The meaning of Justice and the theory of forms

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The Meaning of `Justice' and the Theory of Forms Author(s): Charles H. Kahn Source: The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 69, No. 18, Sixty-Ninth Annual Meeting of the

American Philosophical Association Eastern Division (Oct. 5, 1972), pp. 567-579Published by: Journal of Philosophy, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2025374Accessed: 21-05-2015 01:52 UTC

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MEANING OF JUSTICE AND THEORY OF FORMS 567

cover for themselves what justice requires, it is by so much the more important that the laws be good. It is no accident that the Socratic legacy issues in a school of jurisprudence. But the criterion of wrongfulness lies ultimately not in any set of rules, however skillfully framed, but in a single self-consistent standard of justice, fixed in the nature of things, by which the worth of rules, and all else, is to be judged, and whose use is essential to genuine virtue, based on knowledge and allied to art.

Socrates never claimed to have attained certain knowledge of that standard. The man who in the Apology knew only that he did not know does not in the Crito lay claim to full knowledge of justice and virtue. The Crito presents not demonstration, but dialectic, with the provisional quality that dialectic entails. But when dialectic has been carried through as far as possible and when such degree of clarity has been attained as human limitation permits, one must act-act on the conclusions that appear true and good. This conception of human rationality, lofty in its aim, is tentative and modest in its estimate of attainment; but, in its insistence on the sovereignty of reason, it is immodest in its rejection of a con- trary view: the view, namely, that reason is, and of a right ought to be, only the slave of the passions. That is the doctrine of Cal- licles, and it is the underlying and unstated assumption of popular rhetoric, the image of statesmanship. In the depths of that image lay disintegration, both personal and social. The Gorgias, as Pro- fessor Morrow once remarked, is an account of the descent into hell.

R. E. ALLEN

University of Toronto

THE MEANING OF 'JUSTICE' AND THE THEORY OF FORMS * P 'LATO'S theory of Forms, as expounded in the middle and

pre-middle dialogues, is among other things a theory of meaning.' By a theory of meaning I understand a very gen-

eral answer to the question: What do words mean, and how do they apply truly to things? In the first section of this paper I briefly

* To be presented in an APA symposium on Plato on the Language of Justice, December 29, 1972; R. E. Allen will be cosymposiast; see this JOURNAL, this issue, pp. 557-567.

1 For present purposes I make no distinction between the classical theory of the Phaedo and the "earlier theory of Forms" of pre-middle dialogues such as the Euthyphro and Meno. I count the Cratylus (together with Symposium, Phaedo, and Republic) among the middle dialogues.



568 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY

sketch Plato's theory of meaning. In the second section I apply this theory to the discussion of Justice in the Republic. In sections iii and iv I consider some differences between my view and the interpretation proposed by Gregory Vlastos in two papers on the Republic in 1968/69. Finally, in section v I present some specula- tive suggestions on the role of Justice among the Forms and on the problem of self-prediction.

I. THE THEORY OF MEANING

Plato's theory of meaning is essentially a theory of general terms or predicates. He speaks simply of onomata, which is naturally translated as "names." Hence we are led to say that in his theory predicates like 'beautiful' (or 'is beautiful') are regarded as naming Forms, or that the abstract term 'beauty' is treated as a proper name for the corresponding Form. Of course there is nothing wrong with translating onoma as 'name' and onomazo as 'to name'. But the implications of this rendering can be misleading, unless we keep a close grip on the following points. (1) Plato has no ter- minological distinction between name, on the one hand, and word, expression, or predicate on the other. Nor does his terminology distinguish in any systematic way between the name relation and other semantic acts or relations such as referring to, describing as, or predicating of. (2) But this does not mean that he conceives predication after the pattern of proper names in our sense. Plato has no theory of proper names as such. Like most Greeks, he seems to think of any name as a kind of condensed description. (3) Fur- thermore, his theory takes no account of the formal difference between a predicate adjective or verb and the corresponding nomi- nalization. That is to say, he treats paronymy-the transforma- tional relation between 'beauty' and 'beautiful', 'justice' and 'just'

as a phenomenon of surface grammar only, without consequence for the theory of meaning. No importance whatsoever is attached to the grammatical category of abstract singular terms. The Forms are designated equally well by nominalized adjectives like '(the) beautiful' as by abstract nominals like 'beauty'.

