Just What Is Justice? – Polemarchus One

“So, Polemarchus said, am I then to be your hier in everything [including the argument]?

You certainly are, Cephalus said, laughing, and off he went to the sacrifice.”  [331d]

Tonight I am going to work on the Republic [331d-336b].

What is owed to you? What do you owe to another? Is justice simply the settling of our debts as atomistic individuals in an overall static state of affairs? Surely it would not be just to all to settle a debt that most likely will directly harm the greater good. Would it? There are ”fuzzy” (such a bad word to use) areas. Justice doesn’t operate in isolation. Like everything else, context matters. First, let us appeal to the wise elders to impart their wisdom on the matter. Simonides, a lyric and elegiac poet, has a reputation for being a wise elder. It seems that, since his thought has “stood the test of time,” he would be a good rock upon which to base our claims and further investigations into the matter of what justice is. But why appeal to figures with a reputation for authority in the first place? They aren’t around to speak anymore, but their opinions count. It’s just like Marxists quoting Karl Marx or other previous philosophers in an invented tradition that has led to present day Marxism. Imaginary dialogues happen all the time. Presently, this is a case in point. A thinker comes around with a novel idea or a new way of doing something and either true believers, imitators, or further innovators emerge. I suppose in Plato’s time there might have been “Simonidists” who practiced Simonidism, eh? There still are Platonists out there, y’know. Let’s defend the Simonidist position.

What did Simonides state about justice, and why might he be, at least in some sense, correct? Polemarchus: “He stated that it is just to give to each what is owed to him.” [331e] Ok. Why might this not be the case? More specifically, we should go beyond and break down the superficial formulation of the definition to get at what is really meant by the phrase in order for us to defend Simonides’ position. Didn’t Humpty Dumpty say something about being able to make words mean whatever he wanted them to mean? He might have made a good defense attorney. I forget. Oh well. At any rate, maybe the most we can arrive at is what Simonides didn’t mean when he said what he said.

To do good to someone (to make better) or to harm someone (to make wose). These actions constitute the dichotomy of the situation when it comes to defining justice as a virtue. Ultimately, justice is a form of giving each what is owed to him or her by doing good or by making people better, because what is owed to each is precisely that. Enemies are even meant to be made better through justice. That is not to say that we want to make the enemies better at being enemies (that would be to do harm to them). We want the enemies to change in quality by making them better. In Polemarchus’ and Socrates’ dialogue, we gain the knowledge that being just, like being a good doctor, farmer, shoemaker, etc is being good at doing something well. It is to possess virtue. To be just is to have that quality. I have said that justice is a form of something. But just what is that form besides the possession of virtue? What is virtue? At any rate, we saved Simonides from saying that it is just to give each to what it is owed to him by simply doing good to friends and bad to enemies. At least I think we did.

Now Thrasymachus has to get his two cents in…