Justice In Plato's The Republic

The idea of justice is one that generally most people will agree on but almost no one can explain why. In The Republic by Plato, Socrates tries to come up with a way to find true justice. After making his argument, it is inferred that Plato takes over the argument, but continues to use Socrates as a mouthpiece. To help in understanding an analogy is created and although it seems reasonable at first, it is not. Plato tries his best to have his line of reasoning flawless, nonetheless it has flaws. His ideology along with his analogy are flawed, which consecutively means that justice is not how he makes it out to be. Justice comes into play in a conversation between Cephalus, an older man who is an archetype of Athens at the time, and Socrates,

With no way to argue with that,Cephalus quickly dismisses himself and hands his argument down to his son, Polemarchus. Polemarchus does not argue any better than his father and simply states that justice is harming your enemies and benefitting your friends. Socrates does not accept this statement and questions Polemarchus on how he would be able to tell whether a friend is genuine or not. An upset Thrasymachus then steps in and says that justice is whatever will be advantageous to the stronger, meaning that justice is decided by those in power, and that justice is not beneficial except for reputation. Through a long discussion, Socrates is able to use analogies,logic, and questioning to prove to Thrasymachus that it is not profitable and that acting justly will have better results than acting unjustly. Thrasymachus abandons the conversation and Glaucon, who is not fully convinced of Socrates’ argument,

To start off, Plato’s city has holes and he also did not consider any other aspect other than what would be ideal for him. It is understandable that it is his ideology so whether it transfers well to the real world does not matter but there are parts that do not match up. The most obvious one would be that once he sets up his city he tries to track it back to the just individual it does noted up. Within the individual it is explained that their soul has three parts, such like his caste system. Iron within the individual is appetite which he states cannot be satisfied. Silver is spirit which he associated with revenge. Gold is reason which would be the mediator between appetite and revenge. Clearly it does not connect well that iron within the city is moderate but within the individual is unsatisfiable granting that his city would not work. Socrates would not identify this as a just city if the logic behind it does not make sense and has holes. His entire existence is based off questioning and trying to find truth and truth is meant to be complete. Along with that, if Plato did censor forms of art it would certainly not fly well with Socrates, the reason being that he is trying to find truth. On a biographical point, Socrates would be part of the lower/iron class and having his fate decided for him would not be