speaking the truth.  The dialogue then comes to a spot where Simonides, another friend, said something similar; that “treating friends well, and enemies badly” could be justice.  Socrates, in his wisdom, showed where this just wasn’t the case either. Perhaps a friend isn’t really a friend, but is just seeming to be one, but is an enemy in reality, what then will happen? And to do evil to anyone, even your enemies, was inconsistent with the conception of morality.  This definition of justice, a justice based on relationships between people and individual perceptions, ignores the whole of justice in a society.

After this dialogue, Thrasymachus defined justice in the prevailing, Sophist spirit.  He said that justice was in the interest of the stronger. Thrasymachus name means fighter and fight he did. He continued trying to push his ideas onto the others. The book said, “He was like a wild beast about to spring, and hurled himself at them as if to tear them to pieces.”  He, most likely, thought that not only did might make right, but perhaps if he was very forceful in the delivery of his speech, it would be more dramatic and less disputed. He thought that every man tries to get what he can for himself  and the strongest is sure to get what he wants. In government, each government tries to be the strongest, because they can get whatever they want for themselves if they are the strongest among governments.  He considered justice as being able to be the strongest and make laws for the advantage of the strongest. He said "whether it be in a democracy making democratic rules, or in a tyranny making tyrannical laws, whatever would be to their advantage, would be just for their subjects."  They would punish who would ever go against the rules, as being lawless and unjust.  He felt that justice was the same in all cities, that is, by having the advantage of being the ruling power.

Socrates tore this argument up slowly, and most methodically. I especially enjoyed this dismantling of such a bad doctrine. I couldn’t imagine how Socrates would do it and also so eloquently, since something felt so unsettling about Thrasymachus’ beliefs. It left me wondering, what could be said to awaken this man to see the perverseness of his beliefs?  He seemed small-minded and closed minded, because he was so dogmatic in his tyrannical view of justice. Socrates never seemed to lose his temper or reason. He dealt with Thrasymachus as one would deal with a kid having a temper tantrum. He remained calm and patient and understanding.  After all, Thrasymachus was just one of many people who believed such a view at that time. S ocrates was one of the older, wiser and morally upright members of an older and wiser society, but he was now living in a decaying and corrupt government. It seemed many people were forgetting the principles of how they became strong and democratic in the golden age of Greece.

As Socrates continued his dialogue, he asked questions such as “are the rulers in all cities infallible, or are they liable to error?”  He maintained that sometimes rulers dictate something that is disadvantageous to themselves as well as to the people.  After a length of time, going on with this type of questioning, Thrasymachus must have felt the heat, because he began to get very testy. He went so far as to call Socrates a false witness. Socrates made a little retort about not being crazy enough to shave a lion or bear false witness against Thrasymachus.  But, he still continued to work on Thrasymachus until the crucial point when he said, “if a physician studies and exercises his power, not in his own interest, then the government of any kind should do what is good for the people for whom it exercises its art.”  Thrasymachus tried to put forth other ideas such as: an unjust is superior to a just in character and intelligence. An unjust man is stronger, and the ruler, while justice is harmful to the one who obeys and serves. He said, “A just man always gets less than an unjust one.” He also said a person of great power outdoes everyone else.” Again, he was showing that “might makes right.” Somehow, it seemed he could not get shaken from this belief that being right was always on the side of whichever person or factor had the power in command.

By his constant questions and dialogue, Socrates arrives at some beautiful conclusions about justice. From the principle that justice is wisdom and a virtue, he made Thrasymachus agree that a city, an army, a band of robbers or thieves or any other tribe with a common unjust purpose would never be able to achieve it  if they were unjust to each other.  He said injustice causes civil war, hatred and fighting among themselves, while justice brings friendship and a sense of common purpose.  He tried to get him to see that injustice has the power to make any unit, city, family, an army, or anything else incapable of achieving anything as a unit. Being just people, on the other hand, they are more capable of doing things together and achieving goals.  They are true to each other and strive for the improvement of the common good.  He proved, through reasoning, that justice was a virtue by itself. Plato stressed that people must know what is right and wrong.  A state cannot rule itself without a sense of justice and fairness.

Cleverly, Socrates was able to use simple analogies to prove his points.  In one analogy, he said that the ears and eyes have functions and because of that they have virtue. Without the peculiar virtue, and a vice in place of it, would the eyes function? If the ears were deprived of their virtue, they would perform badly. He likened all virtues performed by the function of their virtue to be performed well, and if by vice, then they would perform badly. From that angle he jumped to the function of a soul being assigned virtues.  He charged that the soul would perform badly if deprived of its virtues.  It seems truly ingenious to liken virtues to bodily actions which function well or badly.  By connecting these kind of analogies to the soul, one would have to deduce that the soul is the seat of many virtues and peculiar functions.  A bad soul rules badly, as a good soul and a just man rules well. From all of this, he defined justice as only one virtue among others. Plato believed to excel was to be virtuous. He recognized four excellences: wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice.  Bringing the argument down to basic principles gives man common ground to build upon.  The eloquence of his debate or dialogue of justice is extremely impressive. It may be the basic reason for the endurance of this book.

Plato went on in his book to create a beautiful kind of utopia world in which society would become as near idyllic and perfect as he could imagine.  Much of his dreams and plans were very well thought out and organized. One cannot fault his reasoning about what it would take to make a near perfect climate for such a society and indeed, much of it is still relevant to our desires today.  However, common man is not the philosopher, dreamer, or highly idealized type of person that Plato was.  At that time, as well as today, a lot of people are self centered, materialistic and short sighted about goals for bettering their society and lacking in intellectual pursuits. It seemed Plato wished that men would be very philosophical in their thinking.  Generations later, man would look back to this beautiful writing and be impressed, however, at that time it was just too much to expect acceptance of Socratic teachings from the morally declining Greek society.