Moral Individual example essay topic

Justice Plato (who speaks through Socrates) separates people based on their innate strength, intelligence, and courage. Those who are not overly bright, or strong, or brave, are best suited to various productive jobs such as: building, farming, and smith ing. Those who are bright, strong and especially courageous are suited to defensive and policing professions. Those who are extraordinarily intelligent, virtuous and brave are suited to run the state itself; that is, Plato's ideal state is an aristocracy, a Greek word that means "rule by the best". The lower end of human society, which as far as Plato is concerned, consists of an overwhelming majority of people in a state, he calls the "producers", since they are most suited for productive work. The middle section of society, a smaller but still large number of people, make up the army and the police and are called the "Auxiliaries".

The best and Brightest, a very small and rarefied group, are those who are in complete control of the state permanently; Plato calls these people "Guardians" in all things and the Producers obey the Auxiliaries and Guardians in all things. A state may be said to be intemperate if any of the lower groups do not obey one of the higher groups. A state may be said to be just if the Auxiliaries do not simply obey the guardians, but enjoy doing so, that is, they don't grumble about the authority being exercised over them; a state with "ordinary justice" would require that the Producers not only obey the Auxiliaries and Guardians, but that they do so willingly. Ordinary justice is basically the morality in the community or "outer morality". But to achieve this "outer morality" They must have "inner morality" which is morality in an individual or "psychic harmony". Later Plato identifies the intellect with the Guardians, the spirit of emotions with the Auxiliaries and the bodily appetites with the Producers.

Therefore, an individual is courageous if his or her spirit is courageous and individual is wise if his or her intellect is wise. Temperance occurs when the emotions are ruled over by the intellect, and the bodily appetites are ruled over by the emotions and especially the intellect. An individual may be said to have "psychic harmony" when the bodily appetites and emotions are not only ruled over by the intellect, but do so willingly and without coercion. Ordinary justice / outer morality is every part doing its own job and Inner morality occurs when each part does its job, which is psychic harmony. It is basically a cause and effect situation. If there is psychic harmony in the individual there will be morality in the community.

The Adequacies are there are three parts in the community and three parts in the individual that work simultaneously. You must have them all working together to form a just community. But what happens when one part doesn't do its job? For instance what if a person commits an immoral act in a just community? Plato says there is such a thing as a "noble lie" which are masses of people who can't know everything but must believe in everything. But this is where Plato contradicts himself because he had already stated you must tell the truth to be a moral individual.

Another inadequacy I have found is Plato's theory, really depends on the philosophy to be able to produce wise people. In two thousand years, that has clearly not happened. It seems is as if he contradicts himself once again because he had always defined philosophers as those who know they are ignorant, he always talks about the philosopher Guardians as though they will actually be wise. But, if a philosopher is not wise, then he may not make a better ruler than someone who is ethical because of correct belief. Another problem is Plato defines the soul as consisting of three parts for everyone, he really talks about each of his social classes though they only had one part of the soul, the dominant part. Thus, he can contemplate the Guardians living in poverty because he disregards the fact that philosophers and warriors will have desires and so are not likely to be happy in circumstances as any reasonable person would see it, but as Plato defines human nature himself.

It is easy to see how Plato could have came into this mistake by the nature of his analogy between inner and outer morality / justice. Inner morality has three simple parts, but the outer morality has three parts that consists of things that each has three parts.