PLATO

(428-348 BC)
BACKGROUND

1. In Plato, the Greek genius was realized with extraordinary completeness. So powerful
was his comprehensive treatment of knowledge that his philosophy became the most
influential strand in the history of Western thought. Unlike his predecessors who
focused upon single main problems, Plato brought together all the major concerns of
human thought into a coherent organization of knowledge.

“By his mode of life and by his method of philosophizing, he set before mankind the clear
conclusion that the quest for happiness is the same as the quest for excellence.”
ARISTOTLE ON PLATO

2. Aristocles, called Plato because of his broad forehead, was born on the island of Aegina,
in the year 428 BC, roughly a year after the death of Pericles and when Socrates was
about forty years old. Through his father he traced his descent to Cadmus, the last king
of Athens, and the kings before him, even to the god Poseidon. His mother, Perictione,
was the sister of Charmides and the cousin of Critias, both of whom were leading
statesmen in the oligarchy that followed the fall of Athens after the Peloponessian War.
When his father died, early in his childhood, his mother married PyriIampes, who had
been a close friend of Pericles. Such close ties with eminent public figures had long
distinguished PIato's family, especially on his mother's side, where an early relative had
been a friend of the great giver of law, Solon, and another distant member of the family
was the archon, or the highest magistrate, in 644 BC.

In such a family atmosphere, it was inevitable that Plato would learn much about public
life and develop at an early age a sense of responsibility for public political service. But
Plato's attitude toward Athenian democracy was also influenced by what he saw during

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 the last stages of the Peloponnesian War. He saw the inability of this democracy to
produce great leaders and saw also the way it treated one of its greatest citizens,
Socrates. Plato was present at Socrates' trial and had expressed willingness to
guarantee payment of his fine. The collapse of Athens and the execution of his master
Socrates led Plato to despair of democracy and to begin formulating a new conception
of political leadership in which authority and knowledge are appropriately combined.
Plato had concluded that as in the case of a ship, where the pilot's authority rests upon
his knowledge of navigation, so also the ship of state should be piloted by one who has
adequate knowledge.

Since his family was one of the most distinguished in Athens, his early training must
have included the rich ingredients of that culture in the arts, politics and philosophy.
His brilliant education was completed under the philosopher Cratylus, a disciple of
Heraclitus. A poet by nature, Plato wrote plays in his youth, but at the age of twenty,
after hearing Socrates, he burnt his poetry and gave himself up wholly to philosophy.
He spent eight years in the companionship of Socrates, and when the latter died he set
off to supplement his studies by travelling. At Megara he practised dialectic under
Euclid and studied astronomy in Egypt. In Italy and Sicily he became acquainted with,
and admired, the teachings of Pythagoras and the Eleatics. Finally he visited Syracuse
upon the invitation of Dion to whom he expounded his political views. His frankness
lost him the patronage of Dion and he was sold as a slave.

About 387, at the height of his powers, after he had written most of his dialogues, and
when he was about forty years old, Plato founded a school of philosophy in the gardens
of his friend, Academus, which he therefore named the Academy. This was, in a sense,
the first university to emerge in the history of Western Europe, and for twenty years,
Plato administered the Academy as its director for twenty years, and one of its most
brilliant students was Aristotle. The chief aim of the Academy was to pursue scientific
knowledge through original research. Although Plato was particularly concerned with
educating statesmen, he was convinced that their education must consist of rigorous
intellectual activity, by which he meant scientific study, including mathematics,
astronomy, and harmonics.

WRITINGS

It is said that Plato lectured at the Academy without the use of any notes. These lectures
were on subjects and ways of treating subjects which were different from what we find in
his written Dialogues. Plato's lectures were never published because they were never
written, although his hearers’ notes were circulated. So we encounter Plato’s doctrines in
his Dialogues, which number more than twenty - an extensive literary production and, as
mentioned above, most of them were written by the time he had founded the Academy, that
is, by the time he was around forty years old. They are admirable literary works, praised
both for the purity and the varied simplicity of the style and, above all, for the realistic
manner in which the characters speak and act. In the conversations, Socrates is usually the
mouthpiece of Plato, but sometimes the exposition is put into the plainer form of a long
monologue. Each dialogue has more or less the unity of a dramatic composition; in none of

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them is the subject matter strictly defined; they move with the easy pace and the loose
structure of a poem. The most important works are the following:

Protagoras – On the Sophists Phaedo – On the Immortality of the Soul

Gorgias – On Rhetoric Parmenides – On Ideas

Meno – On Virtue Theaetetus – On Knowledge

The Symposium – On Love Sophistes – On Being

Phaedrus – On Beauty Timaeus – On Nature

DOCTRINES

Plato’s ethical theory may be described as the quest for the good life. In this quest, he
followed his master, Socrates, who exhorted people not simply to pursue excellence or the
good life but to ‘take care’ or ‘be careful’ (epimeleisthai) in this pursuit.

