Popper on Justice in Plato (Prof. Bailly's summary of Popper Chapter 6)


There are several ways to approach the topics of justice and the state and their relation.

Popper suggests that the proper way is a technological one: first, determine rational goals, then determine what technology will lead to those goals.

Another way to approach the matter is to ask what justice and the state are essentially. What is their definition and essence. That is Plato's approach. Be sure to be aware that Plato is not seeking a dictionary definition. He is seeking an account which identifies the proper character of something that actually exists, that has an essence. He seems to assume that justice is such a thing: it actually exists and has an essence. It is not a human construct, in other words.

Plato, in his discussion of "justice," may be talking about something that no one else would call "justice." If Plato is doing so, then he is blameworthy, because he is misleading (Dahl and Irwin are two scholars who pursue this point).

Popper offers 5 traits of "justice" that he thinks most of us will agree to (I quote him from P.89):
  1. an equal distribution of the burden of citizenship, i.e. of those limitations of freedom which are necessary in social life;
  2. equal treatment of the citizens before the law, provided, of course, that;
  3. the laws show neither favor nor disfavour towards individual citizens or groups or classes;
  4. impartiality of the courts of justice; and
  5. an equal share in the advantages (and not only in the burden) which membership of the state may offer to its citizens.
We might consider these the "rational goals" that Popper talked about at the start of the chapter.

Popper further asserts that this idea of justice was not foreign to Greece. "Equalitarian" justice was, in fact, the popular notion of justice in Athens, and was the target of Plato's attack, although he did not take it on directly. The idea of equality before the law is seen in Pericles' funeral speech and had a technical name in Greek, isonomia.

Popper asserts that Plato thought justice was "that which is in the interest of the best state...to arrest all change, by the maintenance of a rigid class division and class rule." Popper further asserts that Plato's state and the principles which it embodies are identical with totalitarianism. Popper identifies 5 principles upon which Plato bases the best state (P87: the following is quoted selectively):
  1. The strict division of the classes
  2. the identification of the fate of the state with that of the ruling class; the exclusive interest in this class, and in its unity; and subservient to this unity, the rigid rules for breeding and educating this class, and the strict supervision and collectivization of the interests of its members.
  3. the ruling class has a monopoly of things like military virtues and training...but it is excluded from any participation in economic activities, and especially from earning money.
  4. There must be a censorship of all intellectual activities of the ruling class, and a continual propaganda aiming at moulding and unifying their minds. All innovation in education, legislation, and religion must be prevented or suppressed.
  5. The state must be self-sufficient. It must aim at economic autarchy: for otherwise the rulers would either be dependent upon traders, or become traders themselves. The first of these alternatives would undermine their power, the second their unity and the stability of the state.
Popper observes, correctly, that for Plato justice in a state is a quality of the whole state rather than of any individual in it, or even a relationship between some individuals. For Plato, justice is harmony among the classes and belongs to the whole state.
By way of contrasting Plato's justice with equalitarian justice, Popper creates the following list (quoted from P. 94: ae, be, and ce are the equalitarian side, ap, bp, and cp are the Platonic counterparts)   A(E) means that birth, abilities, wealth, connection, etc. should not influence the administration of the laws. Pericles says in Thuc. "our laws afford equal justice to all alike in their private disputes, but we do not ignore the claims of excellence. When a citizen distinguishes himself, he is then preferred to the public service, not as a matter of privilege, but as a reward for merit."

Both A(E) and A(P) can be defended by assertions about "nature." Plato claimed that humans are not equal by nature, and so should be treated in proportion to their qualities, not all alike. Things should also be expected from them in proportion to their qualities. Popper maintains that Plato also used a psychological appeal to human pride in that he suggested to his readers that they were superior to the average human. A(P) is found in Plato's formulation that justice consists in everyone sticking to their own task. "to keep and to practise what belongs to us and is our own will be generally agreed upon to be justice," says Socrates.

Popper thinks that B(E) and B(P) need to be further examined. "Individualism" in particular can mean two things: 1) the opposite of collectivism, and 2) the opposite of altruism. Collectivism is the demand that the individual should subserve the interests of the whole. Popper asserts that 1) and 2) are two distinct things, but Plato has conflated them. In other words, Popper claims that Plato says that we should not be individualist, because that is the same thing as being selfish (individualism as the opposite of altruism). Next Plato says that in order to avoid selfishness, we must be collectivist (collectivism as the opposite of individualism). With that logic, Plato has argued that we should subserve the interests of the individual to those of the state. If Popper is right about Plato and about the argument, then Plato is guilty of a hugely important error. Namely, he has ignored the fact that one can be individualist without being selfish, and so his conclusion that we should be collectivist is not justified. It is clear that Plato thought that the individual exists for the sake of the state and not the other way around.

Popper's central claim about Plato and justice is that Plato has made a tremendous mistake. Plato has, namely, failed to acknowledge that one can be individualist and yet an altruist.

If we look to the first two books of the Republic, we find in Glaucon's challenge some confirmation of Popper's assessment. Glaucon's challenge and the choice of lives argue or assume that people are inherently selfish if given the chance. Popper does not so much argue that people are inherently altruistic as rail against Plato for claiming that the only choices are to be selfish or collectivist. Popper claims that individualism (the non-selfish kind) is what is championed in Pericles' funeral oration, and what leads to the breakdown of tribalism and the rise of democracy in Athens. He thinks that individualism united with altruism is the basis of western civilization (P. 102). He cites Kant's principle "always recognize that human individuals are ends, and do not use them as mere means to your ends."

