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Assignment 13 - Chapt 16 Read and summarize the main principles or points of Socrates's theory of Justice, Plato's theory of justice and of Aristotle's theory of justice. (See below) and Which do you prefer? a. Plato Plato’s masterful Republic (to which we have already referred) is most obviously a careful analysis of justice, although the book is far more wide-ranging than that would suggest. Socrates, Plato’s teacher, and primary spokesman in the dialogue, gets critically involved in a discussion of that very issue with three interlocutors early on. Socrates provokes Cephalus to say something which he spins into the view that justice simply boils down to always telling the truth and repaying one’s debts. Socrates easily demolishes this simplistic view with the effective logical technique of a counter-example: if a friend lends you weapons, when he is sane, but then wants them back to do great harm with them, because he has become insane, surely you should not return them at that time and should even lie to him, if necessary to prevent great harm. Secondly, Polemarchus, the son of Cephalus, jumps into the discussion, espousing the familiar, traditional view that justice is all about giving people what is their due. But the problem with this bromide is that of determining who deserves what. Polemarchus may reflect the cultural influence of the Sophists, in specifying that it depends on whether people are our friends, deserving good from us, or foes, deserving harm. It takes more effort for Socrates to destroy this conventional theory, but he proceeds in stages: (1) we are all fallible regarding who are true friends, as opposed to true enemies, so that appearance versus reality makes it difficult to say how we should treat people; (2) it seems at least as significant whether people are good or bad as whether they are our friends or our foes; and (3) it is not at all clear that justice should excuse, let alone require, our deliberately harming anyone (Republic, pp. 5-11; 331b-335e). If the first inadequate theory of justice was too simplistic, this second one was downright dangerous. The third, and final, inadequate account presented here is that of the Sophist Thrasymachus. He roars into the discussion, expressing his contempt for all the poppycock produced thus far and boldly asserting that justice is relative to whatever is advantageous to the stronger people (what we sometimes call the “might makes right” theory). But who are the “stronger” people? Thrasymachus cannot mean physically stronger, for then inferior humans would be superior to finer folks like them. He clarifies his idea that he is referring to politically powerful people in leadership positions. But, next, even the strongest leaders are sometimes mistaken about what is to their own advantage, raising the question of whether people ought to do what leaders suppose is to their own advantage or only what actually is so. (Had Thrasymachus phrased this in terms of what serves the interest of society itself, the same appearance versus reality distinction would apply.) But, beyond this, Socrates rejects the exploitation model of leadership, which sees political superiors as properly exploiting inferiors (Thrasymachus uses the example of a shepherd fattening up and protecting his flock of sheep for his own selfish gain), substituting a service model in its place (his example is of the good medical doctor, who practices his craft primarily for the welfare of patients). So, now, if anything like this is to be accepted as our model for interpersonal relations, then Thrasymachus embraces the “injustice” of self-interest as better than serving the interests of others in the name of “justice.” Well, then, how are we to interpret whether the life of justice or that of injustice is better? Socrates suggests three criteria for judgment: which is the smarter, which is the more secure, and which is the happier way of life; he argues that the just life is better on all three counts. Thus, by the end of the first book, it looks as if Socrates has trounced all three of these inadequate views of justice, although he himself claims to be dissatisfied because we have only shown what justice is not, with no persuasive account of its actual nature (ibid., pp. 14-21, 25-31; 338c-345b, 349c-354c). Likewise, in Gorgias, Plato has Callicles espouse the view that, whatever conventions might seem to dictate, natural justice dictates that superior people should rule over and derive greater benefits than inferior people, that society artificially levels people because of a bias in favor of equality. Socrates is then made to criticize this theory by analyzing what sort of superiority would be relevant and then arguing that Callicles is erroneously advocating injustice, a false value, rather than the genuine one of true justice (Gorgias, pp. 52-66; 482d-493c; see, also, Laws, pp. 100-101, 172; 663, 714 for another articulation of something like Thrasymachus’ position). In the second book of Plato’s Republic, his brothers, Glaucon and Adeimantus, take over the role of primary interlocutors. They quickly make it clear that they are not satisfied with Socrates’ defense of justice. Glaucon reminds us that there are three different sorts of goods—intrinsic ones, such as joy, merely instrumental ones, such as money-making, and ones that are both instrumentally and intrinsically valuable, such as health—in order to ask which type of good is justice. Socrates