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This content downloaded from 143.107.252.113 on Thu, 21 May 2015 01:52:15 UTC
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MEANING OF JUSTICE AND THEORY OF FORMS 567
P
THE MEANING OF 'JUSTICE' AND THE
THEORY OF FORMS *
'LATO'S theoryof Forms,as expoundedin the middleand
pre-middle dialogues, is among other things a theory of
meaning.' By a theoryof meaning I understanda verygen-
eral answerto the question: What do wordsmean, and how do they
apply truly to things?In the firstsection of this paper I briefly
* To be presented in an APA symposiumon Plato on the Language of Justice,
December 29, 1972; R. E. Allen will be cosymposiast; see this JOURNAL, this
issue, pp. 557-567.
1 For present purposes I make no distinctionbetween the classical theory of
the Phaedo and the "earlier theoryof Forms" of pre-middle dialogues such as
the Euthyphro and Meno. I count the Cratylus (together with Symposium,
Phaedo, and Republic) among the middle dialogues.
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568 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
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MEANING OF 'JUSTICE' AND THEORY OF FORMS 569
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570 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
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MEANING OF 'JUSTICE' AND THEORY OF FORMS 571
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572 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
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MEANING OF 'JUSTICE' AND THEORY OF FORMS 573
in theman'sdispositionto a cer-
JV) "The soul is just,[relatively,
tain kind of conducttowardsothermen] if and only if it is
just2[absolutely,in thesenseof psychicharmony]."'
Sachs doubted that Plato could have defended such a bicondi-
tional by a convincing argument,but Vlastos provides one on
Plato's behalf by drawing upon the moral psychologyof Books
VIII and IX. He thinksthat Plato did not see the need for such
an argumentsince he had not noticed the equivocation between
'just,' and 'just2' on which his own argumentdepends, and hence
had not realized "the utterinadequacy" of this argumentwhich he
actuallygives.6
I have no objection to Vlastos' reconstructedargument as an
account of what Plato mighthave said and would have been justi-
fiedin sayingon the basis of his own doctrine.But I would point
out that Vlastos' biconditional is not exactly the one Sachs had
required and that it is not entirelysatisfactoryas an answer to
his criticism.For JV connects two psychic states or dispositions,
whereas ordinaryjustice is specifiedin termsof concreteactions
of honesty,fair treatment,and the like. If the biconditional were
interpretedas an "exceptionlessgeneralization" (to use Elizabeth
Anscombe's phrase) linking acts of ordinaryjustice and Platonic
justice in the soul, it could not be convincing.For Plato and every-
one else will agree that we can findjust behavior (in the ordinary
sense) in the absence of psychicharmony.The biconditional (JV)
is plausible only if we insist that the left-handmember expresses
not the capacty to performoccasional acts of justice but a con-
stant disposition to ordinary justice in every action; and that
is how Vlastos interpretsit. But in that case we have already
moved beyond the common-sensenotion of just conduct with
which Glaucon and Adeimantuswere concerned.Insofar as JV is
plausible, it does not establish the link the argument requires.
Even granting(with Sachs) the rest of Plato's argument,JV does
not serveto show that it is in a man's own interestto performjust
actions,but only thatit is in his interestto be disposedto act justly.
Plato's own connectionbetween ordinaryand psychicjustice is
less neat but more satisfactory. I submit that his treatmentof this
5 "The Argument in the Republic that 'Justice Pays'," this JOURNAL LXV, 21
(Nov. 7, 1968): 665-674, p. 670. I have added the bracketed clarificationsto
Vlastos' thesis (H).
6 Ibid., pp. 669 and 671 (where Vlastos' substitute argument is spelled out).
The argument criticizedis the one Vlastos finds at 441C-E, where I find not a
genuine argument but the straightforwardconstructionof definitionsfor the
individual virtues by analogy with the previously defined virtues of the city,
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574 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
7 Sachs would reply that Plato must "prove" this connection and not merely
assert it (op. cit., pp. 154f).But proof in moral psychologyis hard to come by. I
agree with Vlastos that in the Republic as a whole (supplemented by the Phaedo
and by the concrete portrayal of Socrates as a just man) Plato has done what
can be done to make this claim plausible.
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MEANING OF 'JUSTICE' AND THEORY OF FORMS 575
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576 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
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MEANING OF 'JUSTICE' AND THEORY OF FORMS 577
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578 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
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CONTENT AND CONSCIOUSNESS 579
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