DEFINING JUSTICE AND THE PROJECT OF THE REPUBLIC

Whatever may have been the case in previous dialogues, and even in Republic 1, most commentators believe that once Glaucon and Adeimantus take over the argument they “identify being just with a property possessed primarily by psyches.” This point is put in more general terms by saying that Plato moves in the Republic from an act-centered account of justice or virtue to an agent-centered account. The explanation of this is that once Plato has despaired of being able to provide an act-centered account of what justice is, he begins in Book 2 to present an agent-centered one, which culminates in his Book 4 account of “Platonic” justice as harmony in the tripartite soul. The attractiveness of this interpretation is allegedly buttressed by the plausibility of the ethical theory behind it. Plato, one of the original virtue ethicists, rejects the idea that one can specify virtuous actions first and then define the virtuous agent as the one who performs such actions and performs them in the right way. Matters will instead be the other way round. Defining what it is to be a virtuous person first, virtuous actions will then be the actions done by that sort of person.

If the argument of this book is correct, however, this will not be the best way of understanding how the central argument of the Republic develops.