The purpose of this research is to examine the discussion of justice in the first four books of Plato's Republic. The plan of the research will be to set forth Socrates's basic argument for the defense of justice, an explanation of what it is, and then to discuss whether his explanation of what justice is, is justified. This research will suggest why aspects of the explanation of justice in The Republic appear to be flawed.
One element of the universe that plato's defense of justice does not seem to admit is that of what might be called randomness. Randomness of human psychology, which is to say moral randomness, influenced by natural events and the actions of other human beings, injects an element of unpredictability for which the most intellectually and psychologically serene of just men cannot plan. Randomness, a morally neutral abstraction, at least as much as injustice, which is a negative abstraction, can be opposed to justice in a way that troubles the definitiveness with which the discussion proceeds. And it is randomness and psychology that define history. To put it another way, The Republic's discussion of justice, meant as it is to influence the course of human events, actually ignores the facts of history.
To be sure, the integrity of Socrates's way of life, and more important that of his way of death, suggests that the wholly integrated psychology and practice of justice will answer a host of contingencies. Indeed, the practice of justice, as The Republic explains, is a function of the just psychology. Not only that, the just psychology must precede the just action if the action and the one who performs it are to be considered authentically just. This is illustrated in the summary of the nexus of the idea and the practice of justice near the end of Book IV:
[Justice] does not lie in a man's external actions, but in
the way he acts within himself, really concerned with
hims...