If a person can be deceived by appearances in the natural physical world, he can be equally
deceived by appearances in the moral realm. The kind of knowledge that helps one to
distinguish between shadows, reflections, and real objects in the visible world is just the
kind of knowledge that man needs to discriminate between the shadows and reflection of
the genuinely good life.

“Socrates thinks his ambitious contemporaries are not being properly careful or
discriminating about what they seek to acquire under the name of excellence. They are
obsessed with the question – how to acquire excellence – to the neglect of the prior
questions insisted upon by Socrates: what excellence really is.” [Susan S. Meyer, “Plato and the
Pursuit of Excellence,” 14-15]

Socrates urged on the Athenians a particular conception of excellence: “My good Sir, you
are an Athenian, a citizen of the city which is the greatest and noted for its wisdom and
power. Are you not ashamed of your eagerness to possess as much wealth, reputation and
honours as possible, while you do not care for nor give thought to wisdom and truth, or the
best possible state of your soul?” [Apology 29d-e]

“According to Socrates, care of one’s soul or psyche is more important in the quest for
excellence than the accumulation of such external objects of ambition as wealth, reputation,
and political power. One cares for one’s soul, in his view, by seeking ‘wisdom and truth’ –
that is, by engaging in philosophy, the practice of examining the ethical beliefs of oneself
and others... Knowledge provides everything one needs for living well.... He offers a fairly
long list of popularly recognized goods, beginning with wealth, health, good looks,
satisfaction of bodily needs, noble birth, living in a powerful country and honour. To these
he adds self-control, justice, bravery and wisdom – even thought, he recognizes, the first

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two may be controversial to those enamoured of the Homeric ideal. (The excellence
glorified in Homer is that of the warrior chieftain whose greatness consists in his fame
[kleos] and prowess in battle, is proportional to the number of people he rules, and is
measured by the property he has accumulated as a result of his dominance [Iliad 1.225-284]).
Finally, he finishes off the list by adding good fortune.” [“Plato and the Pursuit of Excellence,” 15]

Socrates then sets out to show that all the other items on the list depend on ‘wisdom’. He
argues first that wisdom is responsible for good fortune. He supports this improbable
assertion by citing examples of disciplines (music, navigation, medicine, military science) in
which those with the relevant knowledge have ‘better luck’ than those without it: for
example, the skilled sailor has better luck at sea than the unskilled.... Socrates proceeds to
consider the relation between wisdom and the other goods on the list. He argues that none
of these ‘goods’ is in fact good for you unless you possess wisdom, and that wisdom is what
makes them good. This is because, first of all, it is not the possession but the use of such
things that benefit a person. Second, one must not only use them, but use them properly.
Money and power, for example, are of no benefit to someone who does not know how to
use them well. Even courage and temperance can bring about great harm if controlled by
ignorance rather than knowledge. Thus, in order to be happy, one needs knowledge of how
to use properly the conventionally recognized ‘goods’....

The conclusion so stated amounts to the thesis that wisdom is necessary for living well...
that wisdom is sufficient for happiness... ‘is the only thing that makes a man happy and
fortunate’... that a person who wants to live well must strive to become as wise as possible.
To pursue such wisdom is to ‘engage in philosophy’.” [“Plato and the Pursuit of Excellence, 15-16]

Taking his direction from Socrates, Plato developed the thesis that the life of reason is the
happiest and best. He understood this to mean that knowledge produces a harmonious
person, in the sense that when reason governs the desires and passions, an orderly and
well balanced life is obtained.

“It is assumed that everyone seeks happiness in everything he or she does, and that we
become happy by acquiring good things. Against this assumption Socrates makes an
opposite claim: 1) Good things do not benefit us if we just have them lying around, any more
than a workman is benefited by his tools and materials if they are just lying around, rather
than being put to use. They have to be used and used correctly. Happiness cannot consist
just in things or in having stuff—riches, reputation, power—but must rather consist in what
you do with these things, the use you put them to. Happiness lies in what you make of your
life and its share of conventional goods, rather than in the conventional goods themselves.
Happiness requires not just goods but the recognition of priorities among them….[T]he
happy person needs virtue because the value to him of other things depends on their being
put to good use by virtue….[W]ithout wisdom one is actually better off with conventional
evils; without the sense to use conventional advantages in a way that will benefit him, a
person will be less unhappy being poor, weak, disgraced, cowardly, lazy, slow, short-sighted,
and deaf than he would be with the opposite of these.

