Review: The Republic Book 1: Socrates debates on Nature of Justice and ways to define it 1. Cephalus-- father or Polemarchus, righteous life because of wealth socrates says simply avoiding lies, following the law and returning what you owe isn't enough to make you just ex. you wouldn't give a weapon back to crazed man 2. Polemarchus-- defends it but clarifies it means doing good by friends and harming ones enemies, giving what is owed to them Socrates says: people aren't perfect and people make mistakes in choosing friends and enemies, people sometimes do good things to bad people and bad things to good people, this would lead to injustice 3. Thrasymachus-- justice is simply the advantage of the stronger Socrates says political leaders aren't perfect and might make laws that are unjust, justice is for the people rather than the rulers Thrasymachus is annoyed by this and says its unfair, he tries to argue that justice is illegitimate because it helps those who receive it rather than those who give it, its an artificial limitation on human desires, that injustice is better than justice, that injustice is good because its natural Socrates counters by saying that injustice is against wisdom which is good so injustice is ignorant, justice is a part of following rules that benefit a group rather than individuals with self interest and that those who are unjust won't be happy Book 2: Glaucon suggests that people are just out of self-interest out of fear of punishment He tells the story of the ring of Gyges which suggests that someone who could become invisible by putting on a magic ring would act in an in just matter because they d be able to avoid punishment for their actions In Book II, Glaucon tries to reinforce the challenge to justice that Socrates must meet in the remainder of the book. He argues that justice is the sort of good that is only desired for its consequences, not for its own sake. Justice, he claims, is a necessary evil that human beings endure out of fear and weakness. Because we can all suffer from one another s injustices, he explains, we agree, as a society, to behave justly and thus avoid greater harm. Given the chance to escape reprisals, though, any human being would choose to be unjust rather than just. In order to illustrate this point, Glaucon appeals to the Ring of Gyges. According to mythology, this ring has the special power to make its possessor invisible. Glaucon s intention in invoking this magical entity is to argue that even the most just man only behaves as he does because of fear of reprisal. If such a man were able to behave unjustly with impunity as he could if he were invisible then he would do so. Having a reputation for being just is more important than actually being just because seeming just will lead others to like you whereas as being just will lead others to dislike you
Adeimantus enters the conversation by saying that people celebrate the idea of justice because of all the good it brings not simply for the idea of justice itself, he repeats Glaucons request for Socrates to show that justice is good for his own sake Socrates starts by saying that there are two types of justice: 1) Political 2) Individual In Political, he starts with the formation of society because people cant survive alone. People should do the work that they re best suited to do so that we ll have people doing simple work like farming producing the bare minimum for society to function. He then adds in luxury to create a more advanced society. But, because people need to expand their city- state to get this luxury war will result. People will need to specialize in their work as society advances and the city-state will need massive soldiers called Guardians to defend it from invasion and war that will result from luxury. Socrates says the guardians should be philosophical. He says even from childhood, they shouldn t hear stories that inaccurately portray the gods because it will shape their character. He condemns many stories from Homer as misrepresenting the Gods character. He says there should be laws banding stories that portray the gods negatively. The three things that make up the founding of the city: First city, the city of sows : city geared towards the satisfaction of basic appetites; there is no scarcity and justice takes care of itself (558d-559c), the city is regarded as a city of artisans (each pursuing his or her trait) and what they re good at, we exchange our necessities with one another attaining what we need from others, we all have enough for ourselves where there aren t people having more than others, there s a perfect congruent between the needs of the individuals and the needs of the community, without thinking about anything but what s good for me; I m solving what s good for others, no sacrifices or compulsion is needed, laws are absent from the city, rulers are absent from the city and punishment as well, Socrates doesn t mention death even in regards to animals, this is Adeimantus city one role, one life ex. health, farming, craftsan Second city; luxurious city: Glaucon demands luxury, opulence, excess (373ab); leads to the necessity of a guardian class (373d-e; 414b), he wants to live and be healthy the way of pigs, we require more; unnecessary refinements and pleasures, a city in which everything goes, for Socrates desires are the expression for incompleteness and the desire for it, humanity requires a self overcoming, luxury creates scarcity, land must be taken from others, a new class emerges; a guardian class, one citizen one art, Socrates keep this principle and carries it over from the first city, the art of war is far more demanding in comparison to easier arts like shoe making, the art of war is only accessible to those with a natural aptitude for it, need a class for people who are up for fighting and going to war regarding the city as the most important thing, Socrates and Glaucon must know how to perceive this war like nature
