Justice (Plato)
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Justice (Plato)
For Plato, Justice (Dikaiosyne) is the condition where every part of a system performs its own proper function and does not interfere with the others.
Concept Map
Syncretic Terms
- Asha
- Brahmacharya
- Congruence
- Conversion Experience
- Divine Perfection
- Ethical Perfection
- Eudaimonia
- Gonennoncwal
- Heavenly Marriage
- Holiness
- Justice (Plato)
- Ka'nikonhrÌ:io
- Ondinoc
- Perfect Connection
- Purification
- Purity
- Rectitude
- Renunciation
- Repentence
- Righteousness
- Samyaktva
- Sane Living
- Self-Actualization
- Tahdhīb al-akhlāq
- Taubah
Related LP Terms
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Non-LP Related Terms
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Notes
⚠ AI-generated content — Kimi
Rather than a legal code or a set of external rules, Plato defines justice as structural harmony under rational rule — and he compares it explicitly to health in the body: justice is the natural ordering of parts, injustice a disease where parts rule that should not.
The definition applies identically at two levels — indeed, Plato introduces the city as "the soul writ large" precisely so the pattern can be read at both scales.
The Individual Soul (Psychological Justice): Justice in the person exists when each part of the soul does its own work and does not meddle in the work of the others: when the Rational part rules, the Spirited part (courage, honor, willpower) serves as reason's ally and enforcer, and the Appetitive part (desires and bodily drives) obeys. A just soul is not a suppressed soul — it is a healthy, well-ordered one, governed from the right place.
The Political State (Social Justice): Justice in the city exists when the same structure holds at the level of classes: the rule — because they alone possess wisdom — the (the soldier-guardians) defend and enforce, and the (farmers, craftspeople, merchants) generate the city's goods, with no class attempting to usurp the role of another.
The key to both definitions is that harmony alone is not enough: it must be harmony under the rule of reason. A soul where appetites peacefully coexist without reason governing is no more just than a city where workers peacefully labor without the wise in charge. Justice, for Plato, is each part performing its proper function — with the wisest part firmly at the helm.
Quotes
⚠ AI-generated content — Kimi
All quotations are verbatim from the public-domain translations by Benjamin Jowett, hosted on Project Gutenberg.
<AI agent=KIMI note="quotes verified verbatim against Jowett translations on Project Gutenberg">
Quotes on Justice (Plato)
All quotations are verbatim from the public-domain translations by Benjamin Jowett, hosted on Project Gutenberg. From the Republic — the core definition: "Further, we affirmed that justice was doing one's own business, and not being a busybody; we said so again and again, and many others have said the same to us. ... Then to do one's own business in a certain way may be assumed to be justice." — Republic IV, 433a–b (source) "This then is injustice; and on the other hand when the trader, the auxiliary, and the guardian each do their own business, that is justice, and will make the city just." — Republic IV, 434c (source) On justice in the individual soul: "But in reality justice was such as we were describing, being concerned however, not with the outward man, but with the inward, which is the true self and concernment of man: for the just man does not permit the several elements within him to interfere with one another, or any of them to do the work of others,—he sets in order his own inner life, and is his own master and his own law, and at peace with himself." — Republic IV, 443c–d (source) "...and when he has bound together the three principles within him, which may be compared to the higher, lower, and middle notes of the scale, and the intermediate intervals—when he has bound all these together, and is no longer many, but has become one entirely temperate and perfectly adjusted nature, then he proceeds to act... always thinking and calling that which preserves and co-operates with this harmonious condition, just and good action." — Republic IV, 443d–e (source) The health analogy: "Then virtue is the health and beauty and well-being of the soul, and vice the disease and weakness and deformity of the same?" — Republic IV, 444d (source) On why injustice is self-defeating (against Thrasymachus): "Yet is not the power which injustice exercises of such a nature that wherever she takes up her abode, whether in a city, in an army, in a family, or in any other body, that body is, to begin with, rendered incapable of united action by reason of sedition and distraction; and does it not become its own enemy and at variance with all that opposes it, and with the just?" — Republic I, 351e–352a (source) "And is not injustice equally fatal when existing in a single person; in the first place rendering him incapable of action because he is not at unity with himself, and in the second place making him an enemy to himself and the just?" — Republic I, 352a (source) From the Gorgias — justice as cosmic order: "And philosophers tell us, Callicles, that communion and friendship and orderliness and temperance and justice bind together heaven and earth and gods and men, and that this universe is therefore called Cosmos or order, not disorder or misrule, my friend." — Gorgias 507e–508a (source) From the Laws — justice and the divine measure: "Now God ought to be to us the measure of all things, and not man... as men commonly say (Protagoras): the words are far more true of Him. And he who would be dear to God must, as far as is possible, be like Him and such as He is. Wherefore the temperate man is the friend of God, for he is like Him; and the intemperate man is unlike Him, and different from Him, and unjust." — Laws IV, 716c (source) From Crito — justice over life itself: "SOCRATES: Then we must do no wrong? / CRITO: Certainly not. / SOCRATES: Nor when injured injure in return, as the many imagine; for we must injure no one at all?" — Crito 49b–c (source)</AI>
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