Topic > Justice in Plato's Republic - 1449

What is justice? Obviously the word can have multiple meanings. If we walked into the Student Center and asked ten people what justice was, they would probably all have different answers. I'm not saying they wouldn't have some of the same ideas, but ultimately their answers might vary. That said, what if one of people's ideas of justice included injustices? For example, Adolf Hitler believed that justice would be achieved by completely wiping out the Jewish people and creating a "perfect" blond-haired, blue-eyed Aryan race. He also wanted to rule the entire world. Now, was this really justice? I would definitely have to disagree, but by the same token he had thousands of followers. The thought of this is atrocious and ridiculous, but it is the truth. I think a similar argument could be made against Plato. To me, Plato is wrong in his definition of justice. Plato proposes the Kallipolis, his idea of ​​a just society. In this society, he aspires to perfection. However, it is definitely contradictory. The problem with this “just” society he invented is that many injustices occur while trying to reach this level of perfection. In my opinion, it is not possible to achieve justice by exploiting injustices. Likewise, I believe that no matter what, perfection can never be achieved because in the fight for justice, there will always be someone or something that ends up being treated unfairly. Plato gives his final definition of justice as fundamentally , people doing what they were born to do, without stepping out of bounds and interfering by trying to do anything other than that (Plato, 139). As stated earlier, Plato has many ideas about how to achieve this level of perfection that he strives to achieve. Ultimately, Kallipolis ends up looking like an oligarchy. Plato establishes his regime by creating three classes of people, the philosopher kings, the guardians and the producers. As one might assume, people are sorted into these classes and must remain within them. Power within society is in the hands of only a few individuals, these being the philosopher kings (Plato, 164). They are given the power to rule the society because they are the individuals with the knowledge.