Though written by Plato, the Republic features Socrates as the main character. Since Socrates was a well-known philosopher in his own right, there is an obvious need to say something here about both Plato and Socrates. That said, the facts of their biographies are difficult to pin down, and it has been left to generations of scholars to speculate not only about this, but also about how to apportion between them the ideas that figure in the Republic and in the other Platonic dialogues that give Socrates the main speaking role.
Plato and Socrates were both Athenian citizens, Socrates being the elder of the two, and he was certainly Plato’s teacher, though not in any formal sense. Socrates’ dates are generally accepted to be 469–399 bce, and Plato’s 427–347 bce. As is often noted, Socrates did not himself produce any written work, and his philosophical reputation comes entirely from what is known about his character, wit and moral seriousness, as detailed in the various Platonic dialogues, but also in the Memorabilia of his contemporary, Xenophon, the plays of Aristophanes and in the works of Aristotle. He is thought to have been the son of a sculptor. He didn’t spend much time in earning a living, perhaps because of an inheritance, but mainly because he lived, by any standards, a radically simple life, one that generated few material needs. (One tradition has it that he was a stonemason.) His life centred wholly on the political and social life of Athens, and he spent his days mainly in discussion of moral and political matters – indeed, in debate about these – with those who lived and worked in that city. For underlying reasons that have been argued about down the centuries, he was tried and convicted by those in power in Athens for corrupting the young and undermining religious belief. He was sentenced to death and, rejecting the very real option of exile, is supposed to have faced his sentence with extraordinary dignity, calmly drinking the hemlock given as the method of execution allowed to Athenian citizens. As to his philosophical positions, very little can be said with any certainty, especially given that he famously insisted that he did not himself know anything. No less famously – even notoriously – he felt that he had to seek knowledge from others by endlessly questioning them about their understanding of, among other notions, virtue, friendship, love, knowledge and piety, and he maintained that a life not examined by such reflective inquiry was not worth living.
Plato came from a wealthy and powerful family in Athens, members of which were deeply implicated in the political turmoil that followed the Athenian defeat at the hands of Sparta in 404 bce. (Socrates’ death sentence is often thought to be the indirect result of this turmoil.) As a result, Plato seems to have distanced himself from Athenian politics, though it is known that he travelled to Syracuse in Sicily, and is thought to have given political advice to the ruler of that city. Whatever the truth about Plato’s political activities, there is no doubt about his having established a philosophical school in Athens – the Academy – which endured for some centuries. He also wrote a great deal, most of it in dialogue form, and it is from these dialogues that we have gleaned most of what we know, both about his and Socrates’ thought.
The Republic is one of the longest, and certainly the richest, of Plato’s dialogues, and it has a somewhat odd shape. It is generally reckoned to come in the middle period of Plato’s writing: the earlier dialogues tend to be short and have the inconclusiveness one associates with Socrates’ method of cross-questioning, whereas the later ones tend to be more assertive, and in some cases do not involve Socrates at all. Divided into ten books, the first book of the Republic reads like one of the early dialogues in which Socrates cross-questions various characters about their understanding of justice, but in the remaining books one finds Socrates arguing for, typically with very little input from his interlocutors, various philosophical views about justice and other matters.
Given Socrates’ emblematic insistence on his lack of philosophical knowledge, commentators have suggested that the first book was originally one of the early dialogues, and that the philosophical doctrines of the later books mark the point at which Plato, in spite of using Socrates as the main character, diverges from his teacher and presents his own views. However, it should be borne in mind that the actual texts we have of the Republic and other dialogues date from more than 1,200 years after Plato wrote, and that most of the conclusions scholars draw about the order of Plato’s compositions, and their content, are based mainly on internal evidence from these texts, many of which might have been extensively edited throughout the long period during which they were copied and re-copied. However, putting on one side these vexed issues of authorship, the discussion below will follow tradition in identifying Plato as responsible for the views about justice expressed in the Republic.
