Utopia

Justice

What is justice? And, why be just? That is what our Platonic Socrates aims to find out in Plato’s The Republic; a Socratic dialogue where Socrates does the most talking, although not without occasional bursts of disagreement, teasing, and back-and-forth from the participants that add some thrill to it. Justice—to the ancient Greeks—meant more than mere fairness or exercise of law in court. It signified a deeper, ethical meaning that is more akin to goodness or moral righteousness.

One can look at the question of justice from two perspectives. The first is to consider what it takes to do to be just. A consequentialist would say that to be just is to do what has good consequences, and a utilitarian would continue, to not halt at an answer that simply elicits practically the same question, that what has good consequences is what maximizes the welfare of [human] beings. It becomes obvious then why to be just: to maximize welfare. However, it is problematic to morally reconcile what a utilitarian would be willing to do to maximize welfare; is it then just to willingly take the life of an innocent person to save five if that increases net happiness?1 A deontologist, thus, would contend that to be just is to do what’s right and refrain from what’s wrong based on adherence to certain rules—simply because one is obliged to—with no or little regard to consequences. As to whether what’s right emerges from religion, culture, law, reason, intuition, or a conglomerate of all, is a matter of debate. Although a deontologist would say what one ought to do, he hardly answers why do it.

Plato, however, offers the second perspective by presenting a challenge: defining justice merely in terms of actions runs the risk of only valuing it for its semblance. It is then to seem just—through the appearance of acting in a particular way—that is desirable, not necessarily to be so. Thus, Plato argues that justice is less about what to do and more about what to be. It is a particular psychological disposition. It is admitted, however, that it is not an easy task to find the nature of such a disposition in an individual. Thus, Plato looks into where it is easier to find justice, namely a city-state that comprises many individuals. After constructing the state from the ground up—through the stages of necessity, then maintenance, then luxury and expansion—Plato investigates how justice manifests itself, and what influence it would have. After all, politics is more manageable than psychology, and there is a mutual causality between the two; certain kinds of individuals produce certain kinds of governments, and vice versa. So learning how one is constructed gives us insight into the other.

The construction of the state, which is an attempt at Utopia, is rather amusing to follow. This is mainly due to the compound of unorthodox and distasteful ideas, mixed with undeniably positive purposes; Plato’s utopia presents an entertaining exercise of separating the wheat from the chaff. The state is to comprise three classes: the craftsmen (carpenters, blacksmiths, farmers, etc.), a military class of warriors (referred to as auxiliaries), and a ruling class of philosophers (referred to as guardians). The philosophers rule as they, and only they, are capable of acquiring true knowledge and wisdom, from which they can derive the path to an ideal state. Guardians and auxiliaries are to live a communal life, with everything from dwellings to wives and children being shared among them, proposing some form of intra-class communism2. The third class of commoners are allowed to own but are made sure to never own too much. Women, although admitted to be physically weaker, are given equal opportunities to men in regard to protecting and ruling the state, thus asserting the profitability of gender-wise meritocracy to the system. Society is to be rigidly stratified. Each class minds its occupation towards perfection and never dabbles with the other’s. Occupations are chosen based on inherent ability. Art and innovation are censored lest they cause decadence and anarchy. Propaganda is justified, even encouraged, in as much as it is beneficial to the maintenance and improvement of the state. Children—who are upbrought by the state, thus abolishing the concept of private family—are to be conceived with selective breeding, so the higher classes beget the like. They are carefully educated in gymnasium, music, arithmetic, planar and solid geometry, planetary mechanics, and dialectic. They are rigorously tested, and the best amongst them form the next generation of protectors and rulers.

What we have here is an elitist totalitarianism that’s run by philosophers. Totalitarian regimes stand on three pillars; the first two are power and dogma. The third pillar rises from the necessary mutual reinforcement between the first two; power, once established, spreads dogma by indoctrination and suppresses opposition by force; dogma, once internalized and moralized, maintains power by fanatical adherence and propaganda. In Plato’s state, the power is in the hands of the philosophers, the dogma is the superiority of reason, and the mutual reinforcement is the belief that the philosophers are the prime implementers of reason. Plato’s state, however, differs from typical totalitarianisms in that the philosophers rule purely out of obligation, not self-interest; they never seek power themselves but rather reluctantly accept it. In fact, they’d probably do better without it. The philosophers’ only goal is to maximize the overall happiness of the citizens rather than to dominate. In Plato’s state, power is strictly a means rather than an end.

