JUSTICE AS A VIRTUE OF THE SOUL

PAUL WOODRUFF

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199646043.003.0006

Abstract and Keywords

Platonic justice in the Republic is essentially a pragmatic notion: justice is whatever virtue is

most important to the success of the city, where success is understood in terms of the growth

of other virtues and the prevention of civil war. This pragmatic assumption about justice puts

no direct constraints on what counts as justice in principles, in procedures, in behaviors, or in

the distribution of goods. Plato instead calls attention to a matter in ethics or to the

psychological character that citizens must have in a city that is successful on his terms. Plato

is right about this: an adequate pragmatic account of justice must privilege ethical character

over elements of justice such as principles or procedures.

Keywords: Plato, Republic, justice, virtue, character, soul, polis, stasis

AS a virtue, Platos justice is in the soul, and it has nothing to do with fairness.1 His account

of justice in theRepublic puts no direct constraints on what counts as justice in principles, in

procedures, in behaviours, or even in distribution (apart from the distribution of offices). Plato

instead calls attention to ethicsto the psychological character that citizens should want to

have. He does so by way of looking into the character of the just city, holding it up as an

enlarging mirror for the soul.

In this paper I argue for two theses, a scholarly one about Platos text, and a philosophical one

about justice. My scholarly thesis is that Plato is committed to the view that the citizens of a

healthy polis are personally just, that failures of personal justice undermine civic justice. A

healthy polis is one that resists stasiscrippling division or civil war. The health of such a city

consists mainly in what I call civic justice. Plato develops his concept of civic justice by
constructing an ideal city, Callipolis, which cannot survive unless its citizens maintain a

package of personal virtues that includes personal justice. Plato defines justice in persons as an

ethical concept in its own right; it is not merely derived from justice in institutions as it

would be if he had defined justice in persons as the attitude that supports a previously defined

justice in institutions.

The philosophical thesis of this paper is that Plato is right about the link between personal and

civic justicea position we can take (p.90) without agreeing to the organization and controls

he provides for Callipolis. Justice is not a matter of principle, either as a virtue of individuals

or as a quality of the polis, and in this it contrasts with fairness.2 Civic justicejustice in

communitiesmay or may not require adherence to principles; it belongs to communities in

virtue of their ability to resolve disputes in such a way that no division or stasisarises severe

enough to prevent the community from achieving its goal. Justice depends on fair procedures

in some cases, but not in all, and sometimes justice requires us to ignore fairness altogether.

1. Soul and city

Julia Annas has written a powerful chapter on my topic, entitled The Inner City: Ethics without

Politics in theRepublic.3 The title states the main point: the ancients who followed Plato

understood the Republic not as an idealist venture into political theory but as an ethical work

continuing the Socratic project of investigating virtues as qualities of individual souls. The

ancients were right, Annas argues, and I agree. Plato has Socrates construct Callipolis

through logoi in order to illustrate justice in the soul; he does not do this from the thought that

we must start by building the ideal city in factas if we could not cultivate virtue outside an

ideal state. Ancient political theorists wisely did not start from the Republic; Plato comes closer

to political theory in later works, the Statesman and the Laws.4 But the ethical theory of

the Republic cannot be unbreakably tied to Callipolis, as it is meant to apply to us in the non-

ideal world, and indeed, it is not essentially tied to life in thepolis at all.5
I agree with all that: Platos theory of justice in the Republic is (p.91) ethical. It is nevertheless

related to a theory of the polis in general, whether ideal or not. And on this too I believe I am

in harmony with Annass thinking about ancient ethics in general.6 Plato does not require us to

dwell in an ideal polis if we wish to have justice in our souls, but he does appear to require that

we have some measure of justice in our souls in order to dwell in a polis at allassuming, of

course, that we cannot properly dwell in a polis that is fractured by civil war. This necessity of

personal justice to community is an idea Plato represents elsewhere as due to Protagoras,7 but

here in the Republic he shows how failures of ethical virtue may be correlated with civil

disturbance and political collapse. Plato is right about this: the justice that sustains a community

is an ethical virtue. Cultivating personal justice while in a degenerate polis is not the same as

trying to turn it into Callipolis, however desirable that might be.

Plato connects personal and civic justice first through the image of a text presented both small

and large. Justice in the city is like a text written in large letters above smaller ones that are

harder to make out; after reading the larger text we may look to see whether the smaller text,

justice in the soul, is the same (368 D 17, cf. 435 A 5B 2). In book 4 and again in book 8

Plato explores the analogy, finding it apt again and again.8 He does very little to examine the

relation between the two, however. Some readers have supposed that no one can be just outside

of the ideal city,9 but (as Annas shows) Plato cannot intend this. It would make a mockery of

theRepublics grand argument, which is an answer to Glaucon and Adimantus. (p.92) They

want to know why we should try to be just in the non-ideal world; if no one could be just except

in the ideal atmosphere of Callipolis, then Socrates effort would be wasted.