2) Conventional goods are not valuable in their own right, and thus make no contribution to

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happiness themselves; rather, the value they have depends on the kind of life that they form
part of. The value of conventional goods for happiness is dependent on their use by virtue,
and most people are mistaken in holding that conventional goods contribute to happiness,
and conventional evils subtract from it, no matter what, whether in a good life or a bad.

Conventional goods lack the power to add to the happiness of the vicious, and conventional
evils lack the power to subtract from it. Conventional goods are bad for the vicious;
conventional evils are good for the vicious. Conventional goods can, presumably, encourage
and sustain virtue by facilitating virtuous action, but they do not add to the happiness of the
life of the virtuous in their own right. And the only contribution they can make to the
happiness of the wicked is by retarding wickedness, by diminishing its scope, and enabling
the person to become virtuous. The conventional evils are good for the vicious—good of
course, in a completely unconventional way, since they can benefit the vicious only by
serving to make him less vicious and more capable of becoming happy.

The virtuous person is happy, and conventional goods and evils make no impact on this—it
does not matter whether he is tall, strong, and rich or small, weak, and poor. Human
conventional goods lack value in themselves for happiness. All that matters for happiness is
virtue, and all that matters for unhappiness is wickedness.

[Julia Annas, “Transforming Your Life: Virtue and Happiness,” in Platonic Ethics, Old and New (London:
Cornell University Press, 1999), 40-47.]

There are two basic philosophical doctrines that form the backdrop for the Platonic moral
philosophy:

DOCTRINE OF TELEOLOGY – Everything in the universe has a purpose or proper

function within a harmonious hierarchy of purposes. The ultimate explanation of
things is purposive rather than mechanical.

Humans also have a purpose or proper function. Their value, like that of everything
else in the universe, depends upon their effectiveness in fulfilling that function. In
turn, the success of individuals in realizing their purpose is determined by the
effective functioning of the basic constituents of their personality. The morally
virtuous person is one who is in rational, biological, and emotional balance, or, in
Platonic terms, one who is wise, temperate, courageous, and just.

THEORY OF IDEAS – general conceptions are not derived from experience but are
logically prior to it. There exists the world of Ideas or Forms where the unchanging
models of things in the world are patterned after and of which they are mere
shadows or reflections. Forms are more real than the objects of the spatio-temporal
world. The search for knowledge is the search for the real, and the knowledge
gained thereby is absolute, universal, and objective.

Morality is not the product of public opinion, nor is right simply a question of might.
Just as the proper function of a hammer is discovered not by opinion but by analyzing

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 the nature and capacities of a hammer, so also the proper behavior for man is not
prescribed by opinion but is rather required by the very character of the parts of the
soul. Although men try to evade the clear limits and measures that the parts of the soul
must obey, they cannot avoid the consequences of their acts. Everyone wants to achieve
well-being and happiness and whenever a person chooses a mode of behavior, he
always assumes that his act will bring such well-being. But well-being in human nature
is the product of inner harmony, of balance, of a proper order between the parts of the
soul.

1. ORIGIN OF THE SOUL – Plato's account of man's moral condition begins with a
conception of the soul as existing first of all independently of the body. In this state, the
soul enjoyed a basic harmony between its rational and irrational parts, a harmony
wherein reason controlled the spirit and appetites through its knowledge of the truth.
But the irrational part of the soul has the possibility of imperfection and it expresses
this possibility by being attracted through its appetites to the lower regions, dragging
with it the spirit and reason. Upon entering the body, the original harmony of the parts
of the soul is further disrupted, former knowledge is forgotten, and the inertia of the
body obstructs the recovery of this knowledge.

The cause of evil is discovered in the very nature of the soul and in the relation of the
soul to the body. Before it enters the body, the soul had a prior existence. The soul has
two main parts: the rational and the irrational. The irrational part in turn is made up of
two sections, the spirit and appetites. Each of the two original parts has a different
origin. The rational part of the soul is created by the Demiurge out of the same species
as the World Soul, whereas the irrational part is created by the celestial gods, who also
form the body. Even before the soul enters the body, therefore, the soul is composed of
two different kinds of ingredients. In its prior existence, the rational part had a clear
vision of the forms, of truth, though at the same time, the spirit and appetites, already,
by their very natures, have a tendency to descend.

