Plato's Theory of Justice
...h the best natures and receive the best education” and he later continues, “the desires of the inferior many are controlled by the wisdom and desires of the superior few?” Socrates states that the desire of the inferior, which is a part of the virtue of moderation, is dependent on the “wisdom” of the rulers. Wisdom is the virtue that Plato assigns to the rulers. Plato makes the point that this virtue of moderation must be present throughout the state and that is his first step in showing that justice is in fact the harmony of all virtues throughout the state and soul. In saying that the state must have moderation, or self control, Plato also distinguishes that the wiser people must rule over the weaker people. Just as the better part of the character must have control over the weaker – the better part of the people must be in control of the state. The workers must allow themselves to be ruled by the wiser, or else there will be a never-ending battle between the ruler and ruled. The second class of the state is the soldiers, and the second class of the soul is the spirited. The virtue of the second class is courage. Plato sees courage as a kind of preservation. He believes that the key in making the soldiers so courageous lies in the issue of education in music and physical training. Socrates speaks of the soldiers, “That because they had the proper nature and upbringing, they would absorb the laws in the finest possible way, just like a dye, so that their belief about what they should fear and all the rest would become so fast that even such extremely effective detergents as pleasure, pain, fear, and desire wouldn’t wash it out” (4:430b) Plato is saying that if soldiers are brought up in such a way that they live by and truly believe in the law so much, that they will be willing to fight and endure the awful pains, and resist the pleasures – in order to serve the state in the most courageous way they possibly can. Soldiers that posses this kind of education will have the virtue of courage. I think that this relates a lot to the idea that people will be more courageous and more willing to fight for causes that they believe in. The present situation in the world is a good example. The day after the attack on the World Trade Center, thousands of men enlisted in the army. They did this because they believed in the cause they were fighting for, and their belief in that issue is what gave them courage, and took away their fear of war. The courage in each individual is achieved by the spirited part of his or her soul. Plato defines justice as the harmony between three virtues – this is the best possible state. In order to create this state Plato believes that philosophers must be turned in to rulers, and rulers in to philosophers. Philosophers, or rulers – the highest part of the state, are in search of wisdom. Wisdom is the virtue of rulers/philosophers and of the rational part of the soul. Wisdom is achieved through the theory of the forms. What makes philosophers capable of being leaders, according to Plato, is their knowledge of the form of justice. But before he tries to convince people what the form of justice actually is, he focuses on trying to convince people that these forms actually exist. In order to do this Plato uses the model of a cave – also known as the divided line. Plato believes that when each person is born, they begin their life in a cave – or at the bottom of the divided line. The cave contains four states of mind, two of which are visible, and two of which are invisible. At first these people have no idea of what they are actually seeing. They use their imagination to create the world around them. They see images, but not for what they actually are. As Plato describes it, they see shadows. For example, if one had no previous knowledge of what a tree looked like, but then they began to read about it, and hear about it, they would eventually form an imaginative vision of the tree. Plato believed that when people are still in the cave, that these imaginative visions are the only things they see throughout the world. He calls them shadows because, as he describes, beyond the cave in the distance there is a fire. The fire creates shadows of all things that pass by, and these a...