For Plato, the theme of justice is question-worthy because fairness and impartiality should be the determining and deciding factors in the coming together of people around each other in any political community, in any community.
In the Republic, justice is extensively discussed, questioned, and investigated. In the second book of the Republic, Glaucon says that humans usually or even constantly endeavor to take more than what they deserve, that is, more than their fair share. This is why in any coming together of people around each other in any political community, there are always rules and laws assuring that no individual takes more than what it deserves, more than its fair share. But this is exactly what renders this account of justice problematic.
Why Is This Account of Justice Problematic?
This account of justice is problematic because it clearly indicates that if there were no laws and rules, humans would be unjust, that is, humans would act unjustly. Why must always be there rules and laws assuring that injustices do not take place? Why do humans need rules and laws to be just and to act justly?
Why could not humans be willing to be just even if there are no laws and rules threatening them, obliging them to be just, and punishing them if they act unjustly?
In other words, that the laws and the rules are the only factors guaranteeing and watching over the taking place and holding sway of justice indicates that those who could evade the rules and escape the punishment of the law should act unjustly.
That is, why should those who could evade the rules and escape the punishment of the law be still willing to be just and to act justly? Socrates’s response to this problem is carried out through an argument that justice benefits those who are just themselves, those who act justly, for it benefits their souls.
Justice in the City and the Soul
The soul, Socrates says, resembles the city in the sense that both are made up of different parts. But the city that resembles the soul is neither Athens nor any other city, but rather an ideal city.
Socrates says that in the ideal city, there are three main functions: Ensuring that the city’s material needs are met, ruling and governing, and war-making.
Ensuring that the city’s material needs are met is carried out by building houses, farming, animal herding, and commercial trading. Socrates says that this function should be undertaken by those who are naturally qualified to carry out such tasks so that the city’s material needs are always met.
Philosophers or those with a philosophical nature, Socrates says, should rule. And finally, those who are aggressive yet gentle and have honor should carry out the third function, which is war-marking.
For Socrates, justice in the ideal city happens and is experienced only when each function is carried out by those who are naturally qualified to carry out this specific function. That is, justice occurs only when each group of people carries out a specific function, for which it is naturally qualified.
Justice thus occurs not when the goods and riches of the city are distributed justly, fairly, or impartially, but rather when the functions of the city are distributed in such a way that, for instance, allows those who are naturally qualified for ruling and governing to actually rule and govern.
Socrates then returns to his discussion of justice in the soul, which resembles the city in the sense that both are made up of different parts. The soul, Socrates says, is also made up of three parts, resembling the three parts of the ideal city. The three parts of the soul are reason, appetite, and the spirited part.
Each part has its own specific function. Reason is naturally qualified for ruling in the soul; appetite is responsible for our longing for food, drink, and sex; the spirited part brings about anger when, for instance, one’s appetites urge one to do wrong deeds.
Justice in the soul, Socrates says, occurs only when each part carries out its own specific function, for which it is naturally qualified, without interfering with the functions of the other parts.
For instance, justice in the soul occurs when reason carries out the function for which it is naturally qualified, that is, the function of ruling the soul, the function of ruling in the soul. Justice also occurs when the spirited part, which resembles the war-making function in the ideal city, comes together with reason to control and limit the appetitive part and to assure that it never rules or holds sway.
Justice also occurs, Socrates says, when each part respects the functions of the other parts. That is, if reason endeavored to render the appetitive part ascetic or the spirited part passive, reason would not be just because it would be distancing each part from its specific function. Hence, justice occurs in the soul only when the three parts come together by carrying out the functions for which each part is naturally qualified.
Socrates then links together this ordered and harmonious coming together of the different parts of the soul with the injustices committed by people against each other by saying that unjust actions arise only when there are injustices among the different parts of the soul. This means that those whose souls are justly ordered never commit injustice.
This way of treating justice turns it into a psychological disposition. In other words, because the Republic takes justice to be a harmonious and ordered interacting between the different parts of the soul, justice thus becomes a psychological disposition.
This means that in the Republic, justice undergoes a transformation from which it arises distanced from the common and usual understanding that it is nothing but fairness and impartiality.
The reason why justice is made a psychological disposition is that this turning into a psychological disposition allows Plato to argue that the souls whose disposition allows them to act justly are better than the souls whose disposition obliges them to act unjustly.
The Just Souls and Lawfulness
The ordered and harmonious souls, that is, the just souls give rise to lawfulness. This indicates that there is a relation linking together the just soul and the lawful city itself. In the Gorgias, Socrates says that the laws of the city should be directed toward what is best for the soul; that is, order and harmony.
When the soul is disharmonious and disordered, that is, when the soul is unjust, judicial punishment is then what could cure its disharmony and disorder by rendering it harmonious and ordered again, that is, by rendering it just again.
In the Laws, the Athenian Stranger says that punishment cures the soul, but if the soul is incurable, that is, if punishment cannot rid the soul of its disharmony and disorder, then the criminal should be sentenced to death so that the city rids itself from an evildoer. Besides, this punishment will inevitably deter others, according to the Athenian Stranger.
Philosophy and Death
Death is a recurrent theme in the thinking-philosophizing of Plato. There are, therefore, many ponderings on grief, mourning, sorrow, and healing in the dialogues philosophizing and thinking toward death and dying. The fear of death, Plato says, burdens humans while they are awake and haunts their dreams.
Schopenhauer on Death and Afterlife
In the thinking-philosophizing of Schopenhauer, death is central because it is linked together with the “will-to-live”. Death is the fragility pervading our existence; a fragility necessarily delivering into philosophizing
At the end of Division One of Being and Time, Heidegger says that investigating the everydayness of Dasein makes understandable and hence brings nearer to Dasein’s being, yet it does not bring Dasein wholly, completely, or fully face to face with itself; that is, it does not bring “Da-sein as a whole in view”.
Heidegger on “Being-Toward-Death”
For Heidegger, death brings closer to the question of the meaning of Being: “Death opens up the question of Being”. Heidegger says that only to the human being belongs the possibility of being brought face to face with death: “Only humanity ‘has’ the distinction of standing and facing death, because the human being is earnest about Being: death is the supreme testimony to Being”.
In Being and Nothingness, Sartre criticizes Heidegger’s conception of death in Being and Time and offers his own account of the finitude of existence, which is grounded not in the certainty of death, but rather in our choices and freedom.
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