Third city; the rule of the philosopher kings Book 3: Socrates continues with his description about the education of the Guardians talking about the types of stories about heroes they can and cannot be permitted to hear. They cannot be afraid to die because they need to be brave. He talks about a variety of stories he would band because they would harm the guardians ideals. He says they should only be allowed to listen to narrative poetry rather than poetry involving representation and he also discusses the type of medical care the guardians should receive. The best of the guardians will be the rulers and the others will be auxiliaries who will help the rulers functioning as enforcers and acting as warriors. Everyone else will be the laborer. In order for society to be peaceful so that there won t be conflict between the social classes, Socrates suggests that a myth be told to the people. A noble lie that people often refer to as the myth of the metals. It says that people in different social classes will have different metals either gold, silver or bronze inside them and the type of metal inside that person determines which class they should belong to. People will gold inside them are the rulers, silvers with auxiliaries and bronze the laborers. If people with silver and bronze inside them were to rule, the government would fail. People will typically have children with the same metal as themselves but occasionally a child will have a different metal than their parents. For this reason the rulers must evaluate every child to move the children into their correct social class. Socrates says that the Guardians should all live together communally and own no private possession. This is in order to protect them from becoming dictators. They ll be supported through taxation but they ll be given food rather than actual money like gold or silver. The myth of the medals will say that the reason for this is to resist from mixing the actual gold and silver with the gold and silver inside them but the real reason is that if they ever got actual money they d become dictators. Book 4: Adeimantus interjects that the guardians would be happy because they wouldn t have any possessions and as a result would lack the freedom to live any kind of normal life. Socrates responds by suggesting that the objective here is to make society happy as a whole and as long as there s no money in the city it will be successful. He says that the city is perfect and identifies four virtues as being present in the city: wisdom, courage, moderation and justice. The guardians provide the wisdom aka the people in charge; the rulers, the auxiliaries the courage aka the warriors to overcome the resistance of the wise commands of the rulers, the maintenance of the balance of the city provides moderation and the separation of the social classes keeps things just. Becauses Socrates has identified justice on the political level he moves on to finally identify it on the individual level. He argues that the two are analogical, just like there are 3 parts to the just society, there are 3 parts to the just individual. He identifies them as being appetite, reason and spirit. Appetite gives people simple desires including
biological needs and cravings for excess. Reason gives people the ability to control those desires and Spirit gives people the desire for honor. Appetite is the predominant characteristic of the laborers, reason is predominant in the rulers and spirit is predominant in the auxiliaries. Just as there is justice when reason rules an individual s desire, there s justice when the guardians rule the laborers. When peoples desires aren t controlled injustice results. In the story of Leontius, one day Leontius walked by an execution, and saw a pile of dead bodies on the ground. When he saw them, part of him wanted to look at them, and part of him wanted to turn his head in disgust. Eventually, his inner appetite to look took over, and he looked at the bodies. He became very angry and yelled at the executioner. Plato explains that the anger sometimes makes war against the appetites. Sometimes, when these inner wars take place, we do not act rationally. The result was Leontius yelling at the executioner. Thus, the yelling was a result of his thinking about the dead bodies, having an appetite to look at them, and finally breaking down, looking at them and reacting in the way he did. Thus, Plato argues that the human soul is divided into three parts, reason, desire, and emotion. The story explains the strain between Philosopher kings and Timocracy during the decay of regimes because the Guardians start to believe that the philosophers do not care about the city as much as they do so they should rule not the philosophers. Book 5 Adeimantus ask that Socrates explain his theory that the guardians will share everything including their wives. Socrates starts by saying that woman will be treated the same as men, receive the same training and perform the same work. Although men will naturally be better and stronger than them in every regard-treating woman equally is the way to produce the best possible citizens. Socrates describes a society in which no one in the guardian class knows who their parents, children or siblings are. There are no traditional households. The philosophers will be the rulers of the guardian class and maintain the system of breeding within the class. Lying to the guardians in order to prevent incest and to keep things running smoothly. When asked whether this society is possible, Socrates says that the issue is not whether it s actually possible but simply the ideal. He goes on to say that in order for this city to be possible, the rulers (the kings), must learn philosophy in order to rule with wisdom. That is to say they must be philosopher kings. Socrates describes a philosopher as someone who looks beyond the world that is noticeable and understandable with only one census to see the ideal forms that can only be seen through reason. For examples there s the beauty you can see with your eyes but then there s the ideal form of beauty that you can only see with your reasoning ability. This is how one gains true knowledge through reasoning. Everything you see with your eyes is mere opinion. Only philosophers can have true knowledge because they are the only ones who seek the ideal forms of things.