As a result, if it is true to say that Plato regards 'justice' as the name of a Form, it is equally true to say that he regards this Form as a predicate concept corresponding to the predicate '(is) just'. Plato makes no such distinction. But we are free (and perhaps bound) to do so for him in articulating his theory in modern terms.

The terms I choose are those of a classical tripartite theory of meaning. By a classical theory I mean one which distinguishes sign, sense, and denotation. The general pattern I have in mind



MEANING OF 'JUSTICE' AND THEORY OF FORMS 569

can be illustrated by Benson Mates's conspectus of the semantic scheme of Chrysippus with that of Frege and Carnap.2 For Plato, the three elements of the theory will be, first, the onomata or terms; second, the sense or significatum of a given term, which is the corresponding Form; and third, the denotation or extension of the term, which is the whole range of things that participate in the Form. Note that the denotation of any given term is determined by its sense (i.e., by the participation-relation to the Form), which is as it should be. (Note also that the distinction between sense and denotation will collapse at one point, if Plato admits that a Form participates in itself. But I see no evidence for this in the middle dialogues.) If I have correctly interpreted what Plato says about the Form of Name in the Cratylus, he understands the true name or term for any concept to be the sign-relation itself, as determined by the sense or significatum, i.e., by the Form. The particular linguistic or phonetic shape of a term is irrelevant, as long as it functions to signify a given Form. On this view, the true name for Jus- tice is unique and unequivocal, regardless whether we pronounce it as dikaiosyne, justitia, or Gerechtigkeit.3 In Plato's theory the Forms are the primitive concept. In semantic terms, the sense is given first; it uniquely determines its own name (whose concrete manifestation will, however, vary from one language to another), just as it determines its own extension. Names, as meaningful units of language, and things, as phenomenal properties, classes, or individuals of a given type, are both functions of Forms.

In order to define the meaning of a term, then, we must identify the Form that it signifies or "intends." "Explain to me," says Soc- rates to Euthyphro, "that very Form (eidos) by which all pious things (i.e., actions) are pious. . . . Explain to me what this Form (idea) is, so that I may consult it as a model and thusg call an action 'pious' when it is of this kind, and deny that it is pious if it is not such" (Euthyphro 6D-E). In this early statement, the relation between the Form and its extension is loosely described in terms of similarity or being "of this kind" (toiouton). In the fuller doctrine of the Phaedo, the relation is conceived as participation or sharing in the Form, for which the semantic analogue is what Plato calls 'eponomy': the things which participate in a Form bear its name eponymously, that is to say, they are named after it (Phaedo 102B,

2 Stoic Logic (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1961), p. 20. 8 For a fuller statement of this view, see my article "Language and Ontology

in the Cratylus" in Exegesis and Argument: Studies in Greek Philosophy Pre- sented to Gregory Vlastos, Phronesis Supplement Volume, forthcoming in 1973.




103B7). Thus a given term signifies or names primarily the corresponding Form; it denotes or names derivatively (or truly applies to) everything that participates in this Form. And a sentence of the form 'x is F' will be true if and only if the given value for 'x' falls within the extension of 'F', that is, if and only if the x in question participates in the Form F.

II. THE MEANING OF 'JUSTICE'

If we apply this semantic theory to the concept of Justice, the implications are obvious. To specify the meaning of 'justice' is to define a Form that can serve as a model for predication, so that we truly apply the term 'just' only if-and to the extent that-tlle subject in question participates in the Form of Justice, or resem- bles the Form, or is "of this sort." Now the ontological theory that underlies this semantics is unmistakably present in the Republic. The Form of Justice is mentioned as soon as the doctrine of Forms is introduced (476A4, 479A5, 479E3, etc.) and a clear distinction is immediately drawn between a given Form and the things that participate in it (476D1-3). But the semantic theory itself is scarcely noticed in the Republic. Socrates offers a definition of the just city and the just man; he never even asks for a definition of Justice itself. Can Plato have abandoned the view that to know the meaning of 'justice' is to know the Form of Justice? Or does he have a motive for leaving this doctrine more or less in the background?

