Republic

Listen then, said I, and learn if there is anything in what I say. For what we laid down in the beginning as a universal requirement when we were founding our city, this I think, or[*](Cf. on 344 E. Justice is a species falling under the vague genus τὸ ἑαυτοῦ πράττειν, which Critias in the Charmides proposed as a definition of σωφροσύνη (Charmides 161 B), but failed to sustain owing to his inability to distinguish the various possible meanings of the phrase. In the Republic too we have hitherto failed to learn from ourselves its true meaning, till now when Socrates begins to perceive that if taken in the higher sense of spiritual division of labor in the soul and in the state, it is the long-sought justice. Cf. 433 B-D, 443 C-D.) some form of this, is justice. And what we did lay down, and often said, you recall, was that each one man must perform one social service in the state for which his nature is best adapted. Yes, we said that. And again that to do one’s own business and not to be a busybody is justice, is a saying that we have heard from many and have often repeated ourselves.[*](This need not refer to any specific passage in the dialogues. Cf. Unity of Plato’s Thought, n. 236. A Greek could at any time say that minding one’s own business and not being a busybody is σῶφρον or δίκαιον or both.) We have. This, then, I said, my friend, if taken in a certain sense appears to be justice,[*](τρόπον τινὰ γιγνόμενον: as in the translation, not justice seems somehow to be proving to be this. Cf. 432 E, 516 C, Lysis 217 E, Laws 910 B, 495 A, 596 D, Goodwin, Moods and Tenses, 830. Yet, Cf. Politicus 291 D.) this principle of doing one’s own business. Do you know whence I infer this? No, but tell me, he said. I think that this is the remaining virtue in the state after our consideration of soberness, courage, and intelligence, a quality which made it possible for them all to grow up in the body politic and which when they have sprung up preserves them as long as it is present. And I hardly need to remind you that[*](καίτοι: cf. on 360 C and 376 B. Here it points out the significance of τὸ ὑπόλοιπον if true, while ἀλλὰ μέντοι introduces the considerations that prove it true.) we said that justice would be the residue after we had found the other three. That is an unavoidable conclusion, he said. But moreover, said I, if we were required to decide what it is whose indwelling presence will contribute most to making our city good, it would be a difficult decision whether it was the unanimity of rulers and ruled or the conservation in the minds of the soldiers of the convictions produced by law as to what things are or are not to be feared, or the watchful intelligence that resides in the guardians, or whether this is the chief cause of its goodness, the principle embodied in child, woman, slave, free, artisan, ruler, and ruled, that each performed his one task as one man and was not a versatile busybody. Hard to decide indeed, he said. A thing, then, that in its contribution to the excellence of a state vies with and rivals its wisdom, its soberness, its bravery, is this principle of everyone in it doing his own task. It is indeed, he said. And is not justice the name you would have to give[*](γε argues from the very meaning of ἐνάμιλλον. Cf. 379 B.) to the principle that rivals these as conducing to the virtue of state? By all means. Consider it in this wise too[*](So Phaedo 79 E ὅρα δὴ καὶ τῇδε. It introduces a further confirmation. The mere judicial and conventional conception of justice can be brought under the formula in a fashion (πῃ), for legal justice est constans et perpetua voluntas ius suum cuique tribuens. Cf. 331 E and Aristotle Rhet. 1366 b 9 ἔστι δὲ δικαιοσύνη μὲν ἀρετὴ δι’ ἣν τὰ αὑτῶν ἕκαστα ἔχουσι, καὶ ὡς ὁ νόμος.) if so you will be convinced. Will you not assign the conduct of lawsuits in your state to the rulers? Of course. Will not this be the chief aim of their decisions, that no one shall have what belongs to others[*](τἀλλότρια: the article is normal; Stallb. on Phaedrus 230 A. For the ambiguity of τἀλλότρια cf. 443 D. So οἰκείου is one’s own in either literal or the ideal sense of the Stoics and Emerson, and ἑαυτοῦ is similarly ambiguous. Cf. on 443 D.) or be deprived of his own? Nothing else but this. On the assumption that this is just? Yes.

