Rather than being full-blown ethical, philosophical, and aesthetic relativists who denied all standards of goodness, truth, and beauty, the sophists of ancient Athens were cultural relativists who believed the codes to which Athenians rightly adhered were not binding on the citizens of Sparta, Thebes, or Corinth, and certainly not on the barbarians of Persia, Babylon, or Egypt. Athenian justice was a good, true, and beautiful thing, but it was neither transcendent nor supernatural. It was strictly polis-bound and could not claim universal authority.

So thought the sophists. Socrates and Plato begged to differ. Though neither was opposed to passing down uniquely Athenian rituals and traditions to the next generation, both understood that a definition of Justice or Courage or Wisdom or Love that was only true in Athens was not a true definition. That discovery would change philosophy and education forever, setting it on a trajectory that would help lay the foundation for classical Christian education.   

True education was not to be grounded in fickle, man-made concepts that alter when they alteration find, but in permanent truths that do not change or die as a result of political, economic, or social upheavals. To be educated is not merely to learn facts but to have one’s character shaped against these eternal touchstones. 

Chief among those touchstones is the classical virtue of justice, a virtue to which Plato devoted a lengthy, ten-book dialogue. In his Republic, Plato, through the mouth of Socrates, seeks a definition of justice that is true for all times and places and not merely for this or that given situation. By the end, he demonstrates that justice is a kind of balance in which each part of the collective city, and each part of the individual soul, performs its proper function.

But Plato is interested in more than defining justice. He takes pains to explain as well why the practice of justice is vital to a healthy state and to a healthy soul. Why should educators seek to mold their students in accordance with justice? Would it not be more practical to teach students how to gain power, wealth, and pleasure? Would we not serve our students better if we taught them how to appear just on the outside while secretly doing and getting and having whatever they want? 

The answer is no, but it takes Plato most of the Republic to prove it. He begins in Book II by having Glaucon challenge Socrates to convince him it is better to be just than unjust. His challenge comes in the form of two hypothetical men: one who is perfectly unjust but whom everyone believes to be just and rewards richly; the other who is perfectly just but who is falsely condemned as unjust and put to death. Surely, argues Glaucon, playing devil’s advocate, it is better to be the celebrated unjust man than the persecuted just man.

If Socrates can’t defend the superiority of justice, then farewell to classical education that builds character, and welcome to utilitarian education that trains students for success in life; goodbye to the liberal arts mission of freeing (liberating) the mind and soul from bondage to ignorance and vice, and hello to the vocational mission of making students marketable. 

Though Plato’s complex argument involves framing a just city, establishing an educational system to shape leaders for that city, discussing the nature of reality and illusion, and tracing the natural cycle of political growth and decay, his defense of the goodness and practicality of justice comes down to what justice and injustice do to the soul of the individual.

The just man, Socrates explains in Book IV, “does not permit the several elements within him to interfere with one another, or any of them to do the work of others, —he sets in order his own inner life, and is his own master and his own law, and at peace with himself” (Jowett translation; 443d). The unjust man, in contrast, is enslaved to the basest, most appetitive part of his soul. His injustice allows him to evade all external authority, whether legal, social, or moral, leaving him a servant of his own inner passions and lusts. Unfortunately for him, our passions and lusts are the forces that lead us to self-destructive behavior. “Freed” from political, religious, and pedagogical rulers and guides, the unjust man ends up enslaved to the harshest of taskmasters.

Such is the case, Socrates argues in Book VIII, with the spoiled son of a radically democratic father. With no boundaries or constraints to stem the self-expression of his appetites, he veers wildly from no-holds-barred licentiousness to rigid, anti-humanistic asceticism. He knows nothing of justice, for he knows nothing of appropriate limits or proper balance. His soul given over to injustice, he loses all sense of right and wrong, good and evil, virtue and vice. It is then, Socrates warns, that “the wild beast within us, gorged with meat or drink, starts up and having shaken off sleep, goes forth to satisfy his desires; and there is no conceivable folly or crime—not excepting incest or any other unnatural union, or parricide, or the eating of forbidden food—which at such a time, when he has parted company with all shame and sense, a man may not be ready to commit” (571c-d).

The role of the classical educator is to prevent such dehumanization by opening his students’ eyes to the true nature of justice, instilling in them a desire to live up to that standard, and providing them with role models of those who have chosen and stayed true to the difficult but life-affirming path of virtue in general and justice in particular. 

Louis Markos, Professor in English and Scholar in Residence at Houston Christian University, holds the Robert H. Ray Chair in Humanities; he devotes a chapter each to Plato’s Republic in his Passing the Torch: An Apology for Classical Christian Education and From Plato to Christ: How Platonic Thought Shaped the Christian Faith. 

 

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