Justice as virtue and harmony: a socratic account

Abstract

In what follows I would like to try to draw your attention to certain passages from Plato and Xenophon which are indicative, I believe, of the Socratic way of philosophising as it relates to his novel conception of justice as virtue and harmony both in the well-ordered souls of ideal citizens. It will become clear, I hope, that Socrates' paradoxical politics of the human soul in search for true happiness through a virtuous life, and his conception of justice as an internal personal affair, contrasts sharply with the external and social theory of justice in its long history from Glaucon and Thrasymachus in antiquity, to Locke and Rousseau in modern times, to John Rawls in our times.