δδ. Finally, the fourth virtue is justice, which was what Plato began by considering. This, as right-doing, is to be found in the state when each individual does only one kind of work for the state, that work for which by the original constitution of his nature he is best fitted; so that in this way each man is not a jack-of-all-trades, but all have their special work, young and old, women and children, bond and free, handicraftsmen, rulers and subjects. The first remark we make on this is, that Plato here places justice on a level with the other moments, and it thus appears as one of the four determinations. But he now retracts this statement and makes it justice which first gives to wisdom, courage and temperance the power to exist at all, and when they have once come into existence, the power to continue. This is the reason of his also saying that justice will be met with independently, if only the other virtues spoken of are forthcoming.[68] To express it more definitely, the Notion of justice is the foundation, the Idea of the whole, which falls into organic divisions, so that every part is only, as it were, a moment in the whole, and the whole exists through it. Thus the classes or qualities spoken of are nothing else than the moments of this whole. Justice is only the general and all-pervading quality; but at the same time it implies the independence of every part, to which the state gives liberty of action.
In the second place, it is clear from what he says, that Plato did not understand by justice the rights of property, the meaning which the term commonly bears in jurisprudence, but rather this, that the mind in its totality makes for itself a law as evidence of the existence of its freedom. In a highly abstract sense my personality, my altogether abstract freedom, is present in property. To explain what comes under this science of law, Plato considers on the whole superfluous (De Republica, IV. p. 425 Steph.; p. 176 Bekk.). To be sure we find him giving laws concerning property, police regulations, &c., “But,” he says, “to impose laws about such matters on men of noble character does not repay the trouble.” In truth, how can we expect to find divine laws in what contains contingencies alone? Even in the Laws he considers ethics chiefly, though he gives a certain amount of attention to the rights of property. But as justice, according to Plato, is really the entire being, which presents itself to the individual in such a way that each man learns to do the work he is born to do as well as it can be done, and does it, it is only as determined individuality that man reaches what is law for him; only thus does he belong to the universal spirit of the state, coming in it to the universal of himself as a “this.” While law is a universal with a definite content, and thus a formal universal only, the content in this case is the whole determined individuality, not this or that thing which is mine by the accident of possession; what I properly hold as my own is the perfected possession and use of my nature. To each particular determination justice gives its rights, and thus leads it back into the whole; in this way it is by the particularity of an individual being of necessity developed and brought into actuality, that each man is in his place and fulfils his vocation. Justice, therefore, according to its true conception, is in our eyes freedom in the subjective sense, because it is the attainment of actuality by the reason, and seeing that this right on the part of liberty to attain to actuality is universal, Plato sets up justice as the determination of the whole, indicating that rational freedom comes into existence through the organism of the state,—an existence which is then, as necessary, a mode of nature.
γ. The particular subject, as subject, has in the same way these qualities in himself; and these moments of the subject correspond with the three real moments of the state. That there is thus one rhythm, one type, in the Idea of the state, forms for Plato’s state a great and grand basis. This third form, in which the above moments are exhibited, Plato characterizes in the following manner. There manifest themselves in the subject, first of all sundry wants and desires (ἐπιθυμίαι), like hunger and thirst, each of which has something definite as its one and only object. Work for the satisfaction of desires corresponds to the calling of the third class. But, secondly there is also at the same time to be found in the individual consciousness something else which suspends and hinders the gratification of these desires, and has the mastery over the temptation thus to gratify them; this is reasonableness (λόγος). To this corresponds the class of rulers, the wisdom of the state. Besides these two ideas of the soul there is a third, anger (θυμός), which on one side is allied to the desires, but of which it is just as true that it resists the desires and takes the side of reason. “It may happen that a man has done wrong to another, and suffers hunger and cold at the hands of him whom he considers entitled to inflict them upon him; in this case, the nobler he is, the less will his anger be excited. But it may also happen that he suffers a wrong; if this is the case, he boils and chafes, and takes the side of what he believes to be justice, and endures hunger and cold and other hardships, and overcomes them, and will not desist from the right until he conquers or dies, or is calmed down by reason, as a shepherd quiets his dog.” Anger corresponds with the class of the brave defenders in the state; as these grasp their weapons in behalf of reason within the state, so does anger take the part of reason, if it has not been perverted by an evil up-bringing. Therefore wisdom in the state is the same as in the individual, and this is true of courage also. For the rest, temperance is the harmony of the several moments of what pertains to nature; and justice, as in external matters it consists in each doing his own duty, so, in the inner life, it consists in each moment of the mind obtaining its right, and not interfering in the affairs of the others, but leaving them to do as they will.[69] We have thus the deduction of three moments, where the middle place between universality and particularity is filled by anger in its independence and as directed against the objective: it is the freedom which turns back within itself and acts negatively. Even here, where Plato has no consciousness of his abstract ideas, as he has in the Timæus, this of a truth is inwardly present to him, and everything is moulded thereby. This is given as the plan according to which Plato draws up the great whole. To fill up the outlines is a mere detail, which in itself has no further interest.