responds that justice belongs in the third category, rendering it the richest sort of good. In that case, Glaucon protests, Socrates has failed to prove his point. If his debate with Thrasymachus accomplished anything at all, it nevertheless did not establish any intrinsic value in justice. So Glaucon will play devil’s advocate and resurrect the Sophist position, in order to challenge Socrates to refute it in its strongest form. He proposes to do this in three steps: first, he will argue that justice is merely a conventional compromise (between harming others with impunity and being their helpless victims), agreed to by people for their own selfish good and socially enforced (this is a crude version of what will later become the social contract theory of justice in Hobbes); second, he illustrates our allegedly natural selfish preference for being unjust if we can get away with it by the haunting story of the ring of Gyges, which provides its wearer with the power to become invisible at will and, thus, to get away with the most wicked of injustices—to which temptation everyone would, sooner or later, rationally succumb; and, third, he tries to show that it is better to live unjustly than justly if one can by contrasting the unjust person whom everyone thinks just with the just person who is thought to be unjust, claiming that, of course, it would be better to be the former than the latter. Almost as soon as Glaucon finishes, his brother Adeimantus jumps in to add two more points to the case against justice: first, parents instruct their children to behave justly not because it is good in itself but merely because it tends to pay off for them; and, secondly, religious teachings are ineffective in encouraging us to avoid injustice because the gods will punish it and to pursue justice because the gods will reward it, since the gods may not even exist or, if they do, they may well not care about us or, if they are concerned about human behavior, they can be flattered with prayers and bribed with sacrifices to let us get away with wrongdoing (Republic, pp. 33-42; 357b-366e). So the challenge for Socrates posed by Plato’s brothers is to show the true nature of justice and that it is intrinsically valuable rather than only desirable for its contingent consequences. In defending justice against this Sophist critique, Plato has Socrates construct his own positive theory. This is set up by means of an analogy comparing justice, on the large scale, as it applies to society, and on a smaller scale, as it applies to an individual soul. Thus justice is seen as an essential virtue of both a good political state and a good personal character. The strategy hinges on the idea that the state is like the individual writ large—each comprising three main parts such that it is crucial how they are interrelated—and that analyzing justice on the large scale will facilitate our doing so on the smaller one. In Book IV, after cobbling together his blueprint of the ideal republic, Socrates asks Glaucon where justice is to be found, but they agree they will have to search for it together. They agree that, if they have succeeded in establishing the foundations of a “completely good” society, it would have to comprise four pivotal virtues: wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice. If they can properly identify the other three of those four, whatever remains that is essential to a completely good society must be justice. Wisdom is held to be prudent judgment among leaders; courage is the quality in defenders or protectors whereby they remain steadfast in their convictions and commitments in the face of fear; and temperance (or moderation) is the virtue to be found in all three classes of citizens, but especially in the producers, allowing them all to agree harmoniously that the leaders should lead and everyone else follow. So now, by this process-of-elimination analysis, whatever is left that is essential to a “completely good” society will allegedly be justice. It then turns out that “justice is doing one’s own work and not meddling with what isn’t one’s own.” So the positive side of socio-political justice is each person doing the tasks assigned to him or her; the negative side is not interfering with others doing their appointed tasks. Now we move from this macro-level of political society to the psychological micro-level of an individual soul, pressing the analogy mentioned above. Plato has Socrates present an argument designed to show that reason in the soul, corresponding to the leaders or “guardians” of the state, is different from both the appetites, corresponding to the productive class, and the spirited part of the soul, corresponding to the state’s defenders or “auxiliaries” and that the appetites are different from spirit. Having established the parallel between the three classes of the state and the three parts of the soul, the analogy suggests that a “completely good” soul would also have to have the same four pivotal virtues. A good soul is wise, in having good judgment whereby reason rules; it is courageous in that its spirited part is ready, willing, and able to fight for its convictions in the face of fear; and it is temperate or moderate, harmoniously integrated because all of its parts, especially its dangerous appetitive desires, agree that it should be always under the command of reason. And, again, what is left that is essential is justice, whereby each part of the soul does the work intended by nature, none of them interfering with