Justice Defined by Plato - Coursework Example

ID Number: Platos definition of justice Introduction Plato was a famous Greek philosopher whowas a student and follower of Socrates, a classical Greek philosopher. He was born in 427 BC and died in 348 BC. Plato was a logical philosopher who has written down many ideas related to philosophy. One of the most famous books of Plato is “The Republic” which was written in 380 BC. The republic is written in the form of dialogues that Plato had with his mentor, Socrates. The book deals with the view of Plato regarding justice and the character and order of a just state, just city as well as a just man. Plato opposed the existing theories and rhetoric related to sophism that prevailed in ancient Athens. He worked towards propagating equality and true justice in his famous work “Gorgias”. He also discussed about other facets of life like immortality of the soul in his book "Phaedo". However, till date, the views of Plato on justice remains one of the most studied and debated work among the literary works of Plato and other contemporary philosophers of his time. Discussion Plato has given much prominence to the idea of justice in all his works. According to the philosophy of Plato, justice forms a main pillar of the social position of any country (Stewart 450). Also, justice is an equally important concept with reference to both individuals and societies. He was not satisfied with the existing degenerating and derogatory conditions in the city of Athens. According to Plato, the absence of a fair form of justice for all led to the ruin of the Athenian democracy. He targeted the excessive individualism and the amateur meddlesomeness that prevailed at large in the society of Athens. Plato’s theory of justice encompassed the fact that justice is the only remedy available for curing the evils like individualism and meddlesomeness which destroy the essence and fair practices for a society. According to the theory of Plato, the existing conventional theories related to justice, especially the sophistic theories were insufficient for application in the practical domain. He widely criticized the theories presented by other philosophers like Thrasymachus, Cephalus, Glaucon, and Polymarchus etc. The theory of justice coined by Plato discussed that justice is a significant form of human virtue which is useful in making a human being self-conscious, good, self-consistent and self-aware. According to Plato, from the perspective of society, justice is a form of social consciousness which adds value to a society by making it internally good, connected and harmonious. He also identified the factor of justice to be a type of specialization. Plato used the word “Diakaisyne” which in Greek means justice and is very near to the concepts of righteousness and morality. According to Plato’s theory of justice, ‘dikaisyne’ includes within itself factors like righteousness and morality. Also, in his view, justice as a concept holds within itself all the duties of a human being. Justice covers the entire field of the conduct of an individual, especially those conducts which are likely to affect other people around him. As per the theory of justice by Plato, justice is a virtue for the human beings and is a quality and asset of the soul of a human being. It is that virtue within a human being which makes people set aside their own irrational desires for pleasures and makes them sacrifice their selfish needs in order to accommodate themselves for better functions that are considered good in social and philosophical terms and which ultimately lead to the general benefit of people and societies (Thesleff 290). Plato stated that justice helped human beings to control their irrational desires and constrain their pleasure seeking nature. He considered interferences, political selfishness and meddlesomeness as the most agitating factors in Greece in his time. Plato also believed that these factors together caused the downfall and ruin for the democracy on Athens. He established justice as the ultimate solution for all the problems pertaining to the society and democracy of Athens. According to Plato, self-satisfaction achieved in a blind and selfish manner often lead to disruptions in the society and also within human minds. This was highly prevalent in the city of Athens where political selfishness and interference created wide gaps among the society. The weak sections of the society were highly deprived and were affected by the unjustified measures prevailing in the State. On the other hand, the affluent sectors were living in boisterous and irrational ways and were acting in socially unacceptable and unjustified ways to derive their own benefits. The sophistic view of justice prevailing in the city was strongly opposed by Plato. He was of the view that the sophistic teachings of the people regarding the ethics of self-satisfaction led to the creation of excessive individualism in the society and also influenced the citizens to capture the ruling office of the State with the ultimate aim of fulfilling their own selfish desires and purposes. This eventually divided Athens into two extreme, parts which make the society and unjust society and the human beings living in the society were either performing the unjust acts or were victims of the unjust acts of others. Two hostile camps were built in Athens- one camp constituted of the rich and oppressing people and the other camp included the poor and the oppressed parts of the society (Zuckert 109). Plato established his theories of justice on the basis of these divisions and propagated