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The Logic of Virtue in the Republic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Michael Kubara
Michael Kubara*
Affiliation:
University of Lethbridge
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Extract

The overriding concern of the Republic is the relation between morally (or socially or politically) right (or just) action and happiness (or prudence). To settle the matter Plato says he must first discover the formula for politically just action for individuals, and that it will be easier to do this if we first take justice to be a virtue of a city as a whole. He develops a model of an ideal city, hardly mentioning justice and the other cardinal virtues, and then looks to that model to individuate them.

Here I shall first discuss the defense of his portrait of an ideal city. Second, the logic of virtue (arete) is considered, in two steps. It is argued that judgments of virtue are to be split into those of function (ergon) and power (dynamis). Then there is a brief consideration of each half. Third, the implications of this for understanding and threefold classification of goods are drawn. Finally, there is a discussion of the formula for each of the cardinal virtues of a city.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy Supplementary Volume , Volume 1 , Issue 1: New Essays in the History of Philosophy , 1975 , pp. 11 - 27
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1975

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References

1 All quotations of Plato will be taken from the translations of either Shorey, P., Plato: The Republic (Loeb Classical Library, 1969)Google Scholar, or Cornford, F. M., The Republic of Plato (Oxford, 1968)Google Scholar. An ‘S’ before the Stephanus number indicates Shorey’s translation; a ‘C’, Cornford’s. The latter is used mainly when elegance is thought more desirable than literalness.

2 Rawls, J., A Theory of Justice (Harvard, 1971)Google Scholar, sections 12, 13, 17.

3 The account of virtue given here is heavily indebted to that of Thayer, H. S., “Plato: The Theory and Language of Function,” in Sesonske, A. (ed.), Plato's Republic (Wadsworth, 1966)Google Scholar. However, there are terminological and other differences between them.

4 Sparshott, F., Enquiry into Goodness (Toronto, 1958), p. 116Google Scholar.

5 Ethica Nichomachea, trans. Ross, W. D., in The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. McKeon, R. (Random House, 1941)Google Scholar.

6 Ethica Nichomachea, trans. Wheelwright, P., in Aristotle (Odyssey, 1951)Google Scholar.

7 Ibid.

8 The ambiguity is more apparent in some translations than others, and not at all apparent in Cornford ‘s.

9 Meditations, in Descartes Philosophical Works, trans. Haldane, E. and Ross, G. R. T. (Cambridge, 1968), no. vi, p. 186Google Scholar.

10 This is not to deny that virtues might be counted by some normal people as having either what Frankena calls inherent or contributory value. It is at least to deny that all normal people must accord intrinsic value to these virtues; according to the usual interpretation this is what Plato is trying to prove about justice. See W. Frankena, Ethics, 2nd ed. (Prentice-Hall, 1973), pp. 80-83.

11 F. Sparshott, “Five Virtues in Plato and Aristotle,” Monist (January 1970).

12 Vlastos, G., “Justice and Happiness in the Republic,” in his Plato, Vol. II (Doubleday, 1971), p. 74Google Scholar.

13 The editors and referees of CJP have been remarkably helpful to me regarding this essay, and I thank them.