Plato's Theory Of Being Just

The idea of being just is one that is often misconstrued. What exactly is justice? What does it take for a person to be truly just? Can someone be truly just, or are we only just for the sake of making other people jealous or proud of us? Plato researched this idea of “being just” in great detail. For a soul to be so, he explained, it must be pious, honest etc. For example, picture the idea of two men- Mr. A and Mr. B. Mr. A will always do the just thing, and Mr. B will always do the unjust thing- he is very manipulative and knows how to deceive. Mr. B however, is more widely liked because he does not let people know he is doing the unjust thing, he is just that good at being manipulative. An example of this is the story of the Ring of Gadges-

At this time, there was no equality between men and women, so there was the question of whether or not there should be women at all in the guardian world. However, if there is not, how would there be gold-medaled children? Men and women are different by nature, according to Plato and Socrates. Socrates said that jobs should be based on the nature of the souls, not on the nature of their sex, whereas Plato says women are to be included in all things men are, only if her soul is fit for it. For example, if women are warriors then they should have children because they are fiercer with their children around. The idea of having women as guardians was one that was decided to be ok, however there was to be no marriage. That being said, children were to be bred. Plato says that they lied to the guardians and mated them while pretending it was a lottery for them to breed the “perfect” children. The babies are taken away as soon as they were born, and the parents were to go back to doing what they were meant to be doing. The guardians were then parents to every single child, instead of just the ones that they gave birth to. According to Plato, this reduced the idea of “favoritism” and that one child is better than the other according to their parents. The children also were bred to have “perfect medals in their souls” for whatever they were

Self-control has two parts, the part that is controlling and the one that is not. However, there are three parts of a soul according to Plato- the rational part, which is what reason tells us we should do, the appetitive part, which is what we want to do, and the spirited part, which is strong, tough and tenacious. When the spirited part of our soul is activated and fighting for justice, it just keeps going. However, we tend to have conflicts within ourselves and within these parts. The appetitive part is the biggest part because people tend to feed their appetites, becoming a slave to their desires. Because of this, reason becomes a slave to the appetites. Reason, however, according to Plato is the best part of people if they learn to not let the other parts of the soul meddle; otherwise reason becomes weaker and weaker. If we do the right thing, which is also the just thing, we will feed the best part of us. However, if you do the unjust thing, you feed your appetite or desires. For example, a drug addict becomes addicted to drugs because he continuously feeds the appetitive part of his soul. His reason diminishes and his spirited part is not longer, the appetitive part takes over completely. By doing this, you are sending your life into chaos and can never have your life harmonious because you will always want more. An