Justice

In The Republic, the first work of Political Philosophy, and perhaps his most important one, Plato defines the ideal political entity in terms of Justice, as an organic body in which each member fulfills a function to which they are naturally suited. These days, Justice hardly seems to be a matter of concern in political debates, but, in fact, one aspect of it is implicit in one of the fundamental conflicts of the time. At issue is which type of Justice has priority, retributive or distributive, in the sphere of economics. The former holds that what each citizen should receive is a function of what they worked for, while the latter maintains that equatability should be the overriding basis of what each gets. The contrast between the political Right and Left can be understood along these lines. To a certain extent, this division is implicit in Plato's vision, which combines both consideration for the totality and for each member, with no hint of a recognition of a potential conflict between both aspects, so, no indication of which might have priority for him. One reason why the question may not have even arisen for Plato is that his notion of Justice is determined not in terms of economics at all, not in terms of what someone should or should not receive, but, rather, with respect to who someone is, and what they do best. Even contemporary polictical theorists who acknowledge the influence of The Republic on their thinking tend to forget that the guiding question of the work is 'What is a Just man?'. For example, Conservative William Bennett's recent book listing personal virtues does not even mention Justice. But for Plato, the two dimensions of Justice are the collective, and the personal, which Aristotle subsequently distinguishes as Politics and Ethics, respectively, but for analytic purposes only, not to deny their existential interrelatedness. So, one lesson to be drawn from them is that any dispensation of Justice, retributive or distributive, depends first and foremost on the Justness of the dispenser.