Towards the end of Book II of Plato’s Republic, we first see an attempt to find out the meaning of justice in the individual by seeking its origin in the state or city. This passage in particular marks the first attempt by Socrates to construct the polis. Although it is clear that the construction of the ‘City of Pigs’, as described by Glaucon, is by no means Plato’s finished image of Kallipolis, this passage describing the basic primitive city provides the basis for future discussions of the ideal republic and where justice lies within it. This textual analysis will be split into three main sections. Firstly, I will discuss the first section of the passage, 368c-369a, the view that Socrates uses a state-soul analogy to attempt to find what
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To do this, he first sets out to define what exactly it means to be just. He comes to the conclusion that it would be easier to locate justice in the individual after first locating it in the city by using the ‘letters analogy’, as labelled by Dominic Scott. This is where Socrates refers to a situation where a man with poor eyesight is told to read some small writing from a distance away; however if there was a larger copy of the same piece of writing, he would be able to read the larger one first and then turn to the small ones for confirmation (. Therefore, it seems that Socrates is arguing that in the same way that the writing in large letters is the same as that in the small, justice in the state is the same as that in the individual soul. However, the coherence of this, what is sometimes called, state-soul analogy is debatable. It could be inferred from this that the city and the soul have the same form. In other words, Plato’s words could be interpreted to mean that an individual soul takes the same shape as the city it is living in. However, this presents dilemmas as each individual is different from another, as Socrates emphasises with the theme of specialisation to be discussed later, and therefore the question I would raise is: how can every individual take the same shape as that of the city, just as the small letters
To do this, he first sets out to define what exactly it means to be just. He comes to the conclusion that it would be easier to locate justice in the individual after first locating it in the city by using the ‘letters analogy’, as labelled by Dominic Scott. This is where Socrates refers to a situation where a man with poor eyesight is told to read some small writing from a distance away; however if there was a larger copy of the same piece of writing, he would be able to read the larger one first and then turn to the small ones for confirmation (. Therefore, it seems that Socrates is arguing that in the same way that the writing in large letters is the same as that in the small, justice in the state is the same as that in the individual soul. However, the coherence of this, what is sometimes called, state-soul analogy is debatable. It could be inferred from this that the city and the soul have the same form. In other words, Plato’s words could be interpreted to mean that an individual soul takes the same shape as the city it is living in. However, this presents dilemmas as each individual is different from another, as Socrates emphasises with the theme of specialisation to be discussed later, and therefore the question I would raise is: how can every individual take the same shape as that of the city, just as the small letters