The focus of this chapter is Books I, II and IV of the ten books that make up the whole, and it focuses sharply on Plato’s account of justice and morality. However, the whole of the Republic is concerned, directly or indirectly, with morality, so the selection sketches, rather than details, the Platonic view.
Though reading the whole of the Republic is certainly to be recommended, our selection aims at giving an uncluttered view of the sources and general shape of Plato’s moral theory. Moreover, even though it involves severe pruning, the recommended texts give one a lively sense of his writing, and his vivid representation of Socrates.
Primary texts
There are many translations of the Republic. The citations in the text below are from the Paul Shorey translation (available both in Loeb Classical Library, two volumes, published in 1930, and in E. Hamilton and H. Cairns, Plato: The Collected Dialogues, New York: Pantheon Books, 1961).
The translation by Benjamin Jowett is available from the Gutenberg Project (use index on www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/), and is perfectly acceptable for use in this course.
Note: References to Plato’s works almost always use Stephanus page numbers, based on an edition of Plato’s works from the sixteenth century. These consist of the name of the dialogue, then the page number, then a letter indicating a section of the page.
Recommended essential reading
Brown, Eric ‘Plato’s Ethics and Politics in The Republic’, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2011 edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2011/entries/plato-ethics-politics/
Santas, Gerasimos (ed.) The Blackwell Guide to Plato’s Republic. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006) [ISBN 9781405115643].
Annas, Julia An Introduction to Plato’s Republic. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981) [ISBN 0198274297].
* Cooper, John M. ‘The Psychology of Justice in Plato’, American Philosophical Quarterly, 14(2), 1977, pp.151–57.
* Dahl, Norman O. ‘Plato’s Defence of Justice’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 51(4), 1991, pp.809–34. (Also in Fine (ed.) listed in Further reading.)
* Demos, Raphael ‘A Fallacy in Plato’s Republic?’, The Philosophical Review, 73(3), 1964, pp.395–98.
* Kraut, Richard ‘The Defense of Justice in Plato’s Republic’ in Kraut R. (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Plato. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992) [ISBN 0521430186] pp.311–37.
* Lear, Jonathan ‘Inside and Outside the Republic’, Phronesis, 37(2), 1992, pp.184–215.
* Sachs, David ‘A Fallacy in Plato’s Republic’, The Philosophical Review, 72(2), 1963, pp.141–58. (Also in Vlastos (ed.) listed in Further reading.)
* Smith, Nicholas D. ‘Plato’s Analogy of Soul and State’, Journal of Ethics, 3(1), 1999, pp.31–49, 398. (Also in Vlastos (ed.) listed in Further reading.)
Vlastos, Gregory ‘Justice and Happiness in Plato’s Republic’ in Vlastos, G. (ed.) Plato: A Collection of Critical Essays, II: Ethics, Politics, and Philosophy of Art and Religion. (Notre Dame, Ind: University of Notre Dame Press, 1978) [ISBN 9780268015299].
Further reading
Fine, Gail (ed.) Plato 2: Ethics, Politics, Religion, and the Soul. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999) [ISBN 0198752040].
Frede, Dorothea ‘Plato’s Ethics: An Overview’, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2009 edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2009/entries/plato-ethics/
Kraut, Richard (ed.) Plato’s Republic: Critical Essays. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997) [ISBN 0847684938].
Vlastos, Gregory (ed.) Plato: A Collection of Critical Essays, II: Ethics, Politics, and Philosophy of Art and Religion. (Notre Dame, Ind: University of Notre Dame Press, 1978) [ISBN 9780268015299].