Some of Plato's reasons for reticence are clear. The whole struc- ture of the Republic (through Book VII) is ingressive and heuris- tic, rather than deductive or demonstrative. It is like a slow moun- tain climb out from the Cave and up the Divided Line. But the final perspective from the summit-a full discussion of Dialectic and the Form of the Good-is expressly omitted from the work. The theory of Forms as such is introduced only at the end of Book V, after the discussion of justice in city and in man.

The strategic advantages of this procedure are also clear. The Republic is primarily concerned with moral theory and political reconstruction. The moral argument (that "justice pays") and the political scheme for a good society are presented in such a way as to be maximally independent of Plato's metaphysics. One need not accept the doctrine of Forms, one need not even have heard of it, in order to follow his defense of justice as an intrinsic good of the soul and to be attracted by his vision of a harmonious society with a ruling elite trained as servants of the community and deprived of all economic advantages and special class interests. Plato repeat-




edly insists that the account of justice he has given is a rough draft or mere sketch (504D6), and that "a longer and a harder way" would have to be traveled for an adequate treatment of these matters (IV.435D, VI.504B-D). This is a clear enough indication that the whole story has not been told. But if he were to present his account of justice in the soul and in the state in the metaphysi- cally correct light, as an insight derived from the more difficult and problematic knowledge of Forms, the effect would be to seri- ously weaken the cogency of his moral and political argument in the eyes of the broader public to which the Republic is addressed.

From the philosophical point of view, however, there is no doubt that Plato does envisage the justice of man and city as derived from the more abstract or intelligible pattern of the Form. Let us, ex- empli gratia, generalize the definitions Plato does give in order to see what formula he might have given for the Form itself. We may suppose that it runs as follows.

(J) Justice is a well-ordered whole.

Or, more fully:

(J') Justice is a unity of differentiated parts, each with its own nature, and these parts are so interrelated that each one performs the task for which it is best fitted.

The specification 'well-ordered' in J and 'best fitted' in J' point beyond Justice itself to the Form of Good on which it depends. A full analysis of Justice would thus require, at the minimum, an analysis of the concepts of Unity, Plurality, and Good, and perhaps of Whole and Part as well. Furthermore, the definitions in J and J' derive whatever intuitive plausibility they have from the concrete account of the just city and the just man which Plato actually gives. (See below, definitions JC and JM.) So it is easy to see that Plato had nothing to gain, rhetorically speaking, from pressing his definition on to the level of Forms. And, philosophi- cally, the result would have entailed an intricate analysis that has no real parallel in the dialogues, although the Parmenides, Sophist, and Philebus can give us some idea of how Plato might have pro- ceeded.

My claim is that we must bear in mincl this unwritten but clearly indicated extrapolation of the dialogue if we are to give an a(lequate plhilosophic account of what we actually fincl tlhere. We must bear in mind, that is, that JC and JM as given below are offered by Plato as "images" of, or approximations to, something




like J' above. Limitations of space prevent any full discussion of this claim here. I turn instead to certain special problems in the defense and definition of justice in the Republic. Before doing so, I must make clear what is meant here by 'ordinary justice' and 'Platonic justice'.

For the remainder of this paper 'ordinary justice' and 'behavioral justice' will be used interchangeably as a title for the common-sense Greek notion of justice as the quality of a man's action or overt behavior that respects certain norms of socially approved conduct in dealing with other men: honesty; truthfulness; obedi- ence to law; refraining from theft, fraud, violence, adultery, and the like.

For our present purposes the meaning of 'Platonic justice' is specified by the parallel definitions of just city and just man given in Book IV:

(JC) Justice in the city is the doing of its proper work by the busi- ness class, the military class, and the guardian class, when each of these does what is its own in the city (434C7-10, repeated at 435B4 and 441D9).

