Virtues Of Order And The City-state Justice

The concept of Justice is a dominant principle in Platonic political philosophy. 《The Republic》 includes Plato's systematic account of Justice.Plato views the concept of Justice as an important political and ethical resource, a criterion to evaluate the values in the physical world. Justice is not only a virtue concerning the relationships between individuals and between individuals and the society, but it is also a kind of principle of social order concerning the order of the city and the peace in the city-state. Therefore. Justice is the central issue in ancient Greek political philosophy from its existence. In Greece, philosophers before Plato paid much attention to Justice. They explored the problem of Justice from different aspects, proposing three views about Justice, i.e.. the concept of Natural Justice, Benefit-Power Justice and Contracted Justice. According to Plato, although each of the three views has its own advantages and weaknesses, they are all biased, and thus no one of them can reveal the nature of Justice. In 《The Republic》. on the basis of idea, Plato criticized the three views of Justice from the point of view of Virtue Justice . He successfully separated the problem of Justice from Socratic self-constrained Individual Ethics, connected it with the Political Ethicsof the society, and based it on the virtual social order. Plato found three basic methods to explore Justice and two basic principles to construct his theory of Virtue Justice. The three basic methods are stated as follows. Firstly, Justice exists among social relationships. The primacy of Justice lies in the maintenance of the order in the city-state. Secondly, Justice must represent the principles of Good. Thirdly, Justice is a kind of internal virtue intending to practice the Virtue education of the city to the individuals. The two basic principles are that the virtue principles of Justice have priority over the utility principles and that the principles of the city-state order have priority over the principles of individual well-being.According to the above methods and principles. Plato constructed his Virtue Justice on the basis of virtues, which emphasizes the harmonious order. Plato explicitly claimed that political philosophy aims at the correlation and harmony among virtue, order and justice, instead of the cultivation of individual ethics, and he also claimed that justice is the primary issue among all the virtues. In order to realize justice and to include all virtues into the city, the Limited Distributive Justice must be practiced, that is, the limit of one's knowledge about Justice is acquired through the extent to which one citizen acquires virtues. In other words, the so-called Platonic Justice refers to the fact that citizens of different classes exercise their social responsibility that they assume according to the virtues they acquire. As to a specific city-state, there are three classes, namely the producer, the warrior and the ruler, and the classification occurs naturallyamong the members of the society according to the principle of division of labor in society, although there are differences between the social classes. So it is impossible to place the interest of one class over that of the other classes. Only through the harmony of the three classes and the performance that suits their own nature can a city practice its justice.Plato's concept of Justice is a social justice of politics, which can ultimately be realized only through the mental justice. Plato connected the state with the individual, regarding the state as an amplified individual and the individual a reduced state. Therefore, just as the justice of the state is composed of the harmony among the three classes, the mental justice is also the result of the harmony, action and independence of the three parts of it: desire, passion and reason. Thus Plato would restore the rules and orders of a city-state back to the virtue order which enables the individual to control his behavior through his internal virtue, and restore human beings to be a virtual being from an interest man, and ensure the realization of political justice through individual mental justice. The Authority of Philosophy, what Plato had longed for, is the performer of the politics which combines reason and virtue and is based on virtue. Because the political authority and philosophical thoughts are coherently combined into the Authority of Philosophy, the realization of the political justice in the city-state is guaranteed by reason and wisdom. Thereof, virtue ruling is the ultimate pursuit of Platonic political philosophy.The Platonic view of Justice in pursuit of virtue ruling emphasizes the paramount of virtue and the priority of the whole order. It is sure to receive wide criticism in an age of individuality. For example, the liberalist Popper took the modern standpoint of political philosophy which is based on individualism and social contract, and criticized Plato's political philosophy which has a tendency against the humanism. According to him, Plato's Justice still represents the principle of natural privilege and the principle of common or collectivism and is sure to result in political privilege or totalitarianism. Although Popper's criticism of Plato's view did not distinguish the classical political philosophy and the general political philosophy and it was obviously biased, his criticism attacked the virtue politics that overemphasizes the function of virtue in the regulation of individual interest. One of the fatal weaknesses of Plato's virtue justice is the Utopian illusion and the proposition of being ruled by man, caused by over-ethicalization. At the same time, it is the idealist components in Plato's Justice that connects his Justice with the rationality in the Greek spirit. It emphasizes human thoughts and keeps away from the reality in order to examine, measure the critical reflective tool. With this reflective tool, people criticize, reconstruct and construct reality politics, clarify the true meaning and value of life, and march toward the hopes.