Justice as Intrinsic & Instrumental in Plato's Republic

I am interested in the relationship between justice as a means and as an end because those aspects separately and their standing with respect to one another are integrally—that is to say inseparably—involved in how we think about ethics generally and in specific cases.

For instance, recent, disturbing race-related violence by police officers toward certain citizens in the United States and then the assassination of 5 Dallas officers and the wounding of many other police and civilians raised complicated questions about what is right, fair, and valuable in itself, about the nature and extent of contemporary prejudices, and about the use of violence in service of conceptions of justice.  Similarly, the recent decision by the U.S. Justice Department and its Federal Bureau of Investigation not to indict Hillary Clinton despite the overwhelming evidence of her violations of standard federal security procedure strikes many observers as unjust. This is so not only because the decision seems to contravene obvious desert (the FBI does not doubt what she did), but also because, notwithstanding Director Comey’s (knowingly erroneous) denial that positive intention is required for a violation of the law, it raises questions about whether some supposedly greater purpose like social and political harmony in an election year outweighs the upholding of the law for its own sake or even as a deterrent to future security mismanagement.  Is justice, we might wonder, something good in itself and to be pursued for that reason, or because of the ranked purposes that it may serve?

United States citizens in 2016 are not the first persons or society to entertain these questions.  The ancient Greeks anticipated contemporary Anglophones in this as in many areas, particularly Plato.  It may be timely and to our profit then to ask this:  Is justice in his Republic an intrinsic and an instrumental good, as Socrates promises to prove to his interlocutors? Or does he only show that it is an instrumental good, in which case Glaucon's ventrilloquism for Thrasymachus (i.e., voicing the latter’s position for the sake of argument) is more on the mark?

In what follows I wish to explore this important question about justice as an instrumental and a final good through the lens of Plato’s Republic.  Socrates contends that justice is both intrinsic and instrumental.  How does he argue for that conclusion? How might this help contemporary societies understand both justice and the proper relation and pursuit of various ethical, social, and political goods?

An Overview of the Argument in the Republic

I have always been drawn to Plato’s dialogues, perhaps because of the drama of the conversations between Socrates and his interlocutors as they explore various questions.  The central question in the Republic is what is justice.  I want to share my thoughts about two specific aspects of the Republic that I believe will also simultaneously identify and distill Socrates’ central claims about justice: that justice is (1) instrumentally good and also (2) intrinsically good.  This is to say that justice produces good consequences, and justice is good for its own sake.  Chiefly, according to Socrates, justice in the individual is that state when all three parts of the person – rational, spirited, and appetitive – are fulfilling their proper function to create a condition of harmony, which leads to right actions.  From this it follows that it is never a good idea to be unjust:  disharmony (i.e., injustice) results, and doing justice for its own sake is not even a consideration.

Title page of the Republic (Codex Parisinus graecus)

Rather than summarize the entire dialogue here, I only wish to highlight the most important points as they relate to justice.  In this vein, it may be helpful to rehearse some background information.  A man named Thrasymachus interjects early on during Socrates’ conversation with another man, Simonides. Thrasymachus is called a sophist, which at the time referred to someone who was hired to teach generally wealthy people or their children how to succeed in argument so as to excel in politics, the ruling/governing of the commonwealth.  This feature of the dialogue is important to note, because Thrasymachus answers Socrates that justice is the advantage of the stronger. 

 
By this Thrasymachus means that one who acts justly will thereby become weak and that this weakness accrues to the benefit of the one who acts without scruples, the one who acts unjustly because he thereby gains an advantage over the person who acted justly and became weakened.  In one sense, justice is what is enacted in policy by those who rule strongly (might makes right).  In another sense, justice is that which benefits the unjust, although, when Socrates presses him, Thrasymachus must take a circuitous route to defend that position:  justice does not benefit those who act justly; justice benefits those who act unjustly: “Come, then, Thrasymachus … You say that complete injustice is more profitable than complete justice?  I certainly do say that” (Republic I, 348b-c).  Socrates denies that point.  And the rest of the dialogue in the Republic is essentially Socrates’ attempt, through conversation with Glaucon and Adeimantus (Plato’s brothers) who take up Thrasymachus’ position for the sake of argument, to prove that justice is both good in itself and more profitable than injustice:  “I myself put [justice] among the finest goods, as something to be valued by anyone who is going to be blessed with happiness, both because of itself and because of what comes from it” (Rep. II, 358a). 

