Characteristic feature of the Platonic Commonwealth — specialization of services to that function for which each man is fit — will not apply to one individual separately.
The characteristic feature of the Platonic commonwealth is to specialize the service of each individual in that function for which he is most fit. It is assumed, that each will render due service to the rest, and will receive from them due service in requital. Upon this assumption, Plato pronounces that the community will be happy.
Let us grant for the present that this conclusion follows from his premisses. He proceeds forthwith to apply it by analogy to another and a different case — the case of the individual man. He presumes complete analogy between the community and an individual.[33] To a certain extent, the analogy is real: but it fails on the main point which Plato’s inference requires as a basis. The community, composed of various and differently endowed members, suffices to itself and its own happiness: “the individual is not sufficient to himself, but stands in need of much aid from others”[34] — a grave fact which Plato himself proclaims as the generating cause and basis of society. Though we should admit, therefore, that Plato’s commonwealth is perfectly well-constituted, and that a well-constituted commonwealth will be happy — we cannot from thence infer that an individual, however well-constituted, will be happy. His happiness depends upon others as well as upon himself. He may have in him the three different mental varieties of souls, or three different persons — Reason, Energy, Appetite — well tempered and adjusted; so as to produce a full disposition to just behaviour on his part: but constant injustice on the part of others will nevertheless be effectual in rendering him miserable. From the happiness of a community, all composed of just men — you cannot draw any fair inference to that of one just man in an unjust community.
[33] The parallel between the Commonwealth and the individual is perpetually reproduced in Plato’s reasoning. Republic, ii. pp. 368-369, vii. p. 541 B, ix. pp. 577 C-D, 579 E, &c.
[34] Plato, Republic, ii. p. 369 B.
Thus much to show that the parallel between the community and the individual, which Plato pursues through the larger portion of the Republic, is fallacious. His affirmation — That the just man is happy in his justice, quand même — in his own mental perfection, whatever supposition may be made as to the community among whom he lives — implies that the just man is self-sufficing: and Plato himself expressly declares that no individual is self-sufficing. Indeed, no author can set forth more powerfully than Plato himself in this very dialogue — the uncomfortable and perilous position of a philosophical individual, when standing singly as a dissenter among a community with fixed habits and sentiments — unphilosophical and anti-philosophical. Such a person (Plato says) is like a man who has fallen into a den of wild beasts: he may think himself fortunate, if by careful retirement and absence from public manifestation, he can preserve himself secure and uncorrupted: but his characteristic and superior qualities can obtain no manifestation. The philosopher requires a community suited to his character. Nowhere does any such community (so Plato says) exist at present.[35]
[35] Plato, Repub. vi. pp. 494 E, 496 D, 497 B. ὥσπερ εἰς θηρία ἄνθρωπος ἐμπεσών, &c. Compare also ix. p. 592 A.
Plato has not made good his refutation — the thesis which he impugns is true.
I cannot think, therefore, that the main thesis which Sokrates professes to have established, against the difficulties raised by Glaukon, is either proved or provable. Plato has fallen into error, partly by exaggerating the parallelism between the individual man and the commonwealth: partly by attempting to reason on justice and injustice in abstract isolation, without regard to the natural consequences of either — while yet those consequences cannot be really excluded from consideration, when we come to apply to these terms, predicates either favourable or unfavourable. That justice, taken along with its ordinary and natural consequences, tends materially to the happiness of the just agent — that injustice, looked at in the same manner, tends to destroy or impair the happiness of the unjust — these are propositions true and valuable to be inculcated. But this was the very case embodied in the exhortations of the ordinary moralists and counsellors, whom Plato intends to refute. He is not satisfied to hear them praise justice taken along with its natural consequences: he stands forward to panegyrise justice abstractedly, and without its natural consequences: nay, even if followed by consequences the very reverse of those which are ordinary and natural.[36] He insists that justice is eligible and pleasing per se, self-recommending: that among the three varieties of Bona (1. That which we choose for itself and from its own immediate attractions. 2. That which is in itself indifferent or even painful, but which we choose from regard to its ulterior consequences. 3. That which we choose on both grounds, both as immediately attractive and as ultimately beneficial), it belongs to the last variety: whereas the opponents whom he impugns referred it to the second.
[36] Plato, Republic, ii. p. 367 B. εἰ γὰρ μὴ ἀφαιρήσεις ἑκατέρωθεν (i.e. both from justice and from injustice) τὰς ἀληθεῖς, τὰς δὲ ψευδεῖς προσθήσεις, οὐ τὸ δίκαιον φήσομεν ἐπαινεῖν σε, ἀλλὰ τὸ δοκεῖν, οὐδὲ τὸ ἄδικον εἶναι ψέγειν, ἀλλὰ τὸ δοκεῖν, καὶ παρακελεύεσθαι ἄδικον ὄντα λανθάνειν, &c.