so pleased

in my intro to political philosophy class, we are reading plato's republic. one of the curious features of the republic is that socrates proposes to investigate justice in a person by first investigating justice in the city:

We say, don’t we, that there is a justice that belongs to a single man, and also one that belongs to a whole city? …Perhaps, then, there will be more justice in the larger thing, and it will be easier to discern. So, if you are willing, let’s first find out what sort of thing justice is in cities, and afterward look for it in the individual, to see if the larger entity is similar in form to the smaller one. (Book II)

 

its not clear that socrates' strategy makes any sense. to see the problem, suppose that we were trying to investigate health in a mouse. would it make sense to first investigate health in an elephant, on the grounds that elephants are bigger, and then use that to understand health in the mouse? what counts as healthy in a mouse is different than what counts as healthy in an elephant. in the same way, how can we assume that justice in the city will be the same as justice in the soul?

i put this question to my students today (with white-board drawings of mouse & elephant, and person & city).

right away, one of my students from nepal answered: the difference is that a person is a part of a city, just like a cell is a part of a body. a mouse, however, is not part of an elephant. so justice in the person and city are related in a closer way. and the city will be just only if the people within it are just.

i was so pleased by this answer - already thinking in terms of parts and wholes! and this is the same student who, on the first day of class, was skeptical of democracy and spoke in favor of monarchy! perhaps she has been reading ahead, or perhaps she comes from a long line of nepali platonists.