Book 6 When Adeimantus challenges Socrates description of philosophers by saying that in reality philosophers don t actually do anything for society and would be awful rulers, Socrates uses a metaphor called the allegory of the ship to explain this misconception about philosophers. He starts by saying that steering a ship is no different than governing a society. If you were to let the sailors navigate the ship, you would be in big trouble because the sailors don t know anything about navigation. Similarly the problem with direct democracy is that the people themselves don t know about governing or wisdom and the politicians (the sailors) are only trying to bring the support of the people (the captain). Everyone dismisses the philosophers navigator has a relevant even thought the philosophers are the only ones with the knowledge necessary to actually steer the government appropriately. Socrates argues that philosophers are corrupted by society. This is why philosophers in Athens wouldn t make good rulers. Because its important for guardians to have many important and seemingly contradictory qualities there will likely be few of them and even fewer who them who are capable of learning philosophy with the goal of learning the form of the good the ideal state of the good the supreme good. The rulers will attempt to lead the city towards what is good. In order for them to know this they must actually know what good is. Book 7: Allegory of the Cave Socrates next discusses the form of the good with his allegory of the cave. In the allegory man are trapped inside the cave chained to the wall and have been there for their entire lives. They are only able to see shadows on the wall in front of them, the shadows from what s happening outside. However, because the men have been in the cave for so long (entire lives) they assume that these shadows are reality themselves simply because they don t know anything else. If a man were to leave the cave and see the world for all its brightness, at first they would find it painful and confusing preferring instead to return to the shadows. However, once he got used to the real world he d realize that the world of shadows was a mere illusion and would want to tell his former prisoners. If he returned to try to save them and enlighten them, they would think he was crazy. In Socrates allegory, the cave is the world of illusion we can see with our senses. The world of brightness outside the cave is the world of reality as it truly is. He is saying that ordinary people in society mock philosophers because they aren t able to see the world as it truly is. Philosophers aren t the only ones who left the cave to discover the world outside, to discover the form of the good. Ordinary people are still trapped in the cave living in a world of illusion. Socrates continues by discussing how the guardians (the philosopher kings) should be educated in order to properly learn philosophy and he suggests that they should learn math and geometry in particular in order to exercise their minds.
Book 8: Since Socrates has described the just type of government, he then goes on to talk about the 5 types of unjust government: Rule of Philosopher Kings (Wisdom), Timocracy (honour), Oligarch (money), Democracy (freedom) and Tyranny (Eros). Rule of philosopher kings rule of the wise, rational and just souled, who are indifferent to politics and to honour Timocracy the rule of the guardians, of unbridled spiritedness; sensitivity to the lack of respect given to the philosophers. There is no communism. It s a kind of moderate and restrained oligarchy. The rulers are too ashamed to show their want for wealth. It degenerates into Oligarchy. Eventually the secret hornds of money that the Timocrats accu`mulate eventually devours the regime. Love of money takes the place for the love of virtue. Wealth replaces public spiritedness as the true source of distinction and power Oligarcyhy Love of money, replaces the love of virtue; city primary task is the management and protection of private property. Are indifferent to recognition. Eventually the Oligarchs turn all of the cities resources to the private gain. They are unwilling to fight because they don t want to spend money on armies. The possession of private property changes the regime from Timocracy to oligarchy. The cities primary business is mear life, not the good life. Public spiritedness is sapped. Socrates says, the oligarchy does possess a certain degree of stability, it is restrained from excess, the oligarch only spends to gratify their desires. This leads to the existence of a rich minority, and poor majority Democracy is characterized by its permissiveness. There are certain virtues; it fosters the greatest human variety. There are more human types found here than in any regime. All sorts of human beings come to exist in a democracy. It is where one has to live. There is the most diversity within individuals. Socrates believes that the diversity within this has some disadvantages. We are superficial in everything that we do because of the equality we put it every rule in the city, the just city can have dabblers (one rule, one life). Myth of metals is a way to prevent citizens to think they are allowed to be any role they want. Even though it s not the best regime; it might be the best regime for the philosopher. Whereas all the other regimes are hostile to the philosophers and there s not time. Only democracy has the leisure necessary for philosophy. Life in these regimes is already disorganized enough that it would make it difficult to study philosophy. Tyrant The manic instability and unhappiness of the tyrant; this is the heart of Socrates defense of the just life. Its completely unrestrained to the satisfaction of desires. We think of unhappiness as an arisen of our failures, the worst thing for human being is to be dominated by desire Book 9: Socrates describes the tyrannical man in detail wasting all his negative qualities sayings he s governed by unnecessary anti-social pleasures the tyrannical man is the ideal type of the most unjust man possible. The philosopher king is the total opposite of this. The tyrannical man is the most miserable man of all and the philosopher king is the happiest.
