The Republic · ¶5100

Justice. [The search for justice is the groundwork or foundation of the Republic, which commences with an enquiry into its nature and ends with a triumphant demonstration of the superior happiness enjoyed by the just man. In the First Book several definitions of justice are attempted, all of which prove inadequate. Glaucon and Adeimantus then intervene:—mankind regard justice as a necessity, not as a good in itself, or at best as only to be practised because of the temporal benefits which flow from it: can Socrates prove that it belongs to a higher class of goods? Socrates in reply proposes to construct an ideal state in which justice will be more easily recognised than in the individual. Justice is thus discovered to be the essential virtue of the state, (a thesis afterwards enlarged upon by Aristotle [Pol. i. 2, § 16; iii. 13, § 3]), the bond of the social organization, and, like…

Plato · translated by Benjamin Jowett · composite transcription based on the 1888 third edition
Benjamin Jowett, revised third edition (1888), with Stephanus numbering from the 1908 edition; composite transcription, Project Gutenberg #55201
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