Plato Justice And Injustice Analysis

Mahfuzul Islam Period 4
Western Political Theory Mr. Polazzo
Injustice in our Society and in Ourselves What is justice is a question that has plagued philosophers since the time of Plato when he wrote The Republic to present day. In the book, Plato uses the dialectic, between Socrates and other Athenians like Polemarchus, Cephalus, and Glacuon, to try and find the definition of justice. Through the voice of Glaucon, Plato defines justice as a compromise of sorts between advantage and fear, and injustice as the things that we wouldn’t
want done to ourselves. Then my question is: is it just to do something injust to an unjust person? A perfect example of this question being contemplated in society is the controversial debate over whether or not the death penalty should be abolished.
In my opinion, it should be abolished because doing an unjust thing to an unjust man does not make that thing justified. Murder is an unjust act because, based off of Glaucon’s definition of injustice, a healthy and sane person would never intentionally want someone else to kill them on purpose which means that society considers murder unjust. That is why, it should not go around killing people on purpose because by doing so it joins the ranks of criminals. In a way it is also kind of ironic because humanity calls murderers the “scum of society”, yet it thinks that by executing them it is a “hero”. However, people are judged by their actions, and killing another human being is about as profound as actions come. The death penalty is a lot like injustice because people want to commit injustices, but they don’t want unjust things done to them, which is like people wanting other people to be executed, but if they were the ones that were being killed then they wouldn’t want it. Whichever way you look at it, killing another human isn't humane, not even close, and when you get into the details it is simply vengeful and
cruel.
In reality, as well, there are no benefits to capital punishment. Some people might think the death penalty is needed to be “tough on crime”, but did you know that since Canada stopped executing people their murder rate has dropped by 44 percent? This means that there is no correlation between the death penalty and the crime rate in a country. Also, a study done in California showed that it was actually more expensive to execute a person than to keep them in jail for life, so, strictly economically speaking, the death penalty doesn’t save us money instead it costs us more. In fact, it costs up to ten times more to give someone the death penalty than to incarcerate them for life. Moreover, a study done by the National Academy of Sciences shows that four percent of death row inmates are innocent in the United States. That means the U.S. is not only killing guilty people, but they are also killing innocent people four percent of the time. Now some of you might be thinking that the death penalty is needed to deter crime, but according to Amnesty International there is no evidence of it deterring violent crimes. This makes sense because most of the people that commit crimes think that they are going to get away with it, which is evident through Glaucon’s allegory involving the legend of the ring of Gyges. The conclusion of this allegory is that people would only be unjust if they thought they could get away with unjust acts, and that no one is just because justice is desirable in itself.
Ultimately, though Glaucon’s idea of justice being undesirable is shot down by Socrates, who states that it is desirable to be just by giving the example of the tyrant.
The tyrant, who is also the most unjust man, is the least happy, but the aristocrat, the most just man, is the most happy, which shows that it pays to be just. In turn, Socrates comes up with his own definition of justice where, just like the ideal society, the just man has to balance the rational part of his soul, the spirited part of his soul, and the appetitive part of his soul. The problem, though, is that with this definition, the hoi polloi of America is
unjust.
A great example of this is the actions of the masses on Black Friday. A time when videos pop up all over the internet of people injuring others and, in some rare cases, murdering others over materialistic objects. This day just shows how unjust the masses is because the appetitive part of their souls and the rational part of their souls are unbalanced. In this case the appetitive part consumes the majority of the soul and makes people act unjustly.
Not only are the people of America unjust individually, but together as a society they are also unjust. The ideal society described by Socrates is where the ruling class uses the guardian class to keep the producing class in order. But, what happens when the guardian class garners too much power?
A good example of this in action is law enforcement, in America, which has acquired too much power. For example, The Central Park Five were five kids who had to go to jail, even though they were innocent, because the police pressured them into lying and making up eyewitness testimonies about a rape that occurred in northern Central Park. Also, over the last few years the “producing class” or the working class has been in uproar over how the “guardian class” or law enforcement is treating unarmed black people. At first, the police was not prosecuted for shooting unarmed black people, but after massive protests occurred, the cops were held accountable.