The soul has the inherent possibility of disorder, so that when in fact disorder does
occur in the soul, the cause of evil is to be located within the soul itself, being the
product of ignorance and forgetfulness of the vision of reality. Upon its entrance into
the body, moreover, the difficulties of the soul are greatly increased. For the body
stimulated the irrational part of the soul to overcome the rulership of reason. This
entrance into the body is then a further cause of disorder or the breakdown of the
harmony between the various parts of the soul.

When the soul leaves the realm of the forms and enters the body, it moves from the
realm of the One to the realm of the many. Now the soul is adrift in the bewildering sea
of multiplicity of things and subject to all sorts of errors because of the deceptive nature
of these things. In addition, the body stimulates such activities in the irrational part of
the soul as the indiscriminate search for pleasure, exaggerating such appetites as
hunger, thirst, and the desire to create offspring, which in turn can become lust. In the
body the soul experiences sensation, desire, pleasure, and pain as well as fear and
anger. There is love, too, for a wide range of objects varying from the simplest morsel

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 that can satisfy some taste to a love of truth or beauty that is pure and eternal. In this
way then the body disturbs the soul to stimuli that deflect the reason from true
knowledge and prevent the reason from recalling the truth it once knew.

2. NATURE OF THE SOUL –Plato described the soul as having three parts: reason, spirit,
and appetite. He derived this tripartite conception of the soul from the common
experience of internal confusion and conflict that all men share. When he analysed the
nature of this conflict, he discovered that there are three different kinds of activity
going on in a person.

ACTIVITY POWER

Awareness of a goal or a value Reason

Drive toward action Spirit

Desire for things of the body Appetites

The soul is the principle of life and movement. The body by itself is inanimate, and,
therefore, when it acts or moves, it must be moved by the principle of life, the soul. That
the soul has three parts follows from the fact that man’s internal conflict indicates
different springs of action at work. The reason could suggest a goal for behavior only to
be overcome by sensual appetite, and the power of the spirit could be pulled in either
direction by these sensual desires.

The condition of man may be likened to the charioteer driving two horses. One horse is
good, “needs no touch of the whip, but is guided by word and admonition only.” The
other is bad, “the mate of insolence and pride… hardly yielding to whip and spur.”
Though the charioteer has a clear vision of where to go and the good horse is on course,
the bad horse “plunges and runs away, giving all manner of trouble to his companion
and the charioteer…” [Phaedrus]

3. MEANING OF THE ANALOGY – The spectacle of horses, moving in opposite directions,

and the charioteer standing helpless, as his commands go unheeded, strikes the
imagination with particular force because it exhibits so clearly the breakdown of order.
The charioteer, by being what he is, namely, the one who holds the reins, has the duty,
the right, the function to guide and control the horses.

In the same way, the rational part of the soul has the right to rule the spirited and
appetitive parts. To be sure, the charioteer cannot get anywhere without the two
horses, and for this reason these three are linked together and must work together to
achieve their goals. The rational part of the soul has the same sort of relation to its other
parts, for the powers of the appetite and the spirit are indispensable to life itself.
Reason works with and upon spirit and appetite, and these two also move and affect the
reason. But the relation of reason to spirit and appetites is determined by what reason

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 is: namely, a goal-seeking and measuring faculty.

Of course, the passions also engage in goal-seeking, for they constantly seek the goal of
please. Pleasure is a legitimate goal of life, but the appetites, being simply drives toward
the things that give pleasure, are incapable of distinguishing between objects that
provide higher or longer-lasting pleasure and those that only appear to provide these
pleasures.

“Each of the three elements of the soul (psyche) is involved in moral behaviour, and
each, when it carries out its proper function, is characterized by an appropriate virtue:
Governing the soul by reason constitutes wisdom; rational regulation of desire
constitutes temperance; the support of reason by the spirit constitutes courage; the
harmony of the three faculties constitutes justice, which is the overarching virtue.”
[Knowledge and Virtue, 14]

The peculiar function of the rational part of the soul is to seek the true goal of human
life, and it does this by evaluating the things according to their true nature. Although the
appetites might lead us into a world of fantasy and deceive us into believing that certain
kinds of pleasures will bring us happiness, it is the unique role of reason to penetrate
the world of fantasy, to discover the true world and thereby direct the passions to
objects of love that are capable of producing true pleasure and true happiness.

