Plato’s theory of Justice
Justice has been one of the important issues in the history of philosophy. To both Plato and
Aristotle, justice meant goodness as well as willingness to obey laws. To Plato, “justice was
one of the highest of virtues.”
Plato (428/27-348/47 BC), was a Greek philosopher, is one of the most creative influential
thinkers in political philosophy. Plato of Athens born of a noble family, and was a pupil of
Socrates. The chief source of inspiration for Plato was Socrates. One of the most important
questions of Socrates was about the nature of justice. After Socrates, Plato, regarded justice
as the true principle of social life. And he has named his most important work, ‘Republic’, as
a discussion on justice.
Plato gives a prominent place to the idea of justice. ‘Justice’ according to Plato was doing
one’s job for which one was naturally fitted without interfering with other people.
In his contemporary world Plato saw cities so divided that their citizens stood against one
another. Thinking mainly of the Athenian democracy in which he lived and at the hands of
which Socrates had been killed, he found the contemporary politics of his day dominated by
two things: One was the ignorance and the other was a political selfishness. Plato found in
justice the remedy for curing these evils.
According to Plato, justice is that in individual life, and in social life, means placing each
individual and each class is in its proper place. And each class according to prevalence of one
of this capacities, places in the social and moral hierarchy. Justice is a quality – an
indispensable quality of moral life. It is condition of the individual and of the state and the
ideal state is the visible embodiment of justice. The state is the reality of which justice is the
idea.
In the theory of justice Plato said that every individual was a functional unit, assigned a
particular task with clear-cut obligations and privileges, which one was expected to perform
diligently and meticulously.
Plato explained his arguments for differing individual capacities with the help of the theory of
three classes and three souls, an idea borrowed from Pythagoras. He pointed out that every
human soul had three qualities: rational, spirit and appetite, with justice as the fourth virtue,
