The Analogy Of Plato’s City-state Justice And Soul Justice

In order to answer the question of "what is justice?",Plato’s Republic introduces City-State justice and individual justice to make people understand the soul or individual justice by analyzing the City-State justice.Therefore,the comparison of City-State justice and individual justice is the basis of the theory of justice in Plato’s Republic to a certain degree.However,some people questioned Plato’s justice analogy and criticized his theory of justice.The representatives are David Sachs and Bernard Williams.Sachs and Williams respectively criticized Plato’s city-state justice and soul justice analogy problems in varying degrees.As a response to them,some scholars stood in Plato’s position to defend Plato.In this paper,the author focuses on this academic question and combines the study of the text of the Republic and finds that Plato had thought about the relationship between city-state justice and soul justice a lot.Urban justice and soul justice are same in the content and similar in the construction.City-state justice and soul justice are divided by the same "justice" concept,so they are same in the content.In the structure they contain three parts and the inner order can be different,so the structure is only similar but not same.For Williams’ opinion,"the city is right and only when his people are all right".I think that people can achieved individual justice in the justice city,but the justice in state of the three classes is different.Desire and reason are not indifferently recognized because of the influence of culture,in order to meet the needs of the soul,in the justice city producers and defenders will be subject to rational rule.So the personal justice and the city-state justice will achieve in the same time.