In the end Socrates allows only one limitation for the non-ideal world: outside Callipolis the

wise and just person may not engage in politics (592 A). The justice Socrates urges on the wise

person is not otherwise curtailed by non-ideal political circumstances; we can see from 591 E

that wise people outside Callipolis may have money, so long as they do not value it too highly.
True, the education needed for justice will come easier in Callipolis,10 but the main argument

in the Republic is not about how we may become just, but about why we should make the

attempt.

Platos text creates a problem, however, by defining justice for all of us in a way that makes it

dependent on a kind of knowledge that none of us (barring a miracle) can have. The text leaves

us to propose solutions. TheApology gives us a clue: Socrates lacks godlike wisdom, but claims

to have human wisdom. Probably Plato holds that there are imperfect human versions of all the

virtues that the gods perfectly exemplify. In the case of justice, I suppose this must be what he

says it is in book 4the psychological condition of one who is disposed to accept the good

judgement (euboulia)11 of reason over the demands of the spirit or the blandishments of sensual

desire. This disposition Socrates identifies as inner harmony, making it explicit that this

harmony is available to people who engage in business and own property12a class of people

who would not be allowed to practise philosophy in Callipolis. Nowhere in book 4 does

Socrates define justice in terms of knowledge of the Forms, and here he is urging people who

could not possibly know the Forms to maintain psychic justice. Full knowledge may well turn

out to be impossible outside Callipolis; after all, not even Socrates claims to have that. Personal

justice does not require full knowledge, however, (p.93) and therefore it does not on

epistemological grounds require membership in Callipolis.

Citizens, then, do not depend on the city for their personal justice. Does the city depend on its

citizens virtue for its civic justice? Here the question is more complicated. The question

divides in two, for Callipolis and for non-ideal communities. In Callipolis, certain virtues of

citizens are transferred to the city because of its organization; for example, the city will be wise

because its rulers are wise, and courageous because its Guardians are courageous (428 E; 429

B). But the presence of Socrates did not make Athens wise or courageous. Take away the

structure of Callipolistake the virtuous people out of leadership rolesand their virtues will
not rub off from part to whole. Does the same distinction hold for justice and soundness of

mind?

2. Justice and sphrosun (soundness of mind)

By contrast with courage and wisdom, sphrosun (431 E432 A) and justice (433 A) spread

through the whole of Callipolis. They appear to do so in different ways: sphrosun in the city

puts all the citizens into harmony, singing together, so apparently each of them is to some

degree sphrn.13 Callipolis, then, depends on all of its citizens for its sphrosun. Each citizen

must exhibit what I will call civic sphrosun through agreeing that the wisest should rule (431

DE). By itself, this result does not entail that civic sphrosun depends on

personalsphrosun, which Plato defines as the personal agreement that a sphrn person

maintains within his own soul (442 C).

Plato has further reasons for holding that personal sphrosun is necessary for the

corresponding civic virtue. Civil war arises in a polis when its people14 are unable to acquire

personal sphrosun, (p.94) which apparently would prevent civil war (555 C with 556

E).15 Civic sphrosun therefore entails personalsphrosun outside Callipolis, and almost

certainly inside as well.

The justice of Callipolis, by contrast, is expressed in its structure, rather than in properties of

its citizens. Like happiness, justice may be analogous to beauty: a sculptor may aim to make a

statue beautiful without aiming to make all (or indeed any) of its parts beautiful to the same

degree as the whole (420 B ff.). On this analogy, we may aim to put justice in the city without

putting it into the parts of the city. Plato would be wrong to hold that justice in a whole entails

justice in its parts; that would have two awkward consequences, and for cleanliness of theory

Plato should reject the wholepart inference.

The two awkward consequences are these: suppose that justice in the whole entails justice of

the same kindi.e. justice as a harmony of partsin each part of that whole. If so, we would

have to find justice in each part of the soul, which would require further subdivision of the

soul; each of the three parts of the soul would have to have three parts, and so on for ever. But

that would be absurd.16 Second, if all the citizens in a just city are just, then either each citizen

would have an internal wise ruler, or else would have to submit to an external wise ruler,

apparently like a slave (590 D).17

Nevertheless, the justice of the city does depend on its citizens justice, albeit for a different

reason: not because of the wholepart inference, but because civic justice depends on

civic sphrosun for its lasting power, and civic sphrosun in turn depends on

personal sphrosun. We must turn to the relation between justice andsphrosun.

Sphrosun entails justice. Justice is the power that enables them [sphrosun, courage, and

wisdom] to come to be in the city and once (p.95) there to survive (453 B 910). Sphrosun,

surely, cannot come to be in the absence of justice, since it consists in agreement that rule

should be by the wise (in the city, 431 D 9E 2), and reason (in the soul, 442 C 10D 1). There

will be nothing to agree to unless the structures of the soul and the city are just, at least to some

degree; the rational part of the soul must be capable of ruling, and the other parts of being ruled.

So if all the citizens of Callipolis are personally sphrones, they will also be personally just.

Moreover, when a city fails, or falls from one degree of corruption to a lower one, its citizens

are evidently failing with respect to personal justice, though Plato does not make the point

explicit. The citizens who lead their city downward are themselves led by personal fealty

towards honour or money or desire in place of reason, and so are personally unjust. The decline

is not due to faulty institutions.18 This is evident from Socrates admission that Callipolis will

decline when its leaders do not carry out their duties correctlynot because they give up on
the institutions, but because of mathematical errors in eugenics (546 C 6D 8) that lead to a

decline in virtue. Good institutions provide no safety from stupidity.

Justice in the city requires sphrosun in the city. This is true for Plato not as a matter of logic,

but in virtue of the way human beings behave. We can consistently construct in thought-

experiments a Platonically just entity that lacks sphrosun. But if its citizens were human,

that entity would be highly unstable and would soon collapse, leaving justice behind. It is

robust justice, justice with staying power, that entails sphrosun. The examples in book 8

show both souls and cities declining or ruptured by stasis as a result of failures ofsphrosun.

Especially telling is the tale of the miserly moneylovera clear example of someone who fails

atsphrosun who restrains his appetites through fear and compulsion (anank) rather than

through persuasion and the gentling effect of logoi (554 C 11D 3). In this he resembles the

oligarchy that is setting itself up for the civil war that will erupt as soon as the downtrodden

realize how weak their rulers actually are (556 D 2E 1). Failure of agreement as to who should

rule leads to a decline from justice. So justice withoutsphrosun is fragile, if it can occur at

all.

The ruler in a just soul or a just city must secure the harmonious (p.96) agreement of the

elements that it rules (519 E 1520 A 4). This it apparently must do mainly by persuasion,

which will begin with education in poetry, music, and gymnastics, and continue through an

adult culture involving myth. Socrates does not envisage using force (bia) for this end, probably

because it does not appear capable of establishing true harmony. He does speak of anank in

such contexts (e.g. at 519 C 9).19 Securing agreement among citizens is a political activity,

mirrored in the soul. Socrates interest in persuasion, even through lies, is evidence for his

preference for harmony over force. Manipulative rhetoric is what enables a community of

people who are not all perfectly rational to function under direction by reason.
The construction of Callipolis was guided from the start by the concept that turned out to be

justice, yet Socrates will not say that justice is the virtue most important to the city; all four

virtues are essential (433 D 7E 1).20They come as a package; the structure of justice makes

no sense unless the rulers have wisdom and the Guardians have courage; it cannot survive

unless the whole city is harmonious. The package of virtues in the soul amounts to psychic

health.

Although justice on Socrates view leads to just actions, Socrates does not define justice in

terms of just actions or in terms of rules for just action. And although he holds that justice in

the soul supports justice in the city, he does not define justice in the soul as a disposition to

support justice in the city. He defines personal justice in terms of an internal division of labour,

on the analogy of justice in the city. This internal division of labour does not inevi (p.97) tably

bring on fairness or even fair-mindedness, but it does enable us to share in human communities

such as poleis. Part of the good at which personal justice aims is the value of being connected

with other people.21

As a virtue, Platonic justice is psychological; it is a character belonging to a soul in which

appetite and the love of honour are harmoniously regulated by reason, which aims at what is

best for the whole person. So defined, justice benefits the individual, because it prevents the

love of honour or appetite from leading to actions that would not be best for the whole person.

The main point of the Republic, after all, is that justice benefits the individual who has it. Less

obviously, such a character in individuals is also beneficial to the polis in which they dwell, as

I have argued above. In fact, Socrates has apparently been known to hold the view that justice

is beneficial, without specifying who it is that receives its benefit.22 He probably believes that

justice is beneficialhaplsbeneficial to all who are touched by it, without qualification;

certainly he holds that justice cannot be harmful to anyone (335 E 5).

3. Fairness vs. justice

Neither in city nor in soul does Plato show much interest in fairness. Democracy in the city

uses the lottery to achieve a kind of fairness that Plato always considers dangerous (Rep. 557

A 25; 558 C 36; Laws 757 A 5758 A 2). In the soul, democracy gives equal weight to

desires, with the result that the desire of the moment can lead one into trouble. There is one

sort of inequality that Plato decries, which results from mixing people of different abilities in

the same class (547 A 24), but this is objectionable not because it is unfair but because (like

an unequal marriage) it is unstable.

The contrasting concept of justice as fairness has been most clearly stated in modern

philosophy by John Rawls in his original statement of his theory of justice as fairness.23 He

opens the famous (p.98) paper in which he made public his theory of justice this way: The

fundamental idea in the concept of justice is that of fairness. There he discusses justice as a

virtue of institutions constituting restrictions as to how they may define offices and powers,

and assign rights and duties; and not as a virtue of particular actions, or persons.24His

discussion of justice from here on is a discussion of principles of fairness, with a view to

rejecting any principle that could not be acknowledged by all sides to a dispute. Because justice

is fairness, and fairness is based on principles, he contends, utilitarianism cannot account for

justice. In the case of slavery, he argues, utilitarianism can reliably yield the right result only

when it borrows illicitly from the principle of fairness.25

Rawls and Socrates are engaged with different kinds of subject; Rawlss subject is political,

while Socrates is ethical. For Rawls, justice is primarily a virtue of institutions, while for

Socrates it is primarily a virtue of the individual soul.

Platos Socrates has no trust in institutions unless they are managed by people with individual

virtues. The difference he identifies between a king and a tyrant is not about institutions but
about virtue. Institutions managed by vicious people, Socrates holds, go into decline. Platos

emphasis on individual virtues continues from the Republic into the Laws: the survival of the

city depends on having scrutiny of magistrates carried out by ethically good people; otherwise

the sense of justice that unites all interests in the state is destroyed (945 D 56, Saunderss

translation).

Rawls defines justice in terms of principles, Socrates in terms of the good at which it aims.

Fairness has been attractive to recent thinkers because its principles are mostly valueneutral

and do not attempt to resolve disputes about what is good. A problem with fairness is that its

principles have no way to cope with fundamental disagreements about value, except through

the hope that rational (p.99) people can learn to live with differences of opinion about such

matters.

Consider an example familiar to our profession. A philosophy department must decide how to

distribute a small sum of money available for salary increases. One member has a distinguished

reputation as a scholar and is being actively courted by other universities; another has devoted

herself to teaching large numbers of students and to winning over their minds to philosophical

pursuits. Advocates for the scholarly star argue that all members will be better off if the

department retains their star, as the department will then be able to tease more money out of

the higher administration. Although the distribution will be unequal, the less advantaged

members will be better off as a result of the inequality. Advocates for the devoted teacher,

however, call it a disgrace for philosophers to set such value on reputation or money; they do

not agree that the teacher would be better off if the star is given a greater reward, and so they

angrily reject the proposed inequality. There does not appear to be a principled way to resolve

this dispute, but a cohesive department, united by respect and good communication, will

weather the storm.26 Persuasion, not principle, comes to the rescue.

Platos reluctance to adopt principles of fairness makes him a kind of particularist. His ethics

is committed to a dominant concept of the good, which trumps any principle of the kind treated

at the opening of the Republic: telling the truth and returning what one has borrowed are not

always good, and so cannot be defining of justice (331 C). That is why the wisdom that knows

(or aims to know) what is good in each case is central to Platonic ethics.

Socrates seeks to motivate justice through self-interest, a gambit that is not open to an advocate

of justice as fairness. Socrates conception of justice is such that he believes he can answer the

question Why should I be just? by showing how justice is to my advantage. But a principled

concept of fairness does not lend itself to an argument of that sort. Contractarians argue that

fairness proceeds from (p.100) a notional agreement that people would accept in so far as they

are rational. But why should I be swayed today by an agreement made in the past, or in a

thought-experiment, if it does not appear to be in my current interest?

Socrates, by contrast, insists on actual agreement of all parties (even those with weak rational

faculties) in the here and now, because failures of agreement can lead to civic collapse or an

unhealthy use of force. Unlike fairness, Platonic justice is not a product of agreement. The

reverse holds: agreement is the product of justice. The people are persuaded to agree on

Platonic justice because of what it is, because it aims at the good of all.

Here lies another striking difference. Rawls posits an ideal situation in which people with

certain qualities and varied conceptions of the good will autonomously agree to principles of

fairness. Plato constructs an ideal community in which highly imperfect people are persuaded

to agree to a harmonious order based on a rich understanding of the good that is accessible to

only a tiny minority of them. The persuasion of the citizens is to be continuous, built into a

culture of music, poetry, and dance that Callipolis keeps under tight control.27
We do not have to accept a tightly controlled culture in order to appreciate the importance of

persuasion in a healthy community. A basic level of agreement is essential for any community

to maintain its health, as Plato understood very well. Force may hold a group together for a

while, but force will not make the group into a community, and the tension that results from

force is fundamentally unhealthy, both for the group and for the individuals who comprise

it.28 Virtue cannot be forced.

University of Texas at Austin