the construction of an ideal society that had justice in its forefront. Plato confronted all the theories that had been propounded by other philosophes like Glaucon, Thrasymachus and Cephalus. He realized that all these theories included one common element which was that in all these theories, the factor of justice was considered to be an external factor. Most of the existing theories of justice indicated that justice was a kind of convention or accomplishment. Plato opposed to these conventions and said that justice is an internal virtue and a specialization of human beings and societies. He also proved that justices is related the soul and should be considered on the place of its habitation. Plato indicated that by building up on three factors – reason, appetite and spirit, the factor of justice can be made to reside within the human soul. He also described justice as the right condition of the soul of a human being. He said that justice is related to the nature of a human being and involved an understanding of the inner man. Therefore, justice is a natural and internal concept according to Plato. This is in contrast to the views of other philosophers according to whom; justice is an external and artificial concept. Plato identified that a man cannot be made just either by force or by creating fear. A human being is likely to act in a human manner when his soul will be motivated to perform a duty according to the nature of the soul itself. In order to prove his theory of justices, Plato created an analogy between a human being and the society as an entity. He identified three main elements of justice that can be found in human beings (Vlastos 206). These elements are reason, appetite and spirit. According to Plato, an individual will act in a just manner when each of these three elements of his soul will perform independently to influence the other elements but without interfering in the function of the other elements. Reason should rule the soul with forethought and wisdom. Similarly, spirit would be subordinated by the rules of reason. Reason and sprit should control the third element within a human being which is the appetite. Appetite forms a large part of the soul of a human being. Therefore, if reason and spirit together can control appetite, then the human being would be freed from the need of selfish motives and as such would act with justice. So, it can be expected that when reason will rule the mind and soul of a person, justice will be created within him (Melchert 40). Plato considered the State to be a perfect whole within which each element of the state performs its own duties not only for individual benefits but also for the benefit of the State as a collective unit. Therefore, justice existing in a platonic state would act as the harmony in relationships that hold the planets in their places and connect them to the galaxy in the planetary system. He was convinced of the fact that an orderly connection and movement of every entity of a society is essential to ensure that the society is organized in a proper way. According to Plato, the society is like the planetary or celestial system while the individual human beings are the planets in the planetary system. Justice, as a unique part of this system, is the harmony that keeps the human beings in place and ensures orderly movements in a society just like the planets are managed in the planetary systems. Plato also included in his theory of justice that when human beings shift from their original places, then the coordination between the different entities of a society are destroyed and the society may eventually get dissolved and disintegrated as a result of this. Justice is therefore the sense of duties among every human being of a society. Conclusion Justice is thus considered to be a type of specialization by Plato. Justice is the will within a human being or a collective group like a society to fulfill their own duties and not interfere in the duties and actions of other people. Justice can be identified to be relevant both from the perspective of an individual as well as from the perspective of a whole society. Justice remains in the mind of every human being. The degree of just practices, however differ from one individual to another and from one society to another on the basis of many inherent factors like the existing mindsets of the people, the habits of the people and the existing principles of interference and non-interference among the people in the society. Thus, Plato said that justice can be built up only when a person performs his individual duty in his appointed place in a righteous manner. In the foundation of the State lies the original principle that an individual should practice and perform one thing only and that this thing should be the one to which his nature has best adopted. Plato concluded that true justice was built on the principles of non-interferences and righteousness. Works Cited Melchert, Norman. The Great Conversation: A Historical Introduction to Philosophy. New Jersey: McGraw Hill. 2002. Print. Stewart, John. Kierkegaard and the Greek World - Socrates and Plato. London: Ashgate. 2010. Print. Thesleff, Holger. Platonic Patterns: A Collection of Studies by Holger Thesleff. Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing. 2009. Print. Vlastos, Gregory. Platos Universe - with a new Introduction by Luc Brisson. Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing. 2006. Print. Zuckert, Catherine. Platos Philosophers: The Coherence of the Dialogues. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2009. Print. Read More