The Central Analogies of Harmony:  Justice in City and in Individuals

Adeimantus appeals to Socrates to address just these two points: not only the consequences of goodness/justice, but also its intrinsic goodness (Rep. II, 366b).  In response, Socrates suggests that they zoom out their conversation to look at justice where it exists in large scale, because that will help them to identify it on a smaller scale in more particular cases.  Therefore, Socrates introduces the idea of looking at justice within an ideal city first (Rep. II, 368d).  Then it will become more apparent what justice is between individuals who live within the city. Moreover, individual people are not self-sufficient.  They live in community and need others to complete tasks that they cannot do easily for themselves.  Flourishing as individuals is related to flourishing in society.  Socrates sees the city and the individual as operating similarly as regards justice within its proper sphere.  Justice in the city and justice in the individual are both related and analogous.  This is one key feature to note of Plato’s account of justice in the Republic. 

Socrates (d. 399 BCE)

Socrates outlines the workings of his ideal city in Books 2-3, and in Book 4 begins to explore more properly where justice is found within it.  Socrates identifies four key virtues that will thrive in the city:  (1) wisdom, (2) courage, (3) moderation, and (4) justice.  The first three virtues correspond to the three chief class divisions within the city:  (1) wisdom/rulers who oversee all, (2) courage/guardians who defend the city from threats, and (3) moderation/the auxiliaries restrain themselves to devote themselves to their particular craft or trade.  Justice is integrative or all-encompassing virtue.  As G.M.A. Grube notes, “Justice means the harmony that results when everyone is actively engaged in fulfilling this role and does not meddle with that of others. Injustice then is precisely that kind of meddling” (Plato’s Republic, translated by G.M.A. Grube [Indianapolis: Hackett, 1974], 85). 

Now Socrates moves to the analogy of justice as it relates to the individual, or the soul. There are conflicts in a soul’s intentions, and this helps to prove that there is a three-fold division within the individual, just as the city has three divisions. Justice in the individual, as in the city, will keep all three parts flourishing in concert, not competition, with each other.  The three parts of the individual mirror those parts and functions within the ideal city: (1) the reasoning part (corresponding to wisdom/rulers), (2) the spirited part (corresponding to courage/guardians), and (3) the appetitive part (corresponding to moderation/auxiliaries).  Justice in the individual is, analogous to the city, when each part of the person is discharging its proper function or role. Such harmony among the parts of the individual, as in the city, will produce or result in just actions:   

And in truth justice is, it seems, something of this sort. However, it isn’t concerned with someone’s doing his own externally, but with what is inside him, with what is truly himself and his own. One who is just does not allow any part of himself to do the work of another part or allow the various classes within him to meddle with each other. He regulates well what is really his own and rules himself. He puts himself in order, is his own friend, and harmonizes the three parts of himself like three limiting notes in a musical scale—high, low, and middle. He binds together those parts and any others there may be in between, and from having been many things he becomes entirely one, moderate and harmonious. Only then does he act. And when he does anything, whether acquiring wealth, taking care of his body, engaging in politics, or in private contracts—in all of these, he believes that the action is just and fine that preserves this inner harmony and helps achieve it, and calls it so, and regards as wisdom the knowledge that oversees such actions. And he believes that the action that destroys this harmony is unjust, and calls it so, and regards the belief that oversees it as ignorance. (Rep. IV, 443c-e) 

There seems to be implicit in the argument the idea that disruption to this harmony (i.e., injustice) results in less good for the city and for the individual than if harmony (i.e., justice) prevails.  This is the consequentialist side of the argument for justice that Adeimantus had requested.  The city ceases to function as well as possible when there is striving, when cobblers do not make shoes and when guardians do not train for and exercise military discipline.  If rulers seek to make shoes and waste their wisdom doing what only they as wise rulers can do, then havoc will result.  Similarly, if the appetitive part of an individual seeks gluttonously to eat as much as one wants, the harmony that is the individual’s health will suffer.  If the striving part of an individual is overly bellicose, it will lead the individual into conflicts that are unnecessary and unprofitable.  This is why Socrates believes that it is never a good idea to be unjust:  the lack of harmony, or justice, produces ill effects and violates one’s natural function. 

Justice as an Intrinsic Good in the Republic

So much for the utilitarian aspect of justice in the city and in the individual.  Socrates has demonstrated that to Glaucon’s and Adeimantus’ satisfaction.  But what about the intrinsic aspect of justice, the idea that it is good for its own sake, or inherently?  An inherent good is one without qualification, that is, without any consequences that result.  If considered in itself, an intrinsic good will be valued for what it is. It is esteemed above all else, we might say, because of its form, its nature.  Justice is precisely this sort of thing, Socrates contends. Glaucus had introduced in Book 2 the famous Ring of Gyges example to argue that people act justly only for fear of consequences, not because they value justice itself.  Socrates uses the city and the resulting discussion to counter this notion. 

