TRANSCENDENT: The Church Should Never be Democratic

The Platonic Ideal

Plato and his teacher Socrates believed that civic structures are primarily about Justice; the most just system will be the most ideal. In The Republic, Plato sets out to answer the question 'what is justice?' and give reasons 'why we should be just'. Does justice mean living up to your legal obligations and being honest? Clearly not; Socrates defeats this formulation by the example of returning a weapon to a madman. You owe the madman his weapon and yet this would be an unjust act, since it would jeopardize the lives of others. So it cannot be the case that justice is nothing more than honoring legal obligations and being honest. He then considers if justice means that you owe friends help, and you owe enemies harm? By extension this really implies rendering to each what is due and appropriate. But bear in mind that we are not always friends with the most virtuous individuals, nor are our enemies always the scum of society. Besides, Socrates points out that there is some incoherence in the idea of harming people through justice, raising the question whether the sole reason for being just was the consideration of reward and punishment.

Maybe Justice is nothing more than the advantage of the stronger; in the case of democracy the 'stronger' being the majority and in totalitarianism the stronger being the unilateralism of the state. And that really is the bone I pick with democracy; that the law and virtue of the majority becomes absolute. According to Plato, and also according to me, this is a delegitimization of justice, not its definition; then for some people, like the minority in a democracy, the weak and the stupid, it does not pay to be just.

Just behavior works to the advantage of other people, those that flout the law and not to the person who behaves justly. This concept makes justice an unnatural restraint on our natural desire to have more; it's a state of oppression through conventions set in place by the 'stronger' against the governed. Justice becomes a convention imposed on us, and it does not benefit us to adhere to it. This would actually promote injustice as a virtue.

Understanding justice primarily requires that we look at it as a virtue of the individual soul; a health of the soul making it intrinsic because health is a naturally desirable state; and second, and this is where civic structures come in, this would then lead us to look at justice as the adherence to certain rules which enable a group to act in common and exist in harmony with the ultimate goal of attaining the health of the individual soul.

Plato classifies all human desires into three categories; those desired only for their consequences (necessary evils) like the desire for physical training, those desired only for their own sake, such as joy; and, the highest class, those desired both for their own sake and for what we get from them, such as knowledge, sight, and health. Most people class justice among the necessary evils, their argument being that we allow ourselves to suffer in order to avoid the greater evil that would befall us if we did away with it. For instance, we agree to be punished if we steal, only because we have also considered the flip side; we fear we are likely to suffer greatly if things are stolen from us. Note that this reasoning first makes us aware that humans have a natural inclination to steal; therefore this kind of justice stems from human weakness and vulnerability. Since we can all suffer from each other's injustices, we make a social contract agreeing to be just to one another. This would therefore make Justice not something practiced for its own sake but something one engages in out of fear and weakness.

To illustrate The Republic invokes the legend of the ring of Gyges:

imagine that a just man is given a ring which makes him invisible. Once in possession of this ring, the man can act unjustly with no fear of reprisal. Would not even the most just man behave unjustly if he had this ring? He would indulge all of his materialistic, power-hungry, and erotically lustful urges. This tale seems to prove that people are only just because they are afraid of punishment for injustice. No one is just because justice is desirable in itself.

This is a pretty accurate definition of Justice, wouldn't you agree? This kind of justice, governed by the fear of repercussions for injustices, sure does seem like a practical way to instill law and order. Many civic structures have been formulated on these precepts and have worked. Totalitarianism and other tyrannical structures have had their fair share of supporters and successes. But liberation patriarchs and the fathers of democracy and other forms of governments, including Plato's own 'The Just city and the Philosopher King' believe in a different definition of justice. Plato must discredit the perception of a 'necessary evil' definition of Justice and prove that justice is not only desirable, but that it belongs to the highest class of desirable things: those desired both for their own sake and their consequences.

In The Republic, Plato reverses the order of acquisition of virtues from being intrinsic in the individual then extrapolated to society to emanating from society and learned by the individual; He reasons that since a city (society) is bigger than a man, it is easier to first look for justice at the political level and later inquire as to whether there is any analogous virtue to be found in the individual. Plato suggests that justice springs first from the society and is then educated to the individual. To explain how society educates the soul Plato compares the soul to the body; it can have both a healthy and unhealthy state. As with the body, this state is determined by what the soul consumes and by what it does. Education determines what images and ideas the soul consumes and what activities the soul can and cannot engage in. Since the soul is always consuming, the stimuli available in the city must be rigidly controlled. Plato compares souls to sheep constantly grazing.

