Finding Justice: The City-Soul Analogy in Plato's Republic Open Access

Abstract

This paper enters into the existing debate about the legitimacy of the city-soul analogy in Plato's Republic. In order to determine if the city-soul analogy is a legitimate argumentative tool, I evaluate Plato's implicit assumptions in shifting the search for justice from the individual to the city, the structural inconsistencies within the city-soul analogy, and most importantly, the analogy's success in giving an account of justice that satisfies Glaucon's, Adeimantus', and the reader's challenges. Glaucon's and Adeimantus' expectations for justice are met in the later books of the Republic, but not at the analogy's conclusion in Book IV. I argue that Plato's delay in responding to these challenges to justice allows room for his political treatise and philosophy. Though the city-soul analogy is unsuccessful in giving an immediate account of justice that satisfies the initial challenge, it provides the foundation for a later account of justice that responds to Glaucon's and Adeimantus' challenges in full. This later account of justice however, remains insular, static, and apolitical, and thus never adequately addresses the reader's expectations for justice. In this paper, I tie this failure back to inconsistencies within the city-soul analogy itself.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

I. Origins of the City-Soul Analogy; Challenges to Justice 7

i. Thrasymachus 9

ii. Glaucon 14

a. A Contractual Request 16

b. Justice in Itself 17

c. Justice and the Good Life 19

iii. Adeimantus 20

iv. The Reader 25

II. Answering the Challenges; The City-Soul Analogy 27

i. Shifting the Search for Justice 27

ii. The Healthy City, the Feverish City, and the Birth of Justice 33

iii. The Multitude 35

iv. The Warrior Class 36

v. The Complete Guardians 39

vi. Justice in the City 40

vii. Justice in the Soul 47

III. Justice at the Analogy's Conclusion 52

i. Meeting Glaucon's Challenge 52

ii. Meeting Adeimantus' Challenge 54

iii. Meeting the Reader's Challenge 56

IV. True Justice 59

Conclusion 65

Works Cited 67

About this Honors Thesis

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School	Emory College
Department	Political Science
Degree	BA
Submission	Honors Thesis
Language	English
Research Field	Philosophy Political Science, General
Keyword	Justice Plato's Republic City-Soul Analogy
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Owen, Judd, Emory University
Committee Members	Strahan, Randall, Emory University Jimenez Rodriguez Valdes, Marta, Emory University

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