b. In the second place Plato indicates the means of maintaining the state. As, speaking generally, the whole commonwealth rests on common morality as the minds of individuals grown into nature, this question is asked: How does Plato arrange that everyone takes as his own that form of activity for which he is specially marked out, and that it presents itself as the moral acting and willing of the individual,—that everyone, in harmony with temperance, submits to filling this his post? The main point is to train the individuals thereto. Plato would produce this ethical quality directly in the individuals, and first and foremost in the guardians, whose education is therefore the most important part of the whole, and constitutes the very foundation. For as it is to the guardians themselves that the care is committed of producing this ethical quality through maintenance of the laws, in these laws special attention must be given to the guardians’ education; after that also to the education of the warriors. The condition of affairs in the industrial class causes the state but little anxiety, “for though cobblers should prove poor and worthless, and should be only in appearance what they ought to be, that is no great misfortune for the state.”[70] The education of the presidents should, however, be carried on chiefly by means of philosophic science, which is the knowledge of the universal and absolute. Plato in this passes over the particular means of education, religion, art, science. Further on he speaks again and more in detail on the question of how far music and gymnastic are to be permitted as means. But the poets Homer and Hesiod he banishes from his state, because he thinks their representations of God unworthy.[71] For then began in real earnest an inquiry into the belief in Jupiter and the stories told by Homer, inasmuch as such particular representations had been taken as universal maxims and divine laws. At a certain stage of education childish tales do no harm; but were they to be made the foundation of the truth of morality, as present law, the case would be different. The extermination of the nations which we read of in the writings of the Israelites, the Old Testament, might for instance be taken as a standard of national rights, or we might try to make a precedent of the numerous base acts committed by David, the man of God, or of the horrors which the priesthood, in the person of Samuel, practised and authorized against Saul. Then it would be high time to place these records on a lower level, as something past, something merely historical. Plato would further have preambles to the laws, wherein citizens would be admonished as to their duties, and convinced that these exist, &c.[72] They also should be shown how to choose that which is most excellent, in short, to choose morality.
But here we have a circle: the public life of the state subsists by means of morality, and, conversely, morality subsists by means of institutions. Morals cannot be independent of institutions, that is, institutions cannot be brought to bear on morals through educational establishments or religion only. For institutions must be looked on as the very first condition of morality, for this is the manner in which institutions are subjective. Plato himself gives us to understand how much contradiction he expects to find. And even now his defect is commonly considered to lie in his being too idealistic, while his real deficiency consists in his not being ideal enough. For if reason is the universal force, it is essentially spiritual; thus to the realm of the spiritual belongs subjective freedom, which had already been held up as a principle in the philosophy of Socrates. Therefore reason ought to be the basis of law, and so it is, on the whole. But, on the other hand, conscience, personal conviction,—in short, all the forms of subjective freedom—are essentially therein contained. This subjectivity at first, it is true, stands in opposition to the laws and reason of the state-organism as to the absolute power which desires to appropriate to itself—through the external necessity of wants, in which, however, there is absolute reason—the individual of the family. Individual conscience proceeds from the subjectivity of free-will, connects itself with the whole, chooses a position for itself, and thus makes itself a moral fact. But this moment, this movement of the individual, this principle of subjective freedom, is sometimes ignored by Plato, and sometimes even intentionally disparaged, because it proved itself to be what had wrought the ruin of Greece; and he considers only how the state may best be organized, and not subjective individuality. In passing beyond the principle of Greek morality, which in its substantial liberty cannot brook the rise of subjective liberty, the Platonic philosophy at once grasps the above principle, and in so doing proceeds still farther.