Unhappiness and the general disorder of the human soul are the result of man’s
confusing appearance with reality. This confusion occurs chiefly when the appetites
override reason. Plato opposed the doctrine of hedonism – the theory that pleasure is
good – because it seemed to him to imply a relativistic view according to which a
person should approve of any activity that gives him or her pleasure. [Knowledge and
Virtue, 7] There is a hierarchy of value or good in the world of matter. The desires of the
flesh are the lowest. The pleasure they give is fleeting. The temptation of pleasure
deadens the control of the mind. It makes the soul forget. Principles are trashed. All
caution is thrown to the wind.

Just as there can be order between the charioteer and the horses only if the charioteer
us in control, so also with the human soul – it can achieve order and peace only if the
rational part is in control of the spirit and appetite.

4. MORAL EVIL –Evil or vice is caused by ignorance, by false knowledge, which occurs
when the passions influence the reason to think what appears to bring happiness will
do so, although it reality it cannot. When the appetites thus overcome the reason, the
unity of the soul is adversely affected. While there is still a unity, this new unity of the
soul is inverted, since now the reason is subordinated to the appetites and has thereby
lost its rightful place.

5. THE RECOVERY OF LOST HARMONY – Morality consists in the recovery of man's lost
inner harmony. It means reversing the process by which the reason has been overcome
by the appetites and the stimuli of the body. The reason must regain its control over the

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 irrational part of the soul.

Only knowledge can produce virtue because it is ignorance or false knowledge that has
produced evil. Men always think that whatever they do will in some way give them
pleasure and happiness. No one, says Plato, ever knowingly chooses an act that will be
harmful to himself. He may do wrong acts, such as murder or lying, and even admit the
wrongness of these and other acts, but he always assumes that he will somehow benefit
from them. This is false knowledge, a kind of ignorance, which men must overcome in
order to be moral.

Indeed, only knowledge can lead to virtue, when people are ignorant, their personalities
are disorganized, for the unruly desires and passions then control them. By contrast,
when people truly know what is good, that is, when they know what promotes harmony,
they will do what is good. Hence, it is the virtuous person, that is, the rational individual,
who is truly happy. Plato stands as a distinguished advocate of the well-rounded life,
guided by reason.

6. To say, then, that knowledge is virtue means that false knowledge must be replaced
with an accurate appraisal of things or acts and their values.

Before one can go from false to true knowledge, he must somehow become aware that
he is in a state of ignorance. As Socrates said, “the recognition of ignorance is the
beginning of knowledge.” It is as if one must be awakened from a sleep of ignorance. A
person can be awakened either by something that is happening within himself or by
something external to him or by someone else. Similarly, with regard to knowledge and
particularly moral knowledge, man's awakening works in these two ways. Assuming, as
Plato does, that knowledge is lodged deeply in the mind's memory, this will from time
to time come to the surface of consciousness. What the soul once knew is raised to
present awareness by the process of recollection.

Recollection begins first of all when the mind experiences difficulties with the seeming
contradictions of sense experience. As one tries to make sense out of the multiplicity of
things he begins to go beyond the things themselves to ideas, and this action of the
mind is set in motion by one’s experience of a problem that needs to be solved. Besides
this internal source of awakening, there is Plato's notion of the external agent.

In his allegory of the cave, Plato depicted how men moved from darkness to light, from
ignorance to knowledge. But in this allegory he portrays the mood of self-satisfaction
among the prisoners – they do not know that they are prisoners and they are chained
by false knowledge and dwell in the darkness of ignorance. Their awakening must come
through some external agent. As Plato says, “their release from the chains and the
healing of their unwisdom, is brought about by their being forced suddenly to stand up,
turn and walk with eyes lifted to the light,” that is, someone must break off the
prisoner’s chains and turn him around. Then, having been forcibly released, he can be
led step by step out of the cave.

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 Socrates, with the power of his irony and the persistence of his dialectic method, was
one of history’s most effective awakeners of men from their sleep of ignorance.

7. Virtue means knowledge, a true knowledge of the true consequences of all acts. But to
say that knowledge is virtue does not mean that virtue is merely the knowledge of a list
of truths. Virtue for Plato has the broader meaning of the fulfilment of a unique
function.

