uld this commodity, like many others, go to those who can afford it? Or should it go to those in greatest need, regardless of socioeconomic considerations? Unfortunately, such questions do not yield to quantitative analysis, no matter how complex. At their core are normative concerns dependent on communal will and requiring a communal consensus.
Now, the nominal objective of Plato's Republic is to understand justice. But, in Socrates's early discussions with Glaucon, they decided that, since exemplars are more illustrative in macrocosm than microcosm, their investigation is best served by examining what makes the just state, rather than the just individual (Book II). In Book IV, Socrates concludes (443d), "One who is just does not allow any part of himself to do the work of another part or allow the various classes within him to meddle with each other. He regulates well what is really his own and rules himself. He puts himself in order."
In other words, all in a just society must perform their own roles, do their own work without interfering with that of others. Similarly, actions which produce "justice in the soul" are those that establish harmony among components of the body in "a natural relation", while those which produce disease "establish a relation of ruling and being ruled contrary to nature" (444d). Indeed, physical pathology for Socrates seems more a manifestation of vice than of misfortune. Illness, then, is a punishment for the undisciplined, the unavoidable consequence of their "drunkenness, overeating, lechery, and idleness" (426b).
Consequently, Plato's philosopher kings, physically and intellectually disciplined as they are to live by the pure light of rational agathos (the Good), would contend that resources spent on the chronically ill are resources wasted. Indeed, viability in this Republic would be det
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