c. In the third place, in regard to the exclusion of the principle of subjective freedom, this forms a chief feature in the Republic of Plato, the spirit of which really consists in the fact, that all aspects in which particularity as such has established its position, are dissolved in the universal,—all men simply rank as man in general.
α. It specially harmonizes with this particular quality of excluding the principle of subjectivity, that Plato in the first place does not allow individuals to choose their own class; this we demand as necessary to freedom. It is not, however, birth which marks off the different ranks, and determines individuals for these; but everyone is tested by the governors of the state, who are the elders of the first class, and have the education of individuals in their hands. According as anyone has natural ability and talents, these elders make choice and selection, and assign each man to a definite occupation.[73] This seems in direct contradiction to our principle, for although it is considered right that to a certain class there should belong a special capacity and skill, it always remains a matter of inclination which class one is to belong to; and with this inclination, as an apparently free choice, the class makes itself for itself. But it is not permitted that another individual should prescribe as to this, or say, for example: “Because you are not serviceable for anything better, you are to be a labourer.” Everyone may make the experiment for himself; he must be allowed to decide regarding his own affairs as subject in a subjective manner, by his own free will, as well as in consideration of external circumstances; and nothing must therefore be put in his way if he says, for instance: “I should like to apply myself to study.”
β. From this determination it further follows that Plato (De Republica, III. pp. 416, 417 Steph.; pp. 162-164 Bekk.) in like manner altogether abolished in his state the principle of private property. For in it individuality, the individual consciousness, becomes absolute; or the person is looked on as implicit, destitute of all content. In law, as such, I rank as “this” implicitly and explicitly. All rank thus, and I rank only because all rank, or I rank only as universal; but the content of this universality is fixed particularity. When in a question of law we have to do with law, as such, to the judges of the case it matters not a whit whether this or that man actually possesses the house, and likewise the contending parties think nothing of the possession of the thing for which they strive, but of right for right’s sake, (as in morality duty is done for duty’s sake): thus a firm hold is kept of the abstraction, and from the content of reality abstraction is made. But Being to Philosophy is no abstraction, but the unity of the universal and reality, or its content. The content has therefore weight only in as far as it is negatively posited in the universal; thus only as returning into it, and not absolutely. In so far as I use things,—not in so far as I have them merely in my possession, or as they have worth for me as existent, as definitely fixed on me,—they stand in living relation to me. With Plato, then, those of the other class (cf. supra, p. 101, note) carry on handicrafts, trade, husbandry, and procure what will satisfy the general requirements, without acquiring personal property by means of their work, for they are all one family, wherein each has his appointed occupation; but the product of the work is common, and he receives as much as he requires both of his own and of the general product. Personal property is a possession which belongs to me as a certain person, and in which my person as such comes into existence, into reality; on this ground Plato excludes it. It remains, however, unexplained how in the development of industries, if there is no hope of acquiring private property, there can be any incentive to activity; for on my being a person of energy very much depends my capacity for holding property. That an end would be put to all strifes and dissensions and hatred and avarice by the abolition of private property, as Plato thinks, (De Republica, V. p. 464 Steph.; pp. 243, 244 Bekk.) may very well be imagined in a general way; but that is only a subordinate result in comparison with the higher and reasonable principle of the right of property: and liberty has actual existence only so far as property falls to the share of the person. In this way we see subjective freedom consciously removed by Plato himself from his state.
