THE PHILOSOPHY ASSIGNMENT.

Running head: PHILOSOPHY ASSIGNMENT
Philosophy Assignment
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PHILOSOPHY ASSIGNMENT1
The idea of justice is a fundamental notion of philosophy. It serves as a cornerstone for
ethics, social and political philosophy, religion as well as law. Since the ancient times, social and
political thinkers have been contemplating and evaluating the idea of justice in their pursuit of
constructing a comprehensive and tenable framework to describe an ideal society. John Rawls.
The notable political thinker of modern times has described justice as “the first virtue of social
institutions”. Philosophers like John Stuart Mill, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, David
Hume Thomas Hobbes, Immanuel Kant and many others have presented their accounts of
justice. However, the earliest theories of justice were found in ancient Greece, in the
philosophical discourse of Plato and Aristotle. Although both the thinkers consider justice as a
virtue, their description of the notion differs from each other. The present paper, therefore, takes
an attempt to review the theories of justice as propounded by Plato and Aristotle, and therefore
weigh in to determine which of the two accounts is more tenable.
Plato opined that justice is a kind of harmony. During Plato’s time, the Athenian
democracy was on the verge of degeneration, and thus created an anarchic condition in the
political and social life of the city state. Hence, Plato, in his Republic, provided a guideline for an
ideal society where justice reigned supreme. He used the voice of Socrates, confronted the
conventional theories of Polymarchus, Glaucon, Thrasymachus and Cephalus to establish that
justice is the only remedy for the decay of democracy. To elucidate, Plato realized all the
previous theories of justice had one thing in common—they described justice as an external
entity, a convention or an appropriation facilitated by an external force or opportunity. However,
Plato held that being just does not depend on any external force or chance, rather it is a virtue of
the human soul. He maintains that an individual soul has three parts, i.e. reason, spirit and desire.
The human spirit and desire are again governed by the rules of reason, thus creating a harmony

PHILOSOPHY ASSIGNMENT2
of reason, spirit and desire, which in turn facilitates justice in both social and individual level.
(Reference from Book I)
The Platonic view of justice covers both individual and social justice. In this sense, he
argues that justice is a harmonic relationship between the conflicting components of the state or
the individual. Plato states that society also has three organic parts, i.e. the producers, the
auxiliaries and the guardians, just as the three fundamental parts of the human soul, i.e. reason,
spirit and desire. The just society comprises of the fixed and right relationship among the three
classes of the society that makes the society healthy. However, Thrasymachus argues that justice
only serves the interest of the stronger party, and therefore is not a feasible idea in a city state. In
response to that argument, Plato states that justice equates to goodness and knowledge. It can be
achieved if every citizen fulfill their designated duties, culminating to the greater good for all.
(Reference from Book II)
Similar to Plato, his noted disciple Aristotle also considers justice as a form of cardinal
virtue. However, he shifts from his teacher’s viewpoint to some extent and defines justice as a
virtue of political and constitutional virtue, rather than the virtue of soul. He defines justice as
fairness and lawfulness, since injustice emerges out of a state of lawlessness. By this assumption,
a lawful person will essentially be just. According to Aristotle, the idea of virtue correlates with
his/her relationship with others, in contrast to one’s moral state which amounts to virtue. Hence,
he argues that civic friendship is essential to realize justice to its fullest sense. In this regard, he
rejects Plato’s theory of justice on the grounds of its intrapersonal nature. He rather emphasizes
that justice necessarily involves interpersonal relations and is expressed by actions of the persons
concerned. In the Book V of his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle maintains the difference between