If you place sheep in a field of poisoned grass, and they consume this grass little by little, they will eventually sicken and die. Similarly, if you surround a soul with unwholesome influences, then gradually the soul will take these in and sicken. For this reason, Plato does not limit himself in dictating the specific coursework that should be given, but also dictates what will be allowed into the cultural life of the city as a whole.

To see Plato's definition of justice let's look closely at the structure of 'The Just City';

The 'Just City' is built on Socrates foundational principle of human society: the principle of specialization. The principle of specialization states that each person must perform the role for which he is naturally best suited and that he must not meddle in any other business. The carpenter must only build things, the farmer must only farm. Behind this principle is the notion that human beings have natural inclinations that should be fulfilled; this city is built on the premise of the pursuit of one's true calling, which in a different essay (Omens)

I have described as God's infusion into the soul to guide it to its true reason for existence on earth. Specialization demands not only the division of labor, but the most appropriate of such division. Only in this way, Socrates is convinced, can everything be done at the highest level possible.

Having isolated the foundational principle of the city, Socrates is ready to begin building it. The first roles to fill are those that will provide for the necessities of life, such as food, clothing, health, and shelter. The just city is populated by craftsmen, farmers, and doctors who each do their own job and refrain from engaging in any other role. They are all members of what Socrates deems the "producing class," because their role is to produce objects for use. Socrates calls this city the "healthy city" because it is governed only by necessary desires. In the healthy city, there are only producers, and these producers only produce what is absolutely necessary for life. The city is devoid of unnecessary desires like yearning for rich food, luxurious surroundings, and art.

The next stage is to transform this city into the luxurious city, or the "city with a fever." Once luxuries are in demand, positions like merchant, actor, poet, tutor, and beautician are created. All of this wealth will necessarily lead to wars, and so a class of warriors is needed to keep the peace within the city and to protect it from outside forces. The producers cannot act as our warriors because that would violate our principle of specialization.

The book goes into very lengthy detail talking about the nature and education of these warriors, whom he calls "guardians." It is crucial that guardians develop the right balance between gentleness and toughness. They must not be thugs, nor can they be wimpy and ineffective. Members of this class must be carefully selected—people with the correct nature or innate psychology. In particular, guardians should be spirited, or honor-loving, philosophical, or knowledge-loving, and physically strong and fast. Nature is not sufficient to produce guardians. Nature must be protected and augmented with education. The education of guardians will involve physical training for the body, and music and poetry for the soul. Education of guardians is the most important aspect of the city. It is the process of purification through which the unhealthy, luxurious city can be purged and purified. Because the education of the guardians is so important, Socrates walks us through it in painstaking detail. Present day guardians would be all civil servants; judiciary staff, Law enforcement, the military and all bureaucrats.

Socrates then introduces the third and final class of the just society, 'Rulers'. The group which until now has been called guardians is split. The best from this group will be chosen out as rulers. The rest will be termed "auxiliaries," because their role is to aid rulers by carrying out and enforcing their decisions. To ensure the right selection of rulers, all the young guardians in training are closely observed. They are made to go through various tests which are intended to determine which of them remain steadfast in their loyalty to the city. They are exposed to various fears and pleasures meant to tempt or frighten them out of their convictions. Those who do best in these tests will proceed on to higher forms of education that will prepare them to rule.

Socrates declares the just city complete. Since Socrates initial intention was to create it in order to define the virtue referred to as justice, then all we need to do is look into our city and identify the city's virtues. Four virtues emerge: wisdom, courage, moderation, and justice. Wisdom lies with the guardians because of their knowledge of how the city should be run. If the guardians were not ruling, if it were a democracy, say, their virtue would not translate into the virtue of the city. But since they are in charge, their wisdom becomes the city's virtue. Courage lies with the auxiliaries. It is only their courage that counts as a virtue of the city because they are the ones who must fight for the city. A courageous farmer, or even ruler, would do the city no good. Moderation and justice, in contrast to wisdom and courage, are spread out over the whole city. Moderation is identified with the agreement over who should rule the city, and justice, finally, is its complement—the principle of specialization.