In the Republic, Plato has, according to Popper, done all that he can to eradicate individualism. Property, children, and spouses are held in common. Each person should be thoroughly accustomed to obeying orders from superiors and should have no initiative.
Popper also claims that within Plato's works, we can find a strain of thought that is individualistic. It is an earlier strain of thought that is more Socratic than Platonic. In the Gorgias for instance, there is the notorious claim that it is better to suffer injustice than to do it. That claim is, says Popper, altruistic and individualistic. By contrast, says Popper, in the Republic, injustice is not something done to an individual, but to the state. Sure, killing someone is unjust, but it is unjust because it injures the state, not because it harms an individual (even though it necessarily does so).

Popper claims that Plato has pulled a sleight of hand in the Republic, where individualism is identified with the moral nihilism of Thrasymachus. Fighting against Thrasymachus is clearly a good thing, and insofar as Thrasymachus represents individualism, fighting against individualism is thus also a good thing.

In defining justice in the Republic, we find the following passage (Popper annoyingly never gives the page number):

We have three classes in our city, and I take it that any such plotting or changing from one class to another is a great crime against the city, and may rightly be denounced as the utmost wickedness?"
Assuredly.
But you will certainly declare that utmost wickedness towards one's own city is injustice?
Certainly.
Then this is injustice. And conversely, we shall say that when each class in the city attends to its own business, the money-earning class as well as the auxiliaries and the guardians, then this will be justice.

That passage is a clear statement of what injustice is and so is central in the definition of what justice and injustice are in the Republic. Popper notes that injustice amounts to any change or violation of the caste system, anything that harms the city, and anything opposite to those things is justice. That code is strictly utilitarian: morality is simply whatever is in the state's interest. An aside that might interest the political scientists in class: here Popper says that he is explicitly arguing against Hegel's explicit recognition of the amorality of the state and nihilism in international relations.

In contrast to Plato's totalitarian justice, Popper suggests that Lycophron presented a theory of humanitarian justice. We do not have any treatise of Lycophron's, but we have what others said about him. Popper's presentation of humanitarian justice is as follows.
We should start from the question "what do we demand from the state? what is its legitimate aim? why do we prefer to live in a well-ordered state than an anarchy?" The humanitarian reply is that we demand protection from the state, protection from ourselves and others, protection from aggression. Popper asserts that in order to protect certain freedoms of the individual, the state curtails some freedoms, but that does not lead to an arbitrary situation where the question "Which freedoms?" can only be answered arbitrarily. Popper thinks the prior question "What do we demand from the state?" sets the stage, and the subsequent problem is one of technology (i.e. the technology that is the state can provide what we want, but not all of it, and it will interfere with some of it). That such a thing is possible, Popper claims, is demonstrated by the existence of democracies that do it.

Important traits of the humanitarian theory are that it does not assume any particular historical origin of the state, it does not assume anything about human nature or the nature of the state, and it does not make any claims about "natural" rights to freedom.

Two typical objections arise to the humanitarian theory, according to Popper. They are that the state is something greater than the individuals in it and that the state is a moral agent that should be concerned with the morality of its parts. The first one amounts to a demand that the state be worshipped, according to Popper. He does not take the first seriously, because he finds it so clearly distasteful. The second objection, he says, amounts to relieving individuals of their moral responsibility. If the state is to dictate morality, then the individual need not decide what is moral (an example of this is the tendency to think that as long as it is legal, it is all right to do it: think of recent business scandals). Popper says that politics should be held to moral standards, not the other way around.

Popper maintains that the humanitarian theory of justice is presented by Glaucon in book II of the Republic. But, he claims, the theory is presented in historicist form as a theory of the origin of justice. Lycophron, however, from what Popper can tell, did not formulate it as a historicist doctrine that assumed a particular origin of justice. What is more, the humanitarian theory is presented by Glaucon "as if its logical premises were necessarily selfish and even nihilistic; i.e. as if the protectionist view of the state was upheld only by those who would like to inflict injustice, but are too weak to do so, and who therefore demand that the strong should not do so either; a presentation which is certainly not fair, since the only necessary premise of the theory is the demand that crime, or injustice, should be suppressed." (P116).

Glaucon presents his theory as a challenge to Socrates, but also as a reformulation of Thrasymachus' theory. Glaucon, says Popper, at several points claims that protectionism is logically based on the idea that injustice is preferable if one can get away with it. Popper says that Plato does not treat of any theory of protectionism of the individual that does not rest on moral nihilism. In other words, Plato has ignored a rival theory of justice. Popper acknowledges that the theory he likes, which he calls humanitarianism, protectionism, and individualism, rests on an assumption: namely, he assumes that injustice is evil. (there is a potentially huge problem here: does Popper assume that he knows what injustice and justice are in order to "prove" what justice is? probably not: maybe he could claim that by "injustice is evil," he means "things that are ordinarily considered unjust, like stealing, fraud, murder, assault, etc., also happen to be evil").