The main topic in the Republic is justice and this, together with its title, encourages the thought that the work is one of political philosophy. However, even the most casual reading shows that matters are not so straightforward. In a familiar contemporary usage, ‘justice’ can be taken to be concerned with the distribution of goods and harms. If a society concentrates its wealth on a very few, allowing others little opportunity to do well, or if its legal system metes out punishments to the innocent and is distorted by financial considerations, we say that these arrangements are unjust. However, there is another understanding of the notion, which is also in contemporary use. The person who keeps promises, helps those in need, takes trouble over understanding others’ problems and generally behaves in morally praiseworthy ways, not for any reward, but simply because it is right – such a person is naturally described as being just or good. In this sense, justice is a moral virtue – perhaps the moral virtue – and it is only indirectly connected with the more political notion of justice in distribution. In Plato’s Republic one can see the two notions in play, weaving in and out of discussion in interesting ways. So when one says that Plato’s Republic has justice as its central theme, what is in play is as much morality in general as the more narrow kind of morality that we think of in connection with various political institutions.
This interweaving of the various senses of justice is very well illustrated in Book I, which (as noted above) reads like one of the earlier Socratic dialogues, and may well have been written separately from the remainder of the Republic. Its opening gives a genuine sense of place to the ensuing discussion, which itself displays the dogged, and sometimes infuriating, quality of Socrates’ cross-questioning. And while that cross-questioning can seem heavy-handed, the underlying structure of Book I – from its opening page – is very subtle.
Seeking a definition of justice, the first substantial suggestion comes with the poet Simonides’ formulation: justice is ‘rendering to each his due’. Several pages of argument later, Socrates and his interlocutor Polemarchus find themselves dissatisfied with this formulation, largely because it is unclear what it means, and attempts to sharpen it only result in its being pushed into awkward corners by Socrates’ questioning.
It is at this point that the dialogue takes a dramatic turn. Thrasymachus had been listening to the line of argument – none too patiently – and he erupts in anger at Socrates and at what he describes as the ‘balderdash’ that has figured so far in discussion. Instead of constantly asking questions, he demands that Socrates himself provide a definition, one which doesn’t involve ‘drivel’ such as that justice is what ought to be, is beneficial, profitable or advantageous. Alarmed by Thrasymachus’s vehemence, Socrates uses a mixture of flattery and humility both to calm him down and to encourage him to give his own definition of justice. Thrasymachus seems to be a historical figure, not simply a fictional character in the dialogue. He was known to be a Sophist, a group of philosophers who specialised in ‘for profit’ education, teaching Athenians how to get ahead by winning arguments. (Note, though, that Plato gives a uniformly unflattering portrait of them, which may well be wide off the mark.) Fittingly, then, Thrasymachus insists that he will offer his definition of justice only when he is paid a fee for it. Socrates offers all he has at his disposal – praise for a genuinely wise answer – and the other participants offer to stump up the fee.
When Thrasymachus does finally offer his definition, it is wholly consistent with his character, as described above in the dramatic interchanges: justice, he says, is ‘nothing else than the advantage of the stronger’. And, predictably, Socrates gets to work on this formulation straightaway, claiming that he doesn’t yet properly understand it.
The lines of questioning Socrates pursues manage to do two things. First, they somewhat indirectly bring out more clearly what Thrasymachus’ definition really comes to and, second, they lead us to think that Socrates is being less than serious in his examination of that definition. Both of these re-emerge in Book II, but it is worth briefly considering here Thrasymachus’ underlying point.
Defining justice as ‘what is to the advantage of the stronger’, Thrasymachus is at once attempting to be hard-headed about both political and moral reality. He makes clear that by the ‘stronger’ he means those rulers who manage to wield power over the rest of the population, and he is thereby making the familiar point that this kind of political power allows the rulers to shape laws and social institutions so that their interests are furthered. In effect, he is saying that powerful rulers can co-opt the notion of justice for their own ends. But he is not making a merely political observation about justice. For he seems also to be saying that the ‘stronger’ are able to shape the very idea of what it is to be moral; that the very idea of the virtue of justice in an individual is one defined by whatever is in the interests of those who wield power in a society. In one particularly telling comment Socrates says:
For if your position were that injustice is profitable yet you conceded it to be vicious and disgraceful as some other disputants do, there would be a chance for an argument on conventional principles. But, as it is, you obviously are going to affirm that it is honourable and strong and you will attach to it all the other qualities we were assigning to the just, since you don’t shrink from putting it in the category of virtue and wisdom.
