Plato and justice
Plato and justiceJustice
Plato (who speaks through Socrates) seperates people based on their innate strength, intelligence, and courage. Those who are not overly bright, or strong, or brave, are best suited to various productive jobs such as: building, farming, and smithing. Those who are bright, strong and especially courageous are suited to defensive and policing professions. Those who are extraordinarily intelligent, virtuous and brave are suited to run the state itself; that is, Plato�s ideal state is an aristocracy, a Greek word that means �rule by the best.� The lower end of human society, which as far as Plato is concerned, consists of an overwhelming majority of people in a state, he calls the �producers,� since they are most suited for productive work. The middle section of society, a smaller but still large number of people, make up the army and the police and are called the �Auxiliaries�. The best and Brightest, a very small and rarefied group, are those who are in complete control of the state permanently; Plato calls these people �Guardians� in all things and the Producers obey the Auxiliaries and Guardians in all things. A state may be said to be intemperate if any of the lower groups do not obey one of the higher groups. A state may be said to be just if the Auxiliaries do not simply obey the guardians, but enjoy doing so, that is, they don�t grumble about the authority being exercised over them; a state with �ordinary justice� would require that the Producers not only obey the Auxiliaries and Guardians, but that they do so willingly. Ordinary justice is basically the morality in the community or �outer morality.� But to achieve this �outer morality� They must have �inner morality� which is morality in an individual or �psychic harmony.�
Later Plato identifies the intellect with the Guardians, the spirit of emotions with the Auxiliaries and the bodily appetites with the Producers. Therefore, an individual is courageous if his or her spirit is courageous and individual is wise if his or her intellect is wise. Temperance occurs when the emotions are ruled over by the intellect, and the bodily appetites are ruled over by the emotions and especially the intellect. An individual may be said to have �psychic harmony� when the bodily...
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