Socrates thus provides a definition of justice as the law that all do the job to which they are best suited. The just society consists in the right and fixed relationships between these three classes. Each of these groups must do the appropriate job, and only that job, and each must be in the right position of power and influence in relation to the other. This definition is linked by imperative to honoring of legal obligations and also to helping one's friends and harming one's enemies. They all imply rendering what is due, or giving to each what is appropriate. However, Socrates' justice is structural; it's a political arrangement in which each person plays the appropriate role. What is due to each person is rendered all at once. Each is assigned the role in society that best suits their nature and that best serves society as a whole. The previous definitions on the other hand were thinking about justice as a set of actions, rather than as a structure to society, a phenomenon that spreads out over a city as a whole.

Now that Socrates has identified societal justice, he turns to look for individual justice. He sets out to show that the three classes of society have analogs in the soul of every individual; a tripartite soul for a tripartite city. In other words, the soul, like the city, is a tripartite entity. The just individual can be defined in analogy with the just society; the three parts of his soul are fixed in the requisite relationships of power and influence. Justice in the individual, as in the city, involves the correct power relationship among parts, with each part occupying its appropriate role. In the individual, the "parts" are not classes of society; instead, they are aspects of the soul—or sources of desire. He catalogues the various human desires; a rational part of the soul that lusts after truth, a spirited part of the soul that lusts after honor, and an appetitive part of the soul that lusts after everything else, including food, drink, sex, and especially money. The appetite, or money-loving part, is the aspect of the soul most prominent among the producing class; the spirit or honor-loving part is most prominent among the auxiliaries; and reason, or the knowledge-loving part, is dominant in the guardians.

Just relations between the three parts of the soul mirror just relations among the classes of society. In a just person the rational part of the soul rules the other parts, with the spirited part acting as helper to keep the appetitive in line. Compare this to the city where the truth-loving guardians rule, with the honor-loving auxiliaries acting as their helpers to keep the money-loving producers in line. What it means for one part of the soul to "rule" the others is for the entire soul to pursue the desires of that part. In a soul ruled by spirit, for instance, the entire soul aims at achieving honor. In a soul ruled by appetite, the entire soul aims at fulfilling these appetites, whether these be for food, drink, sex, fine material goods, or hordes of wealth. In a just soul, the soul is geared entirely toward fulfilling whatever knowledge-loving desires reason produces.

Socrates has now completely fulfilled his first goal: he has identified justice on both the political and individual levels. But this justice deviates from our intuitive notions of what this virtue is. We tend to think of justice as a set of actions, yet Socrates claims that justice is really a result of the structure of the soul. but Socrates quickly points out that since our just person is ruled by a love of truth, he will not be in the grips of lust, greed, or desire for honor, he will never steal, betray friends or his city, commit adultery, disrespect his parents, violate an oath or agreement, neglect the gods, or commit any other acts commonly considered unjust. His strong love of truth weakens urges that might lead to vice.

This kind of justice amounts to the health of the soul: a just soul is a soul with its parts arranged appropriately, and is thus a healthy soul. We are now in a position to say that it pays to be just. After all, we already admitted that health is something desirable in itself, so if justice is the health of the soul then it too should be desirable.

This isn't a democracy, it is a considerably rigid caste system. Most first-time readers of The Republic are shocked by how authoritarian Plato's ideal city is. The good of the state overrides all other considerations and it may seem like personal freedom is not valued. Even the importance of truth is downplayed when compared to the good of the state as is evidenced by Plato's various proposed widespread deception and propaganda like in the 'Myth of the metals'. Social classes are rigid, and people are sorted into these classes with no thought to their preferences. Of course, Plato would object to this latter claim by saying that each person will find their class most pleasing to them since it is best suited to their nature. Nonetheless, they are given no input when the state determines what life they will lead. A citizen's fate—producer, warrior, or ruler—is decided at an early age, and no provisions are made for individuals to shift classes as they mature.

But rather than draw back from this authoritarian utopia in horror, I implore you to suspend judgement for the time being. As we read through I hope that we shall begin to ask ourselves why we value personal freedom so highly and what we might be sacrificing by placing such a high priority on freedom.