γ. For the same reason Plato also abolishes marriage, because it is a connection in which persons of opposite sex, as such, remain mutually bound to one another, even beyond the mere natural connection. Plato does not admit into his state family life—the particular arrangement whereby a family forms a whole by itself,—because the family is nothing but an extended personality, a relationship to others of an exclusive character within natural morality,—which certainly is morality, but morality of such a character as belongs to the individual as particularity. According to the conception of subjective freedom, however, the family is just as necessary, yea, sacred to the individual as is property. Plato, on the contrary, causes children to be taken away from their mothers immediately after birth, and has them gathered together in a special establishment, and reared by nurses taken from among the mothers who gave them birth; he has them brought up in common, so that no mother can possibly recognize her child. There are certainly to be marriage celebrations, and each man is to have his particular wife, but in such a way that the intercourse of man and wife does not pre-suppose a personal inclination, and that it should not be their own pleasure which marks out individuals for one another. The women should bear children from the twentieth to the fortieth year, the men should have wives from the thirtieth to the fifty-fifth year. To prevent incest, all the children born at the time of a man’s marriage shall be known as his children.[74] The women, whose natural vocation is family life, are by this arrangement deprived of their sphere. In the Platonic Republic it therefore follows that as the family is broken up, and the women no longer manage the house, they are also no longer private persons, and adopt the manners of the man as the universal individual in the state. And Plato accordingly allows the women to take their part like the men in all manly labours, and even to share in the toils of war. Thus he places them on very nearly the same footing as the men, though all the same he has no great confidence in their bravery, but stations them in the rear only, and not even as reserve, but only as arrière-garde, in order that they may at least inspire the foe with terror by their numbers, and, in case of necessity, hasten to give aid.[75]
These are the main features of the Platonic Republic, which has as its essential the suppression of the principle of individuality; and it would appear as though the Idea demanded this, and as if this were the very point on which Philosophy is opposed to the ordinary way of looking at things, which gives importance to the individual, and thus in the state, as also in actualized mind, looks on the rights of property, and the protection of persons and their possessions, as the basis of everything that is. Therein, however, lies the very limit of the Platonic Idea—to emerge only as abstract idea. But, in fact, the true Idea is nothing else than this, that every moment should perfectly realize and embody itself, and make itself independent, while at the same time, in its independence, it is for mind a thing sublated. In conformity with this Idea, individuality must fully realize itself, must have its sphere and domain in the state, and yet be resolved in it. The element of the state is the family, that is, the family is the natural unreasoning state; this element must, as such, be present. Then the Idea of the state constituted by reason has to realize all the moments of its Notion in such a way that they become classes, and the moral substance divides itself into portions, as the bodily substance is separated into intestines and organs, each of which lives on in a particular way of its own, yet all of which together form only one life. The state in general, the whole, must finally pervade all. But in exactly the same way the formal principle of justice, as abstract universality of personality with individual Being as its existent content, must pervade the whole; one class, nevertheless, specially belongs to it. There must, then, also be a class in which property is held immediately and permanently, the possession of the body and the possession of a piece of land alike; and in the next place, a class where acquisition is continually going on, and possession is not immediate, as in the other, but property is ever fluctuating and changing. These two classes the nation gives up as a part of itself to the principle of individuality, and allows rights to reign here, permitting the constant, the universal, the implicit to be sought in this principle, which really is a principle of variability. This principle must have its full and complete reality, it must indeed appear in the shape of property. We have here for the first time the true, actual mind, with each moment receiving its complete independence, and the mind itself attaining to being-another in perfect indifference of Being. Nature cannot effect this production of independent life in her parts, except in the great system.[76] This is, as we shall elsewhere see, the great advance of the modern world beyond the ancient, that in it the objective attains to greater, yea, to absolute independence, but for the very same reason returns with all the greater difficulty into the unity of the Idea.