Plato viewed the good life as the life of inner harmony, of well-being, of happiness. For him
goodness and virtue were intimately connected with the mode of behavior that produced
well-being and harmony so that harmony could be achieved only if the parts of the soul
were doing what the nature of each required that it do. Each part of the soul has a special
function and a thing’s function is the work that it alone can do, or can do better than
anything else.

Virtue is not a matter of custom or opinion but is rather grounded in the very nature of
the soul. It is the very nature of reason to know and to direct the spirit and appetites.
Reason has a function, and reason is good only when it is acting as reason should.
Clearly, one's reason is not fulfilling its function if it is pushed around by passion. At the
same time, the spirit has a function, and so do the appetites, and the good life is
achieved only when every part is fulfilling its function.

8. Plato frequently compared the good life to the efficient functioning of things. A knife is
good, he said, when it cuts efficiently, that is, when it fulfils its function. We say of a
physician that he is a good physician when he fulfils the function of doctoring. Living,
said Plato, is likewise an art, and the soul's unique function is the art of living.
Comparing the art of music with the art of living, Plato saw a close parallel, for in both
cases the art consists of recognizing and obeying the requirements of limit and
measure.

When a musician tunes his instrument, he knows that each string should be tightened
just so much, no more and no less, for each string has its specific pitch. The musician's
art consists, therefore, in acknowledging the limit beyond which a string should not be
tightened and, in playing the instrument, observing the measure between intervals.

Similarly, the art of living requires knowledge of limits and of measure. The soul has
various functions, but these functions must operate within the limits set by knowledge
or intelligence. Because the soul has various parts, each part will have a special
function, and since virtue is the fulfilment of function, there will be as many virtues as
there are functions. Corresponding to the three parts of the soul are three virtues,
which are achieved when those parts are respectively fulfilling their functions.

When the appetites are kept within limits and in their measure, avoiding excesses that
they do not usurp the position of the other parts of the soul, this moderation in
pleasures and desires leads to the virtue of temperance.

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 When the energy of will, which issues from the spirited part of the soul, is kept within
limits avoiding rash or headlong action and becoming instead a trustworthy power in
aggressive and defensive behavior, the virtue of courage is achieved.

“He is deemed courageous whose spirit retains in pleasure and in pain the commands of
reason about what he ought or ought not to fear.... And him we call wise who has in him
that little part which rules, and which proclaims these commands; that part too being
supposed to have a knowledge of what is for the interest of each of these parts and of
the whole.” [Knowledge and Virtue, 14]

When reason remains undisturbed by the onrush of appetites and continues to see the
true ideals in spite of the constant changes experienced in daily life it achieves the
virtue of wisdom.

Between these three virtues there are interconnections, for temperance is the rational
control of the appetites, and courage is the rational ordering of the spirit.

REASON SPIRIT APPETITE

awareness of a goal or drive towards action desire for things of the
value body

when undisturbed by the when kept within limits when kept within limits and
onrush of appetites and sees avoiding rash action and in their measure, avoiding
the true ideals in spite of the becoming instead a excesses that they do not
constant changes trustworthy power in usurp the position of the
experienced in daily life aggressive and defensive other parts of the soul
behavior
  
WISDOM COURAGE TEMPERANCE

Virtue is attained only when each part of the soul is fulfilling its own function. The
appetites and the spirit must be subject to the sovereignty of the rational element,
which directs one's dynamic capacities and orders the desires and affections according
to intelligence.

9. When each of the parts of the soul fulfils its special function, a fourth virtue, justice, is
attained, for justice means giving to each its own due. Justice then is the general virtue,
which reflects a person's attainment of well-being and inner harmony, which, in turn, is
achieved only when every part of the soul is fulfilling its proper functions.

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 Appetites-Temperance Spirit-Courage Reason – Wisdom
  
JUSTICE

“Among all the virtues that a person may have, justice is the most important, especially
because it brings about happiness in the just person, who is far happier than an unjust
one. Justice in anything is a special sort of balance, order, or harmony among its
components. In an individual person this harmony is established and governed by
reason, and in a political community it is maintained by the wise philosopher-rulers….
In a just individual soul or personality, harmony obtains among the person’s desires for
various different things and among the satisfactions that result from fulfilling those
desires. Plato divides these desires into three groups: the desire of reason for
knowledge and orderliness, the desire of spirit for self-defense, and the bodily
appetites.” [Knowledge and Virtue, 8]

10. The importance of the virtue of justice is a bone of contention between the Sophists and
Socrates. The former maintain that the weak value justice only because it restrains the
strong. Most people would take advantage of their neighbors if they were certain that
they would not be apprehended and punished, for they are interested only in their own
welfare, injustice is more profitable, provided that it is possible to escape detection.
This propensity to injustice is illustrated in the story of the Ring of Gyges.

