THE FORMATION

OF A SOCIETY
P R E S E N T E D BY S AT O R R E , C I N C O F L O R E S ,
& MODEQUILLO
 PLATO’S REPUBLIC

- Contains his account and answer to the

question. What Is Justice?
- It contains the belief of Socrates that humans
enter political life since each is not self-sufficient.
- Each human has certain natural abilities and
doing a single job he is naturally suited for is the
most efficient way of satisfying the needs of the
citizens.
 PLATO’S REPUBLIC
• It is Plato’s most read dialogue which is considered a work for
either ethics or politics or even for both.
• The Republic begins with a dialogue between Polemarchus and
Socrates.
• Polemarchus claimed that to be just is to give what is due and
appropriate; it was even said that justice is what is owed to
friends, while harm is owed to enemies.
• Socrates’ objection to this claim is by asking whether is
applicable to every case or situation requiring justice.
• In the second book, Trassymachus claimed that injustice is
better than justice, because an unjust person who commits
injustice undetected is always happier than the just person.
 PLATO’S REPUBLIC
• Socrates offers three counter arguments: (1) the just man is wise
and good, the unjust man is ignorant and bad; (2) injustice
produces internal disharmony which prevents effective action; and
(3) virtue is excellence in one’s function, and a just person lives
happier life because he performs functions of the human soul well
• The second book of the Republic showed Glaucon’s account since
he was dissatisfied with the definition which Socrates describes.
Glaucon claimed that injustice arises from the compromise
between weak people who are afraid that suffering injustice is
worse than doing it and justice is desirable only for its rewards;
hence, people need not be just but pretend only to be just as the
unjust person who has the reputation of justice is happier than the
person who has the reputation of injustice.
 PLATO’S REPUBLIC
• Socrates then began imagining the origins of civic life, why
human enter political life. Book III of the Republic until Book
X expounded on Socrates’ conception of justice where he
claimed that if the individual citizen is just, then the city-
state will be just as well. JUSTICE was defined as the
harmony in the citizens where they are to do their roles
suited to their souls. In book VIII, Socrates even argued that
democracy is an unjust regime.
• By having a balance soul, Socrates believed that a person
will lead one to act justly. A balanced soul is a person who
is led by reason and whose spirited part and appetitive part
are aligned to that of reason.
 PLATO’S REPUBLIC
• In the account of Plato in the Republic, Individuals
are not self-sufficient. Second, they organize
themselves into city-state to address other needs.
Justice comes into the picture if one does his or
her duty or what is suited to his or her person,
that is, if you are naturally suited to govern, you
have to do so. But if you are naturally suited to
protect the state, then you are not suppose to
rule because the state will be unjust.
THE STATE OF
NATURE
 ARISTOTLE’S POLITICS
• Aristotle claimed that man is, by nature, an animal fit for
a state.
• “The village seems to be by nature in the highest degree,
as a colony of a household . . . This is why states are first
ruled by king: they were formed from persons who were
under kingly rule. For every household is under the kingly
rule of it's most senior member, so too colonies, because
of the kinship. The complete association from several
villages is the state, which at once reaches the limit of
social sufficiency, so to say. Whereas it comes into
existence for the sake of life, it exists for the sake of the
good life.” - Aristotle, Politics
 HOBBES’S LEVIATHAN
• Hobbes’ Leviathan argues that the state of nature is a state or war,
where every man is an enemy to every man
• The condition of a man, as described by Hobbes in the leviathan,
express why it is necessary to form a society where power is to be had
to obtain peace. Man is recognized as equal in all his faculties. If
Hobbes will describe you as a human being, he will say that you have
the capacity that is equal to another. What is unfortunate in this
situation is when the needs or desires that you have similar to
another's needs or desires are limited; thus you both cannot enjoy.
Man described as an enemy to every man does not necessarily mean
they engage in a physical war but their quarrels are the effects of the
equality in attaining ends. According to Hobbes without the power or
the government, justice or injustice and right or wrong will not exist as
well.
 HOBBES’S LEVIATHAN
“The passions that incline men to peace are
fear of death, desire of such things as are
necessary to commodious living; and a hope by
their industry to obtain them, and reason
suggesteth convenient articles of peace, upon
which men may be drown to agreement.”
-Thomas Hobbes , "The Misery Of The Natural
Condition Of Mankind" In Leviathan
 LOCKE’S TWO TREATISES OF CIVIL
GOVERNMENT
• The state of nature then, according to Locke, is this; "In the
state of nature, everyone has the executive power of the law
of nature. Men living together according to reason without a
common superior on earth, with authority to judge between
them, is properly the state of nature.“
• All men are in a state of perfect freedom to order their
actions and dispose of their possessions and their persons as
they think they fit within the bounds of the Law of nature,
without asking, leaving or depending upon the will of any
other man.
ROUSSEAU’S THE SOCIAL CONTRACT
DISCOURSES
• Rousseau believes that man possesses a natural
virtue. Man having no moral relations or
determinate obligations one with another could not
either be good or bad, virtuous or vicious.
• Based on Rousseau’s analysis, the true nature of
man in a state of nature is that man can support
himself; he could have no feelings and no
knowledge except that which belief his situation.
 MARX AND ENGELS
• Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels begin their account of the nature of
man with some premises that are empirical or real. The first premise
is that living human individuals exist. Second, man is distinct from
animals because of consciousness and his capacity to “produce” his
means of subsistence.
• “The way in which men produce their means of subsistence depends
first of all on the nature and the actual means of subsistence they
find in existence and have to reproduce. What they are coincides
with their production, both with what they produce and with how
they produce. The nature of individuals thus depends on the material
conditions determining their production.” - Marx and Engels, as cited
in Rosen and Wolff, The German Ideology