To which Thrasymachus replies: ‘You are a most veritable prophet.’
The remainder of Book I sees Thrasymachus so exasperated by what he sees as Socrates’ wilful misunderstanding of his position that he simply nods agreement with each further line of Socratic questioning. Perhaps surprisingly, Socrates doesn’t seem to mind this, and the Book ends with Socrates apparently satisfied that he has shown Thrasymachus to be wrong, while leaving us deeply unsatisfied – nor is this dissatisfaction merely one we as readers experience. For Book II opens with two of the participants in the discussion – Glaucon and Adimantus – expressing their own dissatisfaction with how things had gone, and each separately challenging Socrates to do better. What they most want is to be offered genuinely persuasive arguments showing that the ordinary conception of justice – the ordinary conception of moral worth – is a good of a very special sort. They note that some things are regarded as good for their own sake, for example, the enjoyment of harmless pleasures; some for their effects, even if they are not themselves intrinsically good, for example, exercising to maintain or regain health; while a third kind of good is valued both for its own sake and for its effects, for example, understanding and health. What they want Socrates to show is that, in spite of the arguments that Thrasymachus and others have offered, justice is of this third kind. And, even more specifically, each of them offers extended arguments that, as they say, are common and which purport to show that justice and morality cannot be goods in this third class.
A useful exercise is to compare the arguments offered by the brothers Glaucon and Adimantus (and Plato had brothers with these names), both with each other and with the position put forward by Thrasymachus. There are, of course, similarities in the three, but there are differences. The basic theme that recurs in Glaucon’s and Adimantis’ challenges is that justice is at best a good of the second kind: one we put up with, rather like exercise or a trip to the dentist, because we recognise that there is some benefit in so doing. In contrast, Thrasymachus’s view seems more radical: as noted above, he maintains that the very idea of rightness – the very notion of a just human being – is somehow dependent on the influence of one group within any society.
Glaucon’s version of his challenge includes a reference to a legend that has come to have a perennial significance for any attempt to justify morality. This is the legend of Gyges’ ring. The ring in question is said to confer a special power on its wearer: if it is twisted on the finger, it renders the wearer invisible. Gyges is said to have used this ring to eliminate a king and marry the queen, becoming extremely rich along the way. The question Glaucon asks is: what arguments could we offer to someone who came into possession of the ring and was tempted by its power to ignore the various demands of moral behaviour? This legend captures precisely a thought that recurs throughout human history: if someone has enough power or resources to ignore any retaliation from others for moral transgressions, what reason can we give such a person to remain morally upright? Socrates agrees to set about answering this question; indeed, he takes on an even more difficult version of it. For he promises Glaucon and Adimantus an answer showing that justice is not only good for its own sake but also for its consequences; to show, that is, that someone who is morally just is both happier and better off than someone unjust.
Socrates insists that the answer will take some effort, and that it will require ‘keen vision’ to discern. Noting, then, that it is easier to see large letters at a distance than small ones, he suggests that they would do best to look at justice ‘writ large’, that is to say, to look at justice in the political city-state. ‘There is a justice of one man, we say, and I suppose of an entire city.’ And that because the city-state is ‘larger’ than the single human being, it should be easier to see.
Many commentators (and ordinary readers) find this move surprising. The analogy of large and small letters seems a rather flimsy basis for the argument, and one is tempted to resist the idea of justice as figuring in the same way in city-states and individual human beings. However, his interlocutors do not resist, and we thus embark (beginning at 369b) on a long discussion of the origin and construction of the city-state, with a view to finding out what it means to describe at least one such entity as just.
