Toward a Realist Morality

Abstract

AbstractPlato had a conception of justice somewhat unlike ours. While justice was about what people are due, it also was a properly functional relation of parts to a whole. Justice within a person was a matter of parts of a soul staying in their proper place. Justice within a polis was a matter of citizens minding their own business and tending to their proper roles within society. This conception may seem archaic now, yet it retains some resonance and Plato’s conception is recognizably as an ancestor of the present conception. No one is justly tasked with doing everything worth doing. Instead, in a thriving society, people develop specialties: plumbers have a job, teachers have a job, and the rest depend on them to internalize role-specific standards of excellence and integrity. In any case, for Plato, justice is a matter of people staying in their lanes.