hly critical of Athenian democracy, which encouraged its citizens to try many different professions throughout each of their lives. Plato found that a certain element of conflict or turmoil arises from conditions that promote various parts of a system to meddle with the other parts. Plato’s notion of justice clearly echoes his overall theory of a highest good, or the good in itself. The highest good is constituted by something completely above the sensible world, and understood only within the realm of intelligibility. The truths of the intelligible realm are ordered and unchanging.3 Quite similarly, Plato’s idea of the just life centers on a life characterized by an ordered and stable soul. In the just state, three main categories of people exist – the moneymakers, the soldiers, and the rulers. These three categories correspond directly with the three main divisions of the human soul – the appetitive, the spirited, and the reasonable.4 Accordingly, a just life is achieved when the parts of the soul maintain their proper functions.After establishing a definition for the just life, Socrates still leaves us, along with Glaucon and Adeimantus, searching for an answer to the question of why the just life is happier that the unjust life. In a general sense, the answer is obvious. The life of injustice means that conflict exists among the three parts of an individual’s soul, thus upsetting one’s inner harmony and happiness. Plato does not, however, fail to address the role of the pleasures in producing happiness. In fact, for Plato, happiness is based on pleasure, and each part of the soul has its own pleasure. The lowest division of the soul, the appetitive, derives pleasure from the fulfillment of the most base human desires, or pleasures of the physical body. The spirited sector of the soul derives pleasure from the attainment of honor, and the highest sector, that of reason, finds pleasu...
