Justice and the Individual in the Republic

Abstract

THE INTERPRETATIONS of the Republic which limit justice to the philosopher rulers seriouLsly challenge Plato's renown as the first great ethical thinker. If he does, in fact, contend that only a philosophically gifted few can be just, he has surely violated the elementary principle of a universal extension among men of the two fundamental ethical concepts of the right and the good. Ethical theories as diverse as those of Kant and Hume agree on the universal or well-nigh universal extension of these two concepts. Since justice, the right, is both the necessary and sufficient condition for happiness (the good), Plato firmly believes no person can ever be happy without it. The vast numbers of mankind, therefore, cannot be happy in their lack of justice or, indeed, in their wickedness. Yet we need not plead that Plato must have intended a universal extension of the right and good or else he would not be the great philosopher that he supposedly is. As several scholars have recently called to our attention, Plato in the Republic has distinguished between the justice and the other virtues of the individual (which I shall refer to as personal justice and personal virtues) and the virtues of the polis 1. After presenting a broader perspective for this interesting reading of the Republic, I shall consider what kind of knowledge personal justice requires and how the citizens may attain such knowledge. Adequate justification of the personal virtues requires some consideration of their epistemological ground, for the necessary entailment of virtue and knowledge is as well established in the traditional interpretation of Plato as the fact that the citizens of the ideal polis are incapable of rational deliberation. Early in the Republic, Socrates lays down almost as a rudimentary law of nature the principle of a natural equality among all men: