The Application of Platos Justice in Contemporary Society
The Application of Plato’s Justice in Contemporary Society “The result, then, is that more plentiful and better-quality goods are more easily produced if each person does one thing for which he is naturally suited, does it at the right time, and is released from having to do any of the others” (Sayers 21) Despite an existing definition of justice prior to his philosophical works, Plato spent much of his life challenging that definition and introducing his own. He used his famous work The Republic to define justice and outline its implementation within his concept of the “just city.” The Republic was written several thousand years ago, which causes one to question whether or not its contents are still relevant today. The goal of this paper is to show the correlation between Plato’s theory of justice, and our current contemporary idea of justice. While there are clearly some gaps between the two, I believe many of Plato’s theories are deeply rooted within our society still today. Plato approaches the subject of justice from two directions. He first addresses justice within the individual, and follows it with his model of the “just city” and societal justice. Plato is clearly motivated by the failing government system in Athens, which at the time of The Republic was on the verge of ruins. Further adding to his frustration, was the execution of Socrates. “Plato blamed his death on a broken system in which justice was not truly understood or enforced” (Sayers 57). These factors were key in Plato’s pursuit of justice. Plato viewed individual justice as a “human virtue,” that forced consistency and overall good. Social justice was defined as a certain level of consciousness the “makes society internally harmonious and good” (Plato 14). Plato believed that justice was contained within the individual, or within the soul, and therefore he laid out three crucial elements for the existence of justice. He believed that within the individual must existence a proper
Cited: Burke, Patrick Thomas. The Concept of Justice. New York, NY: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2011. Print Plato. The Republic. 2nd ed. Trans. Desmond Lee. New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1987. Sayers, Sean. Plato’s Republic: An Introduction, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999. Print