Plato's Republic: Justice in the Ideal City and Soul

Plato's Republic: Building the Just City (367e-376e)

Socrates proposes investigating social justice and individual justice by witnessing the spectacle of a city's birth, observing how justice and injustice might arise within it.

The Necessary City: Meeting Basic Needs

The city originates from the lack of individual self-sufficiency. To meet basic needs—food, shelter, and clothing—the city will require:

• Farmers
• Masons
• Weavers
• Shoemakers

The different natural abilities of individuals suggest applying the principle of functional specialization to increase productivity and improve product quality. To provide tools and materials, the city will also need carpenters, blacksmiths, cattlemen, and shepherds. Lack of self-sufficiency will necessitate traders and sailors for external exchange. Internally, exchange requires:

• A marketplace
• Currency
• Merchants
• Strong laborers for arduous tasks

This represents the image of a basic, healthy society, characterized by its sobriety and the application of functional specialization.

The Luxurious City: Glaucon's Influence

However, Glaucon does not settle for this simple life, deeming it a "city of pigs" and desiring the advancements of civilization. Socrates concedes that accommodating luxury and the superfluous requires adding many more roles:

• Hunters
• Imitators (e.g., painters, musicians, poets)
• Bards, actors, dancers
• Entrepreneurs
• Artisans of luxury goods
• Servants (tutors, nurses, nannies, waiters, hairdressers)
• Chefs and kitchen staff
• Swineherds (as meat consumption increases)
• Doctors (as luxurious living leads to illness)

The Need for Guardians and Their Nature

This enlarged, "feverish" city will need to procure resources beyond its own, inevitably leading to conflict and war. Therefore, the city requires soldiers, or Guardians. Due to their critical role, these Guardians must be chosen carefully and properly prepared. Qualities that must characterize them include:

• Vivacity
• Speed
• Strength
• Boldness

Most importantly, they must possess a complex nature: spirited and passionate, yet gentle towards their own citizens—a disposition fostered by a love for knowledge and philosophy.

Educating the Guardians: Mind and Body

How can such individuals be cultivated? Through a specific education:

• Gymnastics for the body.
• Music (in the broad sense, including literature and arts) for the soul, which should begin before gymnastics.

This education starts with fictional narratives (myths and stories).

Reforming Theology for Education

However, the traditional religion and mythology, with their anthropomorphic depictions of flawed gods, must be avoided. Instead, divinity must be represented as immutable and solely the author of good, providing a proper moral foundation for the Guardians.

Plato's Republic: Justice in City and Soul (Book IV, 427c-End)

Socrates asserts that the ideal city they have described will possess the four cardinal virtues: wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice.

The Four Virtues of the Ideal City

• Wisdom: Resides in the small ruling class (the philosopher-guardians) due to their knowledge and ability to make sound decisions for the entire city.
• Courage: Found primarily in the auxiliaries (the military Guardians), defined as the unwavering preservation of the belief, instilled by the rulers through education, about what things are truly to be feared.
• Temperance: A harmony that pervades the entire city, representing the agreement among all classes (rulers, auxiliaries, and producers) that the naturally superior element (reason/rulers) should govern the inferior elements.
• Justice: The underlying principle that makes the other virtues possible; it is the state in which each individual and each class performs the specific function for which they are naturally best suited, without interfering in the functions of others.

Individual Justice: A Reflection of the City

Now, Socrates turns to individual justice. Just as the city has distinct classes performing specific roles, the individual soul has corresponding parts. If the city was just because each class performed its proper function harmoniously, then the individual will be just if a similar harmony exists between the various forces operating within their soul.

The Tripartite Structure of the Soul

Evidence for distinct parts within the soul lies in the common experience of internal conflict—simultaneously feeling attraction and repulsion towards the same object. This points to at least three distinct forces or parts:

• The Rational part (logistikon): The aspect that calculates, learns, and guides with reason.
• The Irrational or Concupiscible part (epithymetikon): The seat of appetites and desires (for food, drink, sex, wealth, etc.).
• The Spirited part (thymoeides): The emotional element, responsible for anger, indignation, ambition, and courage. It typically acts as an ally to the rational part against the unruly appetites but can be corrupted.

The Just and Unjust Soul Defined

Based on this structure:

• The just soul is one where internal harmony prevails. The rational part, guided by wisdom, rules the entire soul. The spirited part acts as its courageous ally, enforcing reason's decrees and helping to control and moderate the concupiscible part.
• The unjust soul is characterized by internal strife or 'revolt'. The lower parts (spirited or concupiscible) usurp control, leading to chaos and dysfunction within the individual.

(Note: Plato's division of the soul in the Republic faces challenges later in his own dialogues, particularly concerning arguments for the soul's immortality.)

Justice as Health, Injustice as Disease

Socrates concludes this section by drawing an analogy: a just soul is fundamentally a healthy, beautiful, and well-ordered soul, leading to happiness (eudaimonia). Conversely, an unjust soul is diseased, ugly, disordered, and inherently unhappy.

Virtue as Unity, Vice as Multiplicity

Therefore, virtue—specifically justice as the overarching health of the soul—is essentially one. Vices, representing the various forms of internal disorder and injustice, are innumerable.