The City, Its Virtues, and Its parts

           In Book 4 of the republic be start we revisit the structure of the city to find a better understanding of the city and how justice relates to it. Originally when first exploring the true city we established that a city must be composed of at least 4 people and that each had their own job, each individual focusing solely on their own job, through witch they contributed to the entirety, and benefit, of the city.

From this groundwork we get new additions to this definition. Socrates says that the city is divided into three parts; the guardians, auxiliaries, and moneymakers. But henceforth also claims that the city maintains, necessarily, certain virtues. These are wisdom, courage, moderation, and justice. From here we need to understand how each of these virtues applies to the city.

When something applies to a city what does this entail? Since there are many parts of a city should they in turn apply only a needed to certain parts of the city whether it be the guardians or the auxiliaries? I hold against this idea. The city is a composition of people therefore any virtues that is held by the city should in turn apply to everyone who comprises the city.  First of all does this make sense and second of all does this affect an understanding of the goal of each part of the city?

To answer these questions we need to take a look at the goal of the virtues and see how they apply to the goal of the parts.

           

            To recap the virtues are Wisdom, Courage, Moderation, and Justice. Wisdom as we have commonly encountered is the use of knowledge. This could be in regards to what is better or what is beneficial but the general idea is that we need knowledge to sort out the good and to make good decisions towards a topic. Courage in this case was defined as “ the preserving of the opinion produced by law through education about what- and what sort of thing-is terrible” (The Republic of Plato 428c).  So courage is thus maintaining the view of what is good. Moderation is stifling individual desires to focus on the good of the city. And Justice is focusing on ones own art for the city, mind their own business as to not hinder the work towards art they or others are doing. Can these apply to all parts of the city or must we designate specific applicability?

            All virtues should apply to all parts of the city, primarily because none of these virtues are independent of each other. To have courage you need to have wisdom to understand what view to maintain. The maintained view is necessarily justice, for the maintained view cannot be an injustice. This means that wisdom is needed for both justice and courage, and in turn justice for courage.  Furthermore to remain just you need moderation to keep one from becoming unjust. And you need justice, courage and wisdom, in order to know how to moderate yourself.  And moderation applies to all other virtues because moderation is the application of these virtues to maintain the virtues.  This connection isn’t circular; it’s more like a net. These virtues are all individual stands that interconnect to support each other and work as a whole for the function of the city. This means that they apply to the parts of a city just like a net on an object. All the parts of the net work together to cover an object, just as all the virtues apply to all parts of the city.

            Does this make sense? In regards to the parts all virtues should apply uniformly. Each part has its goal. One Rules, another produces foods, another goods, some trade, there are many arts that are attended to in a city, and each has its place in the city. Now with the virtue of justice all parts will attend to each, their own, art and mind their business as to not lessen themselves or others in their arts. But at the same time to accomplish this they must use moderation in their desires in order to diminish their interference with the progression of art. But must also use in conjunction courage and wisdom to understand the limits of what is good in and for their art as well as what is bad.  Without all four virtues justice cannot be achieved.  In fact in order for the structure of part in a city to be successful the utilization of all four virtues must be necessary for any part of the city.

            In summary, though there are different parts of a city with different goals for maintaining the whole, the four virtues, which define a city, must be universally applied to all parts in order for the city to be just. This is because all four virtues are connected and support each other in such a way that they are reliant on each other. And in turn for the three part of the city to remain separate and focused on their goals successfully they need the use of all four virtues.