Plato’s Republic: A Definition of Justice
According to Plato, “justice is the excellence of the soul, and injustice the defect of the soul” (20). Another definition of it, however, is that justice is “the repayment of a debt” (4). This is a rather narrow definition of justice, and it is one that Socrates unpacks—but it to can get to the heart of the underlying meaning. The just man is one who pursues the good, while the unjust man is one who pursues evil. Of course, as is always the case with Socrates, everything must come around eventually to a definition of the good, which Plato defines in the dialogue as transcendental ideals that objectively exist as universals: to know justice is, as Socrates explains in the Allegory of the Cave, to pursue the ultimate reality, which exists high above, where the source of all good is to be found—in God. This paper will compare and contrast the two definitions of justice and explain how justice, ultimately, as defined by Plato, is alignment of the soul with the one, the true and the good.
The first definition—that justice is excellence of the soul—is not a great deal different from the second—that justice is the repayment of a debt. If Socrates can show that all men are indebted to the higher good that has filled them with life, then he can show that no man is just who has not repaid the debt—i.e., returned that life to its source. Plato makes certain in The Republic to constantly reiterate how difficult it is to apprehend a concept such as justice—namely because it is so difficult for men to understand what is meant by the good. Without a proper conception of the good, one cannot have a proper conception of justice. And yet so many go about their lives thinking that they not only understand justice perfectly well but that they are also good men. Plato uses the Allegory of the Cave to dispel this notion. He...…all that is good, as Plato would have his reader understand. The source of all that is good is above and is what imprints on the soul the concepts of goodness and truth: “This is the recollection of those things which our soul once saw while following God—when regardless of that which we now call being she raised her head up towards the true being” (Plato Dialogues 417-418). Until a man can understand these things, he searches in vain to define all else.
In conclusion, the definitions of justice—as excellence of soul and as repayment of debt—are both ways to begin to understand the concept, but neither wholly explains its meaning as both are dependent upon a greater understanding of the good. Plato insists in the Allegory of the Cave that the good can only be known by climbing upwards in the mind to the source of all things, towards the good and the true. One must leave behind the shadows of thought and encounter the Reality above.…
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