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.
