“Justice and Virtue: The Republic’s Inquiry into Proper Difference” By: Aryeh Kosman

“Justice and Virtue: The Republic’s Inquiry into Proper Difference”

By: Aryeh Kosman

At the beginning of the dialogue, the Republic can be seen as an investigation into the concept of justice, but as the book progresses the conversation’s scope of interest seems to broaden in order to include the notion of virtue. Kosman wrote this article in order to define the relationship between justice and virtue and the implications those have on how readers interpret the Republic.

Kosman begins with a simplified answer to the relationship between justice and virtue: “justice is virtue” (117).  So, by this answer, it is necessary to understand virtue in order to understand justice. Virtue, in the context of the Republic is “a quality that an entity has that enables it to perform its function well, that is, to be itself characteristically in a good fashion” (120). This definition is established when Socrates refers to the virtue of dogs and horses, where the virtue of a horse is that which makes any horse a good horse (335b). When considering virtue in this light, as “a good state of character”, Kosman linked virtue with moral philosophy posing an idea that a person seeking a virtuous life should ponder and its answer according to Plato: “what kind of person I should or shouldn’t become” with the answer being “a person properly disposed to act in certain appropriate ways” (120-121). The idea of a person taking on a specific role, that each individual has a role that is appropriate for themselves at an individual level, is a key concept in the Republic that ties in both the concepts of justice and virtue. This idea has the potential to tie together a debated flaw in the Republic, where “the problem that Socrates addresses is set in terms of a conception of justice understood as just action and just behavior, whereas the account of justice that Socrates offers as an answer to that problem concerns justice as a state of character, as a certain harmony of the soul…the argument has missed the point unless we can show that he former behavior entails the latter condition” (121), as Kosman tries to prove throughout the article.

Once virtue is defined, the search for the specific meaning of justice can begin, and for this purpose Kosman poses the question of “which virtue specifically is justice?” because “justice is a virtue…it is one among the states or qualities of an entity that in some sense enable that entity to do well what it characteristically does” (121). With this definition of justice, and speaking in the terms of the city proposed in the Republic, in order to understand what justice is in a city (what makes the city perform its functions well), we need to understand the nature of a city. To highlight the idea of specific roles (mentioned earlier), Kosman explains that “different folks being different, they are therefore able to do different things, and there will therefore be better and worse divisions of labor depending on who does what” (122). This means that different people have different talents, and in order to have a society that functions at its best, each person should carry out the task that he or she does best. Kosman uses the example of popular heist movies, where many people come together in order to pull off a high stakes robbery that requires specified roles such as a technician, getaway driver, a computer specialist, etc. Without each person doing the job that they know best, the heist wouldn’t be successful (it’s unlikely that the getaway driver could disarm the alarm systems of whatever institution is being robbed), “for it is the assignment of tasks according to the principle of giving to each person the job she is best able to do that results in the condition of justice” (123-124). So justice, in this sense, is doing the work “for which one is ‘naturally best suited’” (124).

When dealing with the idea of justice, Kosman lists a few ideas that need to be kept in mind. The first is simply to keep in mind that everything Socrates concludes about justice in the individual is just an analogy of the justice found in his imaginary city. Kosman warns about this in order to warn against reading the Republic purely from the standpoint of finding justice within the individual. However, she also warns that “it would be an equal mistake to read the dialogue as merely an essay in political imagination” (125). Kosman believes that the Republic has something to do with an intermediate reading between the two concepts, begging the question “if this is true, we can’t help but wonder what the relationship is between the justice that characterizes an individual citizen’s soul and that citizen’s contribution to social and political justice” (125). Going along with this point, a reading of the Republic shouldn’t entail the search for a singular definition of justice, virtue, or any other concept, but of the collaborative definitions of different aspects of those terms that give them their overall meanings (justice in terms of itself, the individual, a society). Lastly, Kosman argues that “it is not sufficient to say, as we sometimes do, that justice according to Plato is a matter of balance or harmony among the parts of the city or of the individual” but rather the harmony of the whole due to “the differentiation of function determined by what differentiated parts of the subject are best able to carry out the subject’s several specific functions” (127).

In this sense, “justice is the principle of differentiation of function that is based on natural ability”, and since justice is a virtue, “it’s good for people to do what they’re good at…in a just city, each person practices the occupation for which he has the appropriate virtue” (127-128). Going along with this, “justice is the harmony achieved when each functionally differentiated element of a person is given and performs a function for which it is best suited, that is, for which it has the virtue” (128). Recall the overarching issue with Socrates’ argument in the Republic, where his proposal dealt with just actions and behavior, while his solution dealt with harmony. According to the definitions of justice and virtue set forth by Kosman throughout this article, by individuals differentiating into their respective virtuous abilities, they will achieve the harmony that Socrates proposed. Kosman’s argument theoretically effectively resolved the issue with Socrates’ proposed solution. 

With this crucial aspect possibly tying together Socrates’ proposal with his solution, “the Republic may then be seen as an inquiry into the ethics and metaphysics of difference…the dialogue thus figures justice as a principle of difference, a principle in which function is determined by ability and differentiation follows the lines of virtue” (131). The importance of this solution lies in the ability to differentiate the parts into their respective roles. Kosman even states that “one way of thinking of philosophy…is as the ability to understand principles of sameness and difference” (134). This concept, to Kosman, is key in the sense that “the Republic’s attention to justice…is best understood as a principle of appropriate differentiation” because “no adequate theory of social justice can ignore the issue of how to accommodate difference and allow for proper and appropriate modes of distinction” (136). This article, in sum, highlights the importance of the relationship between justice and virtue and the implications those definitions have in understanding Socrates’ argument. 

1.      With respect to appropriate differentiation, what if certain individuals didn’t have special function that they could accomplish, or they were equally inclined to do multiple things at their best? And what does that mean in terms of the soul and aspects of the self?

2.      What would happen to the overall harmony of an organization if its individuals lacked certain necessary virtues? Also, along those lines, what are the (if there are any) required virtues for an entity to have in order to have the harmony that stems from justice?

3.      One point Kosman was sure to clarify was that “it’s good for people to do what they’re good at” but that it was another question on whether or not the people enjoyed what they were good at. If a person didn’t enjoy what they were good at, how would that effect their justice, the harmony within their soul, and further their happiness with their own lives?

4.      With all of the questions above in mind, does the Republic address different types of souls, justices? Since differentiation seems to be the key of justice, does the Republic seem to account for different types of people and their virtues?

5.      Since the definition of justice is “work appropriate for one…for which one is ‘naturally best suited’”, would it then be just to rob a bank, if robbing a bank is what one was ‘naturally best suited’ to do? Is this definition really encompassing for Plato in what it means to be just?