Introduction
To begin with, the book under consideration is Plato’s “The Republic”, and in order to solve our task of interpreting of Socrates’ defense of justice, we find it necessary to tackle the historic personalities of Socrates and Plato and their relationship. This will help to explain the questions under consideration.
Plato was born in Athens in 427 BC, into a wealthy and powerful family. He was meant to take active part in political life of society, but because of
death of his revered teacher and friend Socrates, he was to become increasingly disillusioned with what he saw as the violence and corruption attendant on the Athenian democracy in which he lived. Indeed, his opposition to this system was a key tenet of his thought, as we shall see in the Republic (Purshouse 1).
It is commonly known that Socrates’ favorite method of teaching was to question the pupils for them to get at the truth themselves due to their own intellectual efforts, instead of getting to know the information from the teacher’s lectures directly. Plato has chosen his own teacher, Socrates, to act as the protagonist of his philosophic works – dialogues, and this enables us to learn more about both philosophers.
Main Text
The work “The Republic” presents a special interest for us, because the author has chosen understanding of justice as one of the main themes of the book. Plato formulates the following questions concerning justice: What does it mean “to be just”? What is better for a person: the life of justice or being unjust? He also tackles justice from political point of view: What is required for justice in the state?
Socrates defends justice, and the first case of this defense is offered in “The Republic I”. “Plato begins by addressing the nature of justice as a quality of individual” (Purshouse 9). In “The Republic I” we come across an unpleasant character – Thrasymachus, who is arguing with Socrates about living in accordance with justice (Purshouse 10). Thrasymachus sets an example of life of a tyrant and says that a person can benefit from enjoying individual power and wealth and he claims that it is good to exploit other people. In his turn, Socrates disagrees with him and suggests an entirely opposite point of view, claiming that justice is the greatest advantage.
In “The Republic II” it can be seen that Socrates’ opinion contradicts popular point of view. Glaucon and Adeimantus, who think that they are representatives of common sense, are arguing with Socrates about the essence of justice. Glaucon presents the classification of all existing things on the basis of their division into three different classes and the main task of the philosopher is to prove that justice should occupy the place among the things that are highly desirable.
From Glaucon’s point of view, justice is evil, but people choose to suffer this evil, because otherwise they would have to suffer even more. Glaucon claims that the source of justice is human weakness and fear, because people in society have agreed on this question and have invented a social contract, according to which they have to be just to other people in order not to suffer from somebody’s injustice. People suffer because of justice, but they are scared by other variants, because they know that without justice the life would be even worse.
Glaucon proves his point of view with the help of a concrete example, resorting to the legend of the ring of Gyges. He says that if any person, even a very just person, could possess the ring that could make a person invisible, this person would be sure to start behaving in an unjust way, because there would be no threat of punishment and the person would get a perfect opportunity to satisfy his mean, materialistic and vulgar desires. Glaucon is sure that everybody would be tempted by that opportunity, thus he proves that justice is imposed on people by threat of punishment, it is not justice for the sake of justice.
In his turn, responding to Glaucon’s attack, Socrates introduces two types of political justice: state and individual justice. To explain the essence of state political justice, Socrates suggests building a just city, when every person will have the occupation he is cut out for: “Nothing else was to occupy his time, but he was to spend his life working at that, using all his opportunities to the best advantage and letting none go by” (Plato 54). This city of justice is called “healthy city”, where only producing people will live (Plato 54). Then Socrates introduces “guardians” whose duty will be to defend “the healthy city”.
It must be also mentioned that the essence of justice is also mentioned in other Books, but the final response to the challenge that Socrates faced in Book II is given by Plato’s words in Book IX. Here the philosopher gives the audience a detailed description of a tyrant. It must be reminded, by the way, that in Book II it was claimed that the tyrants were the happiest men and the aristocrats were not. So, Socrates describes a tyrannical man as a person who is in power of his lawless desires. He states that all people have such desires, but they come to people at night in nightmares and in secret thoughts, but we never try to realize these lawless desires. However, a tyrannical man sets his shameful desires free and gradually becomes their slave. He is in total possession of desire of feasts, luxury, and women. These desires take away his money, his strength of will and deprive him of friends. His whole life becomes a nightmare; he suffers because of constant dissatisfaction and regrets. It seems that there can be nothing worse than such a life, but Socrates is able to prove that to be a political tyrant is even worse than to be a private tyrant. He presents a political tyrant as an absolutely isolated person, who is absorbed in his fears of enemies that surround him. Consequently, Socrates manages to prove us that tyrant, who is the most unjust man is the unhappiest man at the same time.
In this very book Socrates explains to us that only philosophers know the essence of the greatest pleasure for a person: it is the pleasure of seeking the truth. And the best kind of pleasure can be received from a just soul.
Conclusion
Finally, the most picturesque proof of the necessity of a person to be just is given, when Socrates describes an unjust person as a creature with three heads: lion’s, beasts and human heads. The unjust person feeds only two heads and that is why all of them are enemies, but a just person feeds human head, which feeds beast’s head and has a lion’s head as its ally. Thus, a just person is in harmony and he is a happy person. Taking all these arguments into consideration, it can be said, that Socrates fully accomplishes his task of defending justice.
Works Cited
Plato. The Republic. USA: READ BOOKS, 2006.
Purshouse, Luke. Plato’s Republic: a Reader’s Guide. Gosport: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2006.