Socrates then returns to the earlier discussion back in book 2 related to the myth of the Gyges he wants to argue against the idea that its rational for a just man to do bad things and even without external punishments, its bad for ones soul to do evil things. Just as a just city-state requires proper balance within its orders, a just and intelligent man needs to ensure that he himself gains proper balance. If he doesn t act intelligently or justly using reason he will be miserable. Book 10: Socrates returns to discuss all the potential negative affects of poetry in the city and why he thinks it should be bad. Basically, he talks about its corrupting influence. He then says that he believes the soul is immortal, and that evil harms the soul. For this reason justice is important because it is both good for man in his life and after his death. The gods punishes the unjust man and reward the just man. Example of this: Myth of the Er Er was a warrior the gods brought back from the dead in order to tell man what happened to them after death. He said that the gods divide people by the just and unjust and punishing the unjust. People are also able to choose their next lives and philosophy give one the necessary wisdom in order to choose the good next life. The lesson is that justice leads to rewards in the after life. Sorcates hopes to show us that 1) we are responsible for what happens to us. Our lot in life is a result of human agency. The universe is a Cosmos its sensitive and rewarding to human excellence. We simply must choose this life. 2) For Socrates, the worst human failing is ignorance. All those soles that root for terrene aren t condemned in terms of righteous or sinfulness as for lacking virtue; they are condemned in terms of their lack of knowledge. They have a lack of ignorance, which Socrates doesn t hate or blame but pities them for their ignorance. He pities their ignorance for the fact that terrene is a means for harming ones self. Fortunately for most the Cosmos is forgiving and we receive another chance, another life. Human beings aren t evil but just misguided. Socrates offers us an image of the Cosmos as supportive of philosophy. Justice as the Advantage of the Stronger In Book I of The Republic, Thrasymachus sets up a challenge to justice. Thrasymachus is a Sophist, one of the teachers-for-hire who preached a creed of subjective morality to the wealthy sons of Athens. The Sophists did not believe in objective truth, including objective moral truth. They did not think, in other words, that anything was absolutely right or wrong ; instead they viewed all actions as either advantageous or disadvantageous to the person performing them. If an action was advantageous then they thought you should engage in it, and if it was disadvantageous then they thought that you should refrain. Taking this belief to its logical conclusion, some of them went so far as to claim that law and morality are nothing but mere convention, and that one ought to try to get away with injustice and illegality whenever such action would be to one s advantage. Plato meant to combat this attitude in The Republic.