THE RING OF GYGES – “… That those who practice justice do so involuntarily and
because they have not the power to be unjust will best appear if we imagine something
of this kind: having given both the just and the unjust power to do what they will, let us
watch and see where desires will lead them, then we shall discover in the act the just
and unjust man to be proceeding along the same road, following their interest, which all
natures deem to be their good, and are only diverted into the path of justice by the force
of law…. Gyges was a shepherd in the service of the king of Lydia; there was a great
storm, and an earthquake made an opening in the earth at the place where he was
feeding his flock. Amazed at the sight, he descended into the opening where, among
other marvels, he beheld a hollow brazen horse and looking in saw a dead body of
stature, as appeared to him, more than human, and having nothing on but a gold ring;
this he took from the finger of the dead and reascended. Now the shepherds meet
together, according to custom, that they might send their monthly report about the
flocks to their king; into their assembly he came having the ring on his finger, and as he
was sitting among them he chanced to turn the collet of the ring inside his hand, when
instantly he became invisible to the rest of the company and they began to speak of him
as if he were no longer present. He was astonished at this, and again touching the ring
he turned the collet outwards and reappeared; he made several trials of the ring, and
always with the same result – when he turned the collet inwards he became invisible,
when outward he reappeared. Whereupon he contrived to be chosen one of the
messengers who were sent to the court; where as soon as he arrived he seduced the

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 queen, and with her help conspired against the king and slew him and took the
kingdom.” [Knowledge and Virtue, 9-10]

The story is supposed to show that if there were two such magic rings and the just put
on one of them and the unjust the other, both will behave in the same unjust way. “No
man can be imagined to be of such an iron nature that he would stand fast in justice. No
man would keep his hands off what was not his own when he could safely take what he
liked out of the market, or go into houses and lie with any one at his pleasure, or kill or
release from prison whom he would, and in all respects be like a god among men. Then
the actions of the just would be as the actions of the unjust; they would both come at
last to the same point, and this we may truly affirm to be a great proof that a man is just,
not willingly or because he thinks that justice is any good to him individually, but of
necessity, for wherever anyone thinks that he can safely be unjust, there he is unjust.
[Knowledge and Virtue, 10]

The reason why people would prefer to be unjust if given the chance is because it is
more advantageous. This is the view advanced by Trasymachus, one of the interlocutors
of Socrates. The former argued that injustice is rewarding particularly on a large scale.
Happiness comes from injustice, and not from justice.

11. Plato clarifies that true justice pertains more to the true self “being concerned not with
the outward man, but with the inward... for the just man does not permit the several
elements within him to interfere with one another, or any of them to do the work of
others – he sets in order his own inner life, and is his own master and his own law, and
at peace with himself; and when he has bound together the three principles with him,
which may be compared to the higher, lower, and middle notes of the scale, and the
intermediate intervals – when he has bound all these together, and is no longer many,
but has become one entirely temperate and perfectly adjusted nature, then he proceeds
to act, if he has to act, whether in a matter of property, or in the treatment of the body,
or in some affair of politics or private business; always thinking and calling that which
preserves and cooperates with their harmonious condition, just and good action, and
the knowledge which presides over it, wisdom and that which at any time impairs this
condition, he will call unjust actions, and the opinion which presides it ignorance.
[Knowledge and Virtue, 15]

Justice in the end is far nobler than injustice for it serves the of man. The end of
man is attained when his higher powers are perfected. The things of the world are mere
shadows and therefore deceptive. There are many things that appear good or beautiful
in the world at first glance but upon closer inspection prove to be otherwise.

12. “What will he profit, if his injustice be undetected and unpunished? He who is
undetected only gets worse, whereas he who is detected and punished has the brutal
part of his nature silenced and humanized; the gentler element in him is liberated, and
his whole soul is perfected and ennobled by the acquirement of justice and temperance
and wisdom, more than the body ever is by receiving gifts of beauty, strength, and
health, in proportion as the soul is more honourable than the body.... To this nobler

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 purpose the man of understanding will devote the energies of his life, and in the first
place, he will honor studies which impress these qualities on his soul, and will disregard
others... In the next place, he will regulate his bodily habit and training, and so far will
he be from yielding to brutal and irrational pleasures... as to preserve the harmony of
the soul...” [Knowledge and Virtue, 20-21]

13. “Being moral matters so much more than other things that it is better to be wronged
than to do wrong; the wrongdoer is harming himself more than his victim….Socrates
rejects a chance to save himself from death on the grounds that this would be doing
wrong, and that no outcome makes wrongdoing worthwhile. ‘If it becomes clear that
such conduct is unjust, I cannot help thinking that the question whether we are sure to
die, or to suffer any other ill-effect for that matter, if we stand our ground…ought not to
weigh with us at all in comparison with the risk of acting unjustly.’

