A Letter About Justice: Our Quest of Truth

The School of Athens by Raphael

Below is originally written as for assignment required to finish a course in Coursera, Ancient Philosophy: Plato & His Predecessors. (finished on June 5th 2018)

To my fellow born-again ancient Athenians,

Our pathways may have diverged into branches that we won’t be able to recognize each other by the end of this journey. We have sought answers to so many question marks popped up in our heads, but I doubt if we ever truly find them. The best possible choice available to us is, as Plato said in one of his Socratic works, by recollecting the innate knowledge that our souls originally recognized but have forgotten.

In this letter to you, I will specifically talk about Justice once claimed by Socrates in Plato’s Republic. I think it’s important to take a look at this archaic explanation knowing the ancient Athenians were rich of philosophical contemplation as the base of their civilization.

Many of people would think that justice is established when our action doesn’t harm others. However, it raises a question, why on earth justice only serves benefits for other people, not the doer? Without offering the benefit for one’s own, one might not find it useful to commit justice, unless for avoiding punishment. Of course gaining benefit only for oneself would sound like a corrupt idea knowing our action most of the time will always involve or affect other people, meaning in some ways we violate or harm others and thus commit injustice.

In Republic, Plato mentioned that in order to attain justice, one must have the harmony between the tripartite of the soul: Appetite, Spirit, and Reason. Appetite is part of the soul driven by desires and wants. Spirit is part of the soul driven by emotion, which in turn this will help us defending ourselves from aggression. Reason is the one will govern the other two in order to make a just and rational decision. When the Appetite or the Spirit wills something that doesn’t follow what the Reason allows, it will cause disharmony on oneself and that’s when the justice fails to be achieved. When it happens, either one will harm oneself because what the Appetite or the Spirit asks isn’t fulfilled, or eventually they will harm others when the Reason fails to control over the Appetite and the Spirit.

When the harmony between the tripartite of the soul is attained, there will be no conflict between the Appetite, the Spirit, and the Reason. The three of them will be in synchronization. In that case, an act of justice will benefit both oneself as the doer and others who are involved or affected within the action. Knowing so, one will volunteer to perform justice on one’s own will instead of merely avoiding punishment.

After having a good understanding on how one is able to perform justice, now we must look further to justice itself. So many acts can be considered as just, but they are not justice in and of itself. They are mere examples that an act can contain justice when it’s performed. The act itself is not always just. For instance, protecting our family members is just, but protecting them meanwhile knowing they commit a murder or corruption is not just. At the same time, turning them in can be considered as disrespectful and an act of betrayal, especially knowing if the they are the ones who have raised us and supported our lives. No matter what act we choose, it will go awry. Of course reporting a crime is the right thing to do and thus it is just—it may show that we protect the social order and the interest of civilized society—but when we are faced to the situation in which the criminal itself is one of our family members, the justice here becomes questionable. In this case, we see how many actions can be just but they are not perfect.

This is where we must draw the line between the reality we perceive and the truth, or in Plato’s words, the difference between the world of experience (visible world) and the world of the forms (intelligible realm). The visible world only contains the reflection of the intelligible realm, which is a reality in a domain that is accessible only to our intellect or reason. Matters and our acts upon them exist within the visible world. Whether they are pious, beautiful, or just, it’s only the reflection of the piousness, beauty, and justice in and of itself. When the situation changes, their value of piousness, beauty, and justice may shift to the opposite side.

Justice in and of itself exists only in the intelligible realm or world of the forms. This is similar to his predecessors’ claim that there is an underlying order—so called Logos—to the world of our experience. The underlying order is reflected to our daily life and to understand it we must turn to the abstract observation, in which Plato claimed can be done through mathematics and geometry. Through such of the abstract observation, Plato showed that there is a pattern, the goodness, which is the structural principle of reality. The good is the source of the all kinds of being in the world of forms, as well the reason how they become known to or perceived by us.

Thereby, our quest for the truth possibly lies in what Plato said as the structural principle of reality that governs all of things both in the world of forms and in the world of experience. As for the justice, I hope the explanation can help us to be a just person and hence benefits both ourselves and our society.

I wish you well and prosperity.

Cordially Yours,

Liswindio Apendicaesar