Thrasymachus introduces the Sophist challenge by remarking that justice is nothing but the advantage of the stronger. He does not mean to define justice with this statement, but to debunk it. His claim proceeds from the basic Sophistic moral notion: that the norms considered just are nothing more than conventions which hamper those who adhere to them, and benefit those who flout them. Those who behave unjustly naturally gain power and become the rulers, the strong people in society. Justice is the advantage of the stronger because when stupid, weak people behave in accordance with justice, they are disadvantaged, and the strong (those who behave unjustly) are advantaged. An alternate reading of Thrasymachus s bold statement makes his claim seem slightly more subtle. According to this reading (put forward by C.D.C. Reeve), Thrasymachus is not merely making the usual assertion that the norms of justice are conventions; he claims further that these mores and norms are conventions that were put in place by the rulers (the stronger ) for the purpose of promoting their own interests. Conceptions of justice, in this reading, are the products of propaganda and tools of oppressors. Regardless of the interpretation we give to Thrasymachus statement, the challenge to Socrates is the same: he must prove that justice is something good and desirable, that it is more than convention, that it is connected to objective standards of morality, and that it is in our interest to adhere to it. His attempt to meet this challenge occupies the rest of The Republic. The Principle of Specialization Before he can prove that justice is a good thing, Plato must first state what justice is. Instead of defining justice as a set of behavioral norms (as the traditional Greek thinkers did) Plato identifies justice as structural: political justice resides in the structure of the city; individual justice resides in the structure of the soul. The just structure of the city is summed up by the principle of specialization: each member of society must play the role for which his nature best suits him and not meddle in any other business. A man whose nature suits him to farming must farm and do nothing else; a man whose nature best suits him to building objects out of wood must be a carpenter and not bother with any other sort of work. Plato believes that this is the only way to ensure that each job is done as well as possible. The principle of specialization keeps the farmer from carpentering, and the carpenter from farming. More important, it keeps both the farmer and the carpenter from becoming warriors and rulers. The principle of specialization separates society into three classes: the class of producers (including farmers, craftsmen, doctors, etc.), the class of warriors, and the class of rulers. Specialization ensures that these classes remain in a fixed relations of power and influence. Rulers control the city, establishing its laws and objectives. Warriors carry out the commands of rulers. Producers stay out of political affairs, only worrying themselves about the business of ruling insofar as they need to obey what the rulers say and the warriors enforce. A city set up in this way, Plato contends, is a just city. The Tripartite Soul Just as political justice consists in the structural relations among classes of society, Plato believes, individual justice consists in correct structural relations among parts of the soul. Paralleling the producers, warriors, and rulers in the city, Plato claims that each individual soul has three separate seats of desire and motivation: the appetitive part of our
soul lusts after food, drink, sex, and so on (and after money most of all, since money is the means of satisfying the rest of these desires); the spirited part of the soul yearns for honor; the rational part of the soul desires truth and knowledge. In a just soul, these three parts stand in the correct power relations. The rational part must rule, the spirited part must enforce the rational part s convictions, and the appetitive part must obey. In the just soul, the desires of the rational, truth-loving part dictate the overall aims of the human being. All appetites and considerations of honor are put at the disposal of truthloving goals. The just soul strives wholly toward truth. Plato identifies the philosopher (literally truth lover ) as the most just individual, and sets him up as ruler of the just city. The Sun, the Line, the Cave Explaining his idea of a philosopher-king, Plato appeals to three successive analogies to spell out the metaphysical and epistemological theories that account for the philosopher s irreplaceable role in politics. The analogy of the sun illuminates the notion of the Form of the Good, the philosopher-king s ultimate object of desire. The line illustrates the four different grades of cognitive activity of which a human being is capable, the highest of which only the philosopher-kings ever reach. The allegory of the cave demonstrates the effects of education on the human soul, demonstrating how we move from one grade of cognitive activity to the next. In the allegory of the cave, Plato asks us to imagine the following scenario: A group of people have lived in a deep cave since birth, never seeing any daylight at all. These people are bound in such a way that they cannot look to either side or behind them, but only straight ahead. Behind them is a fire, and behind the fire is a partial wall. On top of the wall are various statues, which are manipulated by another group of people, laying out of sight. Because of the fire, the statues cast shadows on the wall that the prisoners are facing. The prisoners watch the stories that these shadows play out, and because this is all they can ever see, they believe that these shadows are the most real things in the world. When they talk to one another about men, women, trees, horses, and so on, they refer only to these shadows. Now he asks us to imagine that one of these prisoners is freed from his bonds, and is able to look at the fire and at the statues themselves. After initial pain and disbelief, he eventually realizes that all these things are more real than the shadows he has always believed to be the most real things; he grasps how the fire and the statues together caused the shadows, which are copies of the real things. He now takes the statues and fire as the most real things in the world. Next this prisoner is dragged out of the cave into the world above. At first, he is so dazzled by the light in the open that he can only look at shadows, then he is able to look at reflections, then finally at the real objects real trees, flowers, houses, and other physical objects. He sees that these are even more real than the statues were, and that those objects were only copies of these.