Socrates, in this connection, seems to summarize his view that justice (here called virtue) is intrinsically good because it affords health to the soul: “Virtue seems, then, to be a kind of health, fine condition, and well-being of the soul, while vice is disease, shameful condition, and weakness” (Rep. IV, 444d-e).  Justice, or virtue, is what allows the soul to be harmonious, to be in balance, to flourish and fulfill its nature as soul.  This may seem, on one reading, not to meet the criterial for an intrinsic good, namely, to be valued for its own sake apart from any effects that it produces.  On another reading, however, Socrates does argue that justice is valued for its own sake because its expression in the city and in the individual is valued by the rulers of the city, who educate the individuals within it, for the mere sake that it reflects the highest Good, the Form of the Just.  The earthly instantiation is a copy of the supreme good, the Form of the Just.  The Form of the Just (or justice) is valued for its own sake as the pinnacle of goodness, and its manifestation, or expression, in the city and in individuals is valued precisely because of its perfection. 

Socrates points in this direction in Book 6, when he tells Glaucon that the Form of the Good gives various virtues their full goodness and makes them beneficial: 

…the form of the good is the most important thing to learn about and that it’s by their relation to it that just things and the others become useful and beneficial. You know very well now that I am going to say this, and, besides, that we have no adequate knowledge of it. And you also know that, if we don’t know it, even the fullest possible knowledge of other things is of no benefit to us, any more than if we acquire any possession without the good of it. Or do you think that it is any advantage to have every kind of possession without the good of it? Or to know everything except the good, thereby knowing nothing fine or good. (505a-b; see also 508e) 

Without the Form of the Good, things which were thought to be known, meaningful, and beneficial lack just those qualities.  Those things are bankrupt without the Form of the Good.  Various goods such as knowledge or crafts or skills or personal qualities/actions are proximately virtuous, but that is only if one exercises them here and now with an eye to the Good -- the ultimate end toward which the various goods individually and collectively aim, the source of meaningfulness that makes various pursuits individually meaningful and provides a context within which their benefit may be evaluated and appreciated.

Some Additional Thoughts

If my reading of Plato is correct, then Socrates does fill out his contention that justice is both valuable in itself as the perfection of the good, and it is beneficial to the individual and to the city. This is an aspect, by the way, that Aristotle will develop in his own way. Aristotle will also try to sort out whether the good is such per se or instrumentally relative to something else.

Aristotle (384-322 BCE)

His particular articulation of the good and justice in both the Nicomachean Ethics and the Politics should, despite the differences from Plato’s vision, be seen as an attempt to continue, improve, and complete the basic Platonic project.  Their shared project to give an account of the goods of excellence sees the ethics of the individual as always part of and necessarily participating in a certain shared social and political context.  As Alasdair MacIntyre has noted, for Plato “justice is the key virtue because both in the psuch­ē and the polis only justice can provide the order which enables the other virtues to do their work” (Whose Justice? Which Rationality? 74). But it remains unclear to me whether Socrates fully or adequately proves his contention about the dual nature of justice as intrinsically good and instrumentally good.

It may be that the unpersuasiveness of the theory of Forms that Socrates supplies indicates that it is less a proof than a pointer to what is needed to substantiate his contention. What it points to is that there is needed some standard for measuring the Good and the just in order properly to instantiate it in a particular social and political context.  Against the sophists, who advocate as justice what leads to greater advantage, Plato has offered in rebuttal the form of the argument that at once admits the utility attached to virtues such as justice but also locates those virtues and their practice in light of some ultimate, overarching telos that guides the adjudication of the various embodiments of the pursuit of virtue in human lives and socio-political situations.  For those of us who are Plato’s justice-pursuing heirs, the form of his argument may be more important to notice than his theory of Forms (on this point see also MacIntyre, WJWR, 83-84).

Aristotle certainly thought so.  It is what propelled him to work out his own account of what is the highest good for humans individually and collectively, a supreme good, or end (telos), that it is their natural disposition and obligation to pursue. This end-goal also serves as a benchmark for interpreting human flourishing in a way quite different from the flexible pragmatism of the ancient sophists who, for instance, might advocate a course of action (perhaps violent, perhaps rule-breaking and otherwise careless) that results in their advantage over others.  Plato and Aristotle both, in their own ways, invite us to walk down a better path of justice.