Introduction:
sourceIn Plato’s Republic, Socrates surmises that a just man is happier than an unjust man. To prove his point, he begins by designing a city for the purpose of defining justice and injustice. In this city, Guardians, who are just beyond reproach, sacrifice their own happiness in order to look after the greater good of the city and its inhabitants. In so doing, justice becomes the same in the city as in the individual.
Injustice can also be found in Socrates’ city.
Socrates states that
“injustice has the power, first, to make whatever it arises in…incapable of achieving anything as a unit, because of the civil wars and differences it creates, and second, it makes that unit an enemy to itself and to what is in every way its opposite, namely, justice"
(Republic, 352a).
sourceAccording to Socrates then, injustice has the power to cause dissension among the populace such that nothing can be accomplished, which is the opposite of justice. Basically, unjust people do not do their own work; rather they mingle into the works of others, leaving their own work undone. Leaving a void in which just works are left undone is like finding a loose thread that when pulled on unravels the whole tapestry.
Hence injustice can not lead to justice, which for Socrates is happiness.
Works Cited
Cherniss, Harold. “The Philosophical Economy of the Theory of Ideas.” The American Journal of Philology, Vol. 57, No.4 (1936), pp 445-456. The Johns Hopkins Press, http://www.jstor.org/stable/290396.
Colson, Darrel. “Elenctic Arguments in Republic I.” Lecture on Plato. Centenary College, Louisiana. September- October 2008.
Grube, G. M. A., C.D.C. Reeve. Plato. Republic. Hackett Publishing Company, Inc: Indianapolis/Cambridge, 1992.
Vlastos, Gregory, editor. Plato II: A Collection of Critical Essays. Notre Dame: The University of Notre Dame Press, 1971.