The Multitudinous Self

The three political classes that constitute the state stand for the three psychological forces that constitute the individual. Guardians reflect reason. Auxiliaries reflect spirit, or the will to apply reason. Craftsmen represent the multitude of conflicting and competing desires in an individual, which nevertheless need to be cared for. Much like the state, the individual is wise in as much as he is ruled by reason. She is brave in as much as she has the will to apply such reason. He is temperate in as much as there is a mutual agreement between each of these forces on who gets to rule. And finally, she is just in as much as each force is only concerned with its role, never attempting to exercise what it never had the aptitude for. Thus, justice is to rule the multitude of desires only by reason, and only through spirit. In other words, justice is the harmony emerging from each psychological force playing the role it is best suited for. All much like a harmonious piece of music, with all its distinct notes seamlessly and nicely blending together. Here, we see the self—or the soul as Plato would put it—as a multiplicity looking for harmony, rather than a united whole. Why be just, then? Well, one can hardly dispute the claim that psychological harmony leads to satisfaction and inner peace, which are desirable both for their own sake and for their consequences.

The True World

It remains to understand why Plato chose pure reason as the most suitable of all to rule the individual as well as the state. The answer becomes clear once we understand Plato’s Theory of Forms, which he presents in The Republic as well as other dialogues. To do so, we can begin by asking: when you look around, what do you see? Chances are you see objects that you can touch, smell, hear, and perhaps unsurprisingly, see. That is what we can aptly call the world of sensible objects. But do you remember the last time you solved a math problem, or carried out a similarly abstract endeavor? Didn’t it feel like a disconnect from such a world? The manner you manipulate abstract concepts that are not perfectly realizable in the sense world is rather peculiar.3 It is this dichotomy that—perhaps partly—urged Plato to suggest a different world, namely the world of ideas. The world of ideas is the true world, and the world of objects is merely an imitation. The world of objects is ephemeral, and the world of ideas is eternal. What’s eternal must be real, and what’s only ephemeral must be illusive4. Only through reason can one assimilate true knowledge in the true world of ideas, rather than have mere opinions in the illusive world of objects. Good, itself, is an idea. You can only become truly good once you know what Good really is, and that can only be done with reason as objects can only be seen with light. Thus, reason rules because only through it can one truly know, and only after one truly knows can one justly act.

Here we conclude the following: Plato’s morality is one of rationality. However, we must examine such a conclusion by asking ourselves: does mathematical proficiency necessarily make one virtuous? Indeed, rationality can help one practice virtue more effectively, but only in as much as it can help one achieve any goal more effectively, whatever that goal may be. Once virtue is established, rationality comes to its aid; but it doesn’t seem you can derive the former from the latter, an ought from an is. After all, it was implicitly decided that Plato’s philosopher kings and queens ought to maximize the happiness of the state before it is known that reason is the best means to that end.

  1. Would you choose to divert a trolley from its path toward five strapped people in the railway, so that it heads towrads a railway in which only one person is strapped? ↩

  2. It is seen that military people mustn’t own private property, lest greed diverts them from their true purpose, which is to protect the state rather than to possess it. I assume that military juntas would be automatically adversarial to Plato. ↩

  3. Can you have an iron rod whose length is a multiple of π? You can try by first constructing a base rod, starting at 3 of any unit, say meters. Then add 0.1 meters, then 0.04, then 0.001, then 0.0005. You can never run out of fractions as π is irrational. However, you’d reach a length that is impossible to be independently added, particularly about 0.2 nanometers, which is the diameter of an iron atom. Thus, an iron rod whose length is a multiple of π, and hence can be bent into a circle, can ever exist. A true circle only exists as an idea. ↩

  4. This emerges from an irresistible hankering for permanence, the continual frustration from the absence of such permanence in the apparent reality presented by the sense world, and the ensuing belief that this permanence must then exist elsewhere (in another world). ↩