In Plato’s Republic he defines justice as “doing one’s own work and not meddling with what is not one’s own” (Plato 139, 433b). This definition begs the question what is one’s own work? Plato states that one’s own work is the work that one’s nature is best suited for, as each person is born with a different nature (Plato 101, 370b). To come to this definition Plato compares justice within the human soul to justice within a city. If Plato can find justice within the city and prove that the individual is only a smaller version of the city then he will have found the form of justice, the aspect by which we recognize justice in anything else.
In Book II of Republic Plato constructs a city from scratch because he claims that it is much easier to find justice in a city, than to try and look for it in a single man (Plato 100, 368d). In this city he places a variety of different craftsmen (Plato 100-103, 369d-371e), which correspond with the appetitive element of the......

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Title: Plato's Theory Of Justice
Approximate Word Count: 884
Approximate Pages: 4 (250 words per double-spaced page)

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