You should read through the pages in which this construction is effected and justice found, though here a simple outline will suffice.
There are many questions raised by Plato’s construction of the city-state; at the end of this chapter, I will mention some that you might like to investigate further. However, the work at hand – the work for which the construction was undertaken – is understanding and grounding justice and morality in individual human lives. That task begins with Socrates attempting to show that the individual human soul can be understood as divided into three parts, each corresponding directly to the three social orders of the city-state. (Note that talk of ‘soul’ – Greek ‘psuché’ – is not the religious concept, but is instead closer to ‘mind’. It is that which determines the character of an individual human life.) As with the construction of the city-state, Socrates’ attempt to find appropriately related parts of the soul is complex and, as one might expect, controversial. While it is no substitute for your own careful reading, an outline of this attempt goes as follows:
I think from this point on our inquiry becomes an absurdity – if, while life is admittedly intolerable with a ruined constitution of body even though accompanied by all the food and drink and wealth and power in the world, we are yet to be asked to suppose that, when the very nature and constitution of that whereby we live is disordered and corrupted, life is going to be worth living, if a man can only do as he pleases, and pleases to do anything save that which will rid him of evil and injustice and make him possessed of justice and virtue – now that the two have been shown to be as we have described them (445a-b).
The importance of Plato’s argument cannot be overestimated. He sets out to show that the virtue of justice – a disposition evidenced in a morally worthy life – is a goal we should aim for independently of any consequences that might follow from possessing this virtue. Socrates takes himself to have shown that justice is not merely like health, but in fact is more important to each of us than health. For health is a bodily condition, whereas justice is one of the soul. One way of putting this is to say that Socrates takes himself to have shown that we have no reason at all to use the ring of Gyges so as to be able ‘to do as we please’, and that we have every reason to live a just and morally worthy life, whatever our circumstances or role in society.
Plato’s defence of morality is certainly one of the strongest in the long history of ethics. It is a long argument, and includes many moves that depend on analogies and metaphors. Unsurprisingly, then, it has been challenged in many different ways, and I have no doubt that you will yourself think of issues it raises.
Some of these issues are ones of interpretation, others concern moves in his arguments. Chief among the former is the question about how seriously – and on its own – we are to take Plato’s highly specific account of the city-state, given Socrates’ claim that its purpose is to help us see individual justice more clearly. There are also interesting questions to be asked about the relationship between Thrasymachus’ views in Book I and the specific challenges that Glaucon and Adimantus mount in Book II.
As to the cogency of Plato’s arguments, one issue that has received a lot of attention concerns the move in the Republic from thinking of morality as a matter of how we ought to treat one another – for example, not lying, cheating, injuring one another – to its being a matter of the state of one’s individual soul. Some regard this as a subtle but damaging changing of the subject; others as providing a necessary improvement on a superficial conception of morality.
Other than this large issue, many smaller details of the argument call for further investigation. Leaving aside the description of the city-state, is Plato’s division of the soul into three parts reasonable and well motivated? That is, should we accept that conflicted plans for acting are a sufficient basis for the divisions Plato makes?
Finally, a word about knowledge and education in relation to morality. The education of the guardians and rulers is described at some length in Plato’s construction of the city-state, but it is a matter of dispute how this is supposed to figure in individual justice. In the later books of the Republic, Plato has a great deal to say about knowledge, and its acquisition. One presumes that he thought a fully virtuous agent would also be one who had followed Plato’s guidance in respect of knowledge and was therefore genuinely wise. But the rulers are described as a particularly select group in a society, so it is an open question whether any individual aiming at virtue will have the ability to get even close to wisdom. Given that justice requires that one be ruled by reason in the soul, and that being so ruled requires reason to be in possession of knowledge and thus wisdom, it is simply not clear where that leaves most of us in relation to genuine virtue.