What matters is morality, regardless of consequences. No gains or losses of

conventional goods can make any impact on the issue of whether a course of action is
morally right or wrong, and nothing other than this is relevant to the question of how
one should act….Virtue is not merely one good among others, but a good which makes
an unconditional demand like that of the orders which a soldier must obey.” [Julia Annas,
“Transforming Your Life: Virtue and Happiness,” 34-35.]

“Virtue has a transformative power: it transforms your view of happiness by

transforming your values and priorities, so that you can see that the values and
priorities of the unreflective are wrong, and correspondingly so is their view of
happiness….It is not living that matters, but living well, where this means: living
virtuously; doing wrong is worse than suffering wrong because it harms you more, loss
of conventional goods being as nothing compared with the loss of virtue; virtue is
sufficient for the happy life. [Julia Annas, “Transforming Your Life: Virtue and Happiness,” 49-50.]

14. “Our final end, according to Plato, is to become like God….This idea is scattered through
very diverse dialogues and does not correspond with a single phase of any familiar
developmental story….The philosopher is completely unworldly…it is ‘only his body
which lives and sleeps in the city’ while his mind takes off and wings its way through
the universe.” [Julia Annas, “Becoming Like God: Ethics, Human Nature, and the Divine,” in Platonic
Ethics, Old and New, 53-54.]

Socrates say that in human life good and evil will always be mixed up, and it is useless
thinking that evil will ever be eliminated. God, on the other hand, is never evil, but
always just virtuous. ‘That is why a man should make all haste to escape from the earth
to heaven; and escape means becoming as like God as possible; and a man becomes like
God when he becomes just and pure, with understanding.’ [Theaetetus 176A8, trans. M.F.
Burnyear (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1990)]

“In The Laws it is said that our final end is ‘following God’—the phrase is regarded as a
Pythagorean formulation, though the ancient Platonists seem to regard it as essentially
a variant on ‘becoming like God.’ The complete passage in The Laws begins with the

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resounding statement that God is the beginning, middle, and end of all things.
Happiness comes to the person who follows God and justice in a ‘lowly and ordered
way.’ God loves what is like himself, and since he is measured and moderate, he loves
people who are temperate and just.

In the Timaeus is found the idea that human nature is such that we can either encourage
and identify with our mortal aspect or try to share in immortality to the extent that
humans can. This is identified with happiness, and with the final end in life, here said to
be put before us by the gods. What Plato has in mind to explicate this is clearer from the
preceding passage; the soul is tripartite, and the two lower parts of it are essentially
connected with the body and thus are affected by what affects it. But the highest part,
reasoning, can control the other two, and the best state of the person is where
reasoning does this, and also is itself the best state.

What Plato calls our mortal aspect just is our life when engaged in thinking about the
everyday business of living. There is another kind of thinking, however, which we
engage in when thinking about abstract matters which are independent of our own
particular point of view….The underlying idea is that we can recognize in ourselves a
rational and a non-rational aspect, and that we can recognize the rational aspect to be
more truly ourselves; we can identify with it rather than with the non-rational aspect,
and can recognize that this is appropriate for the kind of being that we are….[T]his
identification with the reason in us can be seen, in an intuitive way, as productive of
virtue, and it can also be seen as becoming like God in that reason is seen as divine.

At the end of the Alcibiades, in a passage which, perhaps surprisingly, does not turn up
in ancient discussions of this topic, we find that knowing yourself properly means not
knowing your body but your soul, and especially the part of the soul in which its virtue,
wisdom, resides. This part of the soul, which thinks and achieves knowledge, is its most
divine part, and like God; so someone who takes care to look at this part will know God,
and also know himself….Knowing yourself is, properly speaking, knowing your mind.
But your mind is the most divine part of you, and the part which is like God, so knowing
yourself is, properly, knowing God. [Julia Annas, “Becoming Like God: Ethics, Human Nature, and
the Divine,” 56-58.]

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