From this point of view too, then, the having[*](ἕξις is still fluid in Plato and has not yet taken the technical Aristotelian meaning of habit or state.) and doing of one’s own and what belongs to oneself would admittedly be justice.That is so.Consider now[*](A further confirmation. For what follows cf. 421 A.) whether you agree with me. A carpenter undertaking to do the work of a cobbler or a cobbler of a carpenter or their interchange of one another’s tools or honors or even the attempt of the same man to do both—the confounding of all other functions would not, think you, greatly injure a state, would it?Not much, he said. But when I fancy one who is by nature an artisan or some kind of money-maker tempted and incited by wealth or command of votes or bodily strength or some similar advantage tries to enter into the class of the soldiers or one of the soldiers into the class of counsellors and guardians, for which he is not fitted, and these interchange their tools and their honors or when the same man undertakes all these functions at once, then, I take it, you too believe that this kind of substitution and meddlesomeness is the ruin of a state. By all means. The interference with one another’s business, then, of three existent classes and the substitution of the one for the other is the greatest injury to a state and would most rightly be designated as the thing which chiefly[*](μάλιστα with κακουργία.) works it harm. Precisely so. And the thing that works the greatest harm to one’s own state, will you not pronounce to be injustice? Of course. This, then, is injustice. Again,[*](πάλιν, again, here means conversely. Cf. 425 A. The definition is repeated in terms of the three citizen classes to prepare the way for testing it in relation to the individual soul, which, if the analogy is to hold, must possess three corresponding faculties or parts. The order of words in this and many Platonic sentences is justified by the psychological investigation, which showed that when the question which do you like best, apples, pears, or cherries? was presented in the form apples, pears, cherries, which do you like best? the reaction time was appreciably shortened.) let us put it in this way. The proper functioning[*](οἰκειοπραγία: this coinage is explained by the genitive absolute. Proclus (Kroll i. p. 207) substitutes αὐτοπραγία. So Def. Plat. 411 E.) of the money-making class, the helpers and the guardians, each doing its own work in the state, being the reverse of that[*](ἐκείνου: cf. ἐκείνοις, 425 A.) just described, would be justice and would render the city just. I think the case is thus and no otherwise, said he. Let us not yet affirm it quite fixedly,[*](παγίως: cf. 479 C, Aristotle Met. 1062 b 15.) I said, but if this form[*](The doctrine of the transcendental ideas was undoubtedly familiar to Plato at this time. Cf. on 402 B, and Unity of Plato’s Thought, p. 31, n. 194, p. 35. But we need not evoke the theory of παρουσία here to account for this slight personification of the form, idea, or definition of justice. Cf. 538 D, and the use of ἐλθών in Euripides Suppl. 562 and of ἰόν in Philebus 52 E. Plato, in short, is merely saying vivaciously what Aristotle technically says in the words δεῖ δὲ τοῦτο μὴ μόνον καθόλου λέγεσθαι, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῖς καθ’ ἕκαστα ἐφαρμόττειν, Eth. Nic. 1107 a 28.) when applied to the individual man, accepted there also as a definition of justice, we will then concede the point—for what else will there be to say? But if not, then we will look for something else. But now let us work out the inquiry in which[*](In 368 E. For the loose internal accusative ἥν cf. 443 B, Laws 666 B, Phaedrus 249 D, Sophist 264 B, my paper on Illogical Idiom, T.A.P.A., 1916, vol. xlvii. p. 213, and the school-girl’s This is the play that the reward is offered for the best name suggested for it.) we supposed that, if we found some larger thing that contained justice and viewed it there,[*](ἐκεῖ though redundant need not offend in this intentionally ancoluthic and resumptive sentence. Some inferior Mss. read ἐκεῖνο. Burnet’s ἢ is impossible.) we should more easily discover its nature in the individual man. And we agreed that this larger thing is the city, and so we constructed the best city in our power, well knowing that in the good[*](ἔν γε τῇ ἀγαθῇ: cf. on 427 E, and for the force of γε cf. 379 B, 403 E.) city it would of course be found. What, then, we thought we saw there we must refer back to the individual and, if it is confirmed, all will be well.