Plato on Justice and Government
Plato’s work, The Republic, is an examination of government and justice. It asks the
questions “What is the best form of government and what is justice?” To Plato, the idea that
government should be run by the best leaders was self-evident. Government leaders should be
the wisest and most talented in the country. Plato believed in an aristocracy of talent, not of birth
or wealth. Justice would be achieved when the ideal state was established, the rulers were wise,
and the people were happy. In the following excerpt from The Republic, the speaker Socrates
discusses the purposes of government and what is the ideal state:
“A city is formed because men are not self-sufficient but have many wants. So
each looks to others for help in supplying his various wants … Everyone who gives or
takes in exchange does so in the belief that he is thus serving his own best interests. It
follows that more and better of everything will be produced, and more easily, when each
person works at his own specialty according to his own peculiar talent, and at the proper
time, without interfering with other tasks …
Our object in the construction of the state is the greatest happiness of the whole
and not that of any one class …
Unless either philosophers become rulers, or those who rule become lovers of
wisdom, and so political power and philosophy are united, there can be no respite [relief]
from calamity for states or for mankind … What we had in mind when we founded the
[ideal] city was not how to make one class happy above the rest, but how to make the city
as a whole as happy as it could be. For we believed that in such a city we were most
likely to find justice, and injustice again in the worst-managed city; then we might
examine them and decide the matter for which we have been searching all this time.”
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What is the goal of the ideal government?
Why is a city formed?
Explain who the rulers of Plato’s ideal state would be. Why?
What conditions does Plato think must exist in order to obtain justice?
What does Plato believe will make people happy?
In Plato’s ideal state the most talent would rule, rather than the richest or most
powerful people. Do you think this would work? Explain.