Finally, when the prisoner s eyes have fully adjusted to the brightness, he lifts his sights toward the heavens and looks at the sun. He understands that the sun is the cause of everything he sees around him of the light, of his capacity for sight, of the existence of flowers, trees, and all other objects. The stages the prisoner passes through in the allegory of the cave correspond to the various levels on the line. The line, first of all, is broken into two equal halves: the visible realm (which we can grasp with our senses) and the intelligible realm (which we can only grasp with the mind). When the prisoner is in the cave he is in the visible realm. When he ascends into the daylight, he enters the intelligible. The lowest rung on the cognitive line is imagination. In the cave, this is represented as the prisoner whose feet and head are bound, so that he can only see shadows. What he takes to be the most real things are not real at all; they are shadows, mere images. These shadows are meant to represent images from art. A man who is stuck in the imagination stage of development takes his truths from epic poetry and theater, or other fictions. He derives his conception of himself and his world from these art forms rather than from looking at the real world. When the prisoner frees himself and looks at the statues he reaches the next stage in the line: belief. The statues are meant to correspond to the real objects of our sensation real people, trees, flowers, and so on. The man in the cognitive stage of belief mistakenly takes these sensible particulars as the most real things. When he ascends into the world above, though, he sees that there is something even more real: the Forms, of which the sensible particulars are imperfect copies. He is now at the stage of thought in his cognition. He can reason about Forms, but not in a purely abstract way. He uses images and unproven assumptions as crutches. Finally, he turns his sights to the sun, which represents the ultimate Form, the Form of the Good. The Form of the Good is the cause of all other Forms, and is the source of all goodness, truth, and beauty in the world. It is the ultimate object of knowledge. Once the prisoner has grasped the Form of the Good, he has reached the highest stage of cognition: understanding. He no longer has any need for images or unproven assumptions to aid in his reasoning. By reaching the Form of the Good, he hits on the first principle of philosophy which explains everything without the need of any assumptions or images. He can now use this understanding derived from comprehending the Form of the Good to transform all his previous thought into understanding he can understand all of the Forms. Only the philosopher can reach this stage, and that is why only he is fit to rule. Plato is unable to provide direct detail about the Form of the Good, and instead illustrates his idea by comparing it to the sun. The Form of the Good is to the intelligible realm, he claims, as the sun is the visible realm. (In the metaphor, the fire in the cave represents the sun.) First of all, just as the sun provides light and visibility in the visible realm, the Form of the Good is the source of intelligibility. The sun makes sight possible, and, similarly, the Form of the Good is responsible for our capacity for knowledge. The sun causes things to come to be in the visible world; it regulates the seasons, makes flowers bloom,
influences animals to give birth and so on. The Form of the Good is responsible for the existence of Forms, for their coming to be in the intelligible world. Why It Pays to Be Just One of Plato s objectives in The Republic was to show that justice is worthwhile that just action is a good in itself, and that one ought to engage in just activity even when it doesn t seem to confer immediate advantage. Once he has completed his portrait of the most just man the philosopher-king he is in a position to fulfill this aim. In Book IX, Plato presents three arguments for the claim that it pays to be just. First, by sketching a psychological portrait of the tyrant, he attempts to prove that injustice takes such a wretched toll on a man s psyche that it could not possibly be worth it (whereas a just soul is untroubled and calm). Next, he argues that, though each of the three main character types (money-loving, honor-loving, and truth-loving) have their own conceptions of pleasure and of the corresponding good life (each choosing his own life as the most pleasant sort), only the philosopher is in the position to judge since only he is capable of experiencing all three types of pleasure. Finally, he tries to demonstrate that only philosophical pleasure is really pleasure at all; all other pleasure is only cessation from pain. In all likelihood, Plato did not consider any of these to be the primary source of justice s worth. Plato s goal was to prove that justice is worthwhile independent of the advantages it confers, so for him to argue that the worth of justice lies in the enormous pleasure it produces is beside his point. To say that we should be just because it will make our life more pleasant, after all, is just to say that we should be just because it is to our advantage to do so. Instead, we should expect to find him arguing that the worth of justice lies in some other source, preferably having something to do with objective goodness. This is why many philosophers, from Plato s student Aristotle down to modern scholar Richard Kraut, believe that Plato s real argument for the worth of justice takes place long before Book IX. They think, plausibly, that Plato locates the worth of justice in justice s connection to the Forms, which he holds to be the most good things in the world. Justice is worthwhile, on this interpretation, not because of any advantage it confers, but because it involves grasping the Form of the Good and imitating it. The just man tries to imitate the Forms by making his own soul as orderly and harmonious as the Forms themselves.