4.6: Justice in the City

Last updated
Save as PDF

Page ID: 94514

\( \newcommand{\vecs}[1]{\overset { \scriptstyle \rightharpoonup} {\mathbf{#1}} } \) \( \newcommand{\vecd}[1]{\overset{-\!-\!\rightharpoonup}{\vphantom{a}\smash {#1}}} \)\(\newcommand{\id}{\mathrm{id}}\) \( \newcommand{\Span}{\mathrm{span}}\) \( \newcommand{\kernel}{\mathrm{null}\,}\) \( \newcommand{\range}{\mathrm{range}\,}\) \( \newcommand{\RealPart}{\mathrm{Re}}\) \( \newcommand{\ImaginaryPart}{\mathrm{Im}}\) \( \newcommand{\Argument}{\mathrm{Arg}}\) \( \newcommand{\norm}[1]{\| #1 \|}\) \( \newcommand{\inner}[2]{\langle #1, #2 \rangle}\) \( \newcommand{\Span}{\mathrm{span}}\) \(\newcommand{\id}{\mathrm{id}}\) \( \newcommand{\Span}{\mathrm{span}}\) \( \newcommand{\kernel}{\mathrm{null}\,}\) \( \newcommand{\range}{\mathrm{range}\,}\) \( \newcommand{\RealPart}{\mathrm{Re}}\) \( \newcommand{\ImaginaryPart}{\mathrm{Im}}\) \( \newcommand{\Argument}{\mathrm{Arg}}\) \( \newcommand{\norm}[1]{\| #1 \|}\) \( \newcommand{\inner}[2]{\langle #1, #2 \rangle}\) \( \newcommand{\Span}{\mathrm{span}}\)\(\newcommand{\AA}{\unicode[.8,0]{x212B}}\)

See 432b-434c. In a flash of insight, Socrates sees what it is for a city to be just: it is for the virtues of wisdom, courage and temperance to be promoted and preserved in the city by each person doing, and keeping exclusively to, the work for which he or she is naturally best suited. Justice is therefore similar to temperance in being a systemic virtue, an excellence of the whole city. Socrates emphasizes the importance of the people best suited to serve as rulers actually serving as rulers, of the people best suited to serve as auxiliaries actually serving as auxiliaries, and of the people best suited to do one of the “money making” jobs in the city actually doing one or another of these jobs. It wouldn’t matter much if someone best suited to make shoes were to do carpentry, or someone best suited to do carpentry were to make shoes. But if a person who should be doing something like carpentry were to join the auxiliaries or the rulers, then real problems could arise. “Meddling and exchange among these three classes,” Socrates declares, “is the greatest harm that can happen to the city and would rightly be called the worst evil one could do to it.”

Do you agree with Socrates that justice for a city is basically a matter of everyone doing the work proper to them? Should we start thinking of career counselors as part of our society’s justice system?
Some years back, in an interview, the members of the Guarneri String Quartet were attempting to describe what it is like when they are playing well together. Each of the four musicians – the first violinist, the second violinist, the violist, and the cellist – has a separate part to play. And each must play it and it alone. But in playing their parts they are joining and interrelating with the others in such a way that their parts come alive and become deeply meaningful. At times it is as if a fifth voice rises above the four blended voices, inspiring the musicians as individuals, but unifying them as one living sound. This sort of thing appears to be what Socrates means by justice in a city. Can you think of other examples that illustrate the idea, examples involving sports teams perhaps, or non-dysfunctional families you may be fortunate enough to know?
How does everyone doing one of the jobs for which he or she is best suited enable wisdom, courage and temperance to flourish in a city?
Notice how at 433e Socrates reintroduces Polemarchus’ original “give to each what is owed to him” definition of justice from 331e and incorporates it into the definition he is offering. Do you recall the problems that arose when Polemarchus first set it out? What has become of these problems?
Is Socrates serious when he says that “meddling and exchange among these three classes is the greatest harm that can happen to the city,” or is this just hyperbole? Wouldn’t something like enslavement by the Persians, which nearly happened to Athens in 490 BCE and then again in 480, beworse?