(JM) Justice in the individual is the doing of its proper work by each of the three psychic constituents: the rational power ruling and caring for the whole soul, the spirited element as its obedient ally, and the appetitive as its willing subject (441D12- E6; cf. 443D-E).

III. THE LINK BETWEEN PLATONIC JUSTICE AND ORDINARY JUSTICE

As David Sachs pointed out a number of years ago, Plato's argument in defense of justice cannot count as a valid answer to Glau- con and Adeimantus unless some very close connection is established between the Platonic conception (or conceptions) of justice defended as an intrinsic good for the soul, and the ordinary behavioral notion of justice for which the challenge was raised. Sachs claimed that Plato's argument must satisfy two requirements: (1) he must prove that no man who is Platonically just, according to JM, will commit acts of injustice in the usual sense, and (2) that every man who is just according to the vulgar conception will also be Platonically just.4 Sachs asks, in effect, for a biconditional linking Platonic and ordinary justice. By way of response to this criticism, Gregory Vlastos has formulated just such a biconditional.

4 "A Fallacy in Plato's Republic," Philosophical Review, LXXII, 2 (April 1963): 141-158; the claim in question is on pp. 152f.




JV) "The soul is just, [relatively, in the man's disposition to a certain kind of conduct towards other men] if and only if it is just2 [absolutely, in the sense of psychic harmony]."'

Sachs doubted that Plato could have defended such a biconditional by a convincing argument, but Vlastos provides one on Plato's behalf by drawing upon the moral psychology of Books VIII and IX. He thinks that Plato did not see the need for such an argument since he had not noticed the equivocation between 'just,' and 'just2' on which his own argument depends, and hence had not realized "the utter inadequacy" of this argument which he actually gives.6

I have no objection to Vlastos' reconstructed argument as an account of what Plato might have said and would have been justi- fied in saying on the basis of his own doctrine. But I would point out that Vlastos' biconditional is not exactly the one Sachs had required and that it is not entirely satisfactory as an answer to his criticism. For JV connects two psychic states or dispositions, whereas ordinary justice is specified in terms of concrete actions of honesty, fair treatment, and the like. If the biconditional were interpreted as an "exceptionless generalization" (to use Elizabeth Anscombe's phrase) linking acts of ordinary justice and Platonic justice in the soul, it could not be convincing. For Plato and every- one else will agree that we can find just behavior (in the ordinary sense) in the absence of psychic harmony. The biconditional (JV) is plausible only if we insist that the left-hand member expresses not the capacty to perform occasional acts of justice but a con- stant disposition to ordinary justice in every action; and that is how Vlastos interprets it. But in that case we have already moved beyond the common-sense notion of just conduct with which Glaucon and Adeimantus were concerned. Insofar as JV is plausible, it does not establish the link the argument requires. Even granting (with Sachs) the rest of Plato's argument, JV does not serve to show that it is in a man's own interest to perform just actions, but only that it is in his interest to be disposed to act justly.

Plato's own connection between ordinary and psychic justice is less neat but more satisfactory. I submit that his treatment of this

5 "The Argument in the Republic that 'Justice Pays'," this JOURNAL LXV, 21 (Nov. 7, 1968): 665-674, p. 670. I have added the bracketed clarifications to Vlastos' thesis (H).

6 Ibid., pp. 669 and 671 (where Vlastos' substitute argument is spelled out). The argument criticized is the one Vlastos finds at 441C-E, where I find not a genuine argument but the straightforward construction of definitions for the individual virtues by analogy with the previously defined virtues of the city,




question reflects an accurate awareness of the problem to which Sachs has called attention, and that it does not suffer in any essential respect from the confusion Vlastos detects. This will emerge if we look at what follows the statement of the Platonic definitions of virtue in the soul at 441C-442D.

(i) Immediately after reaffirming the psychological definition-of justice (JM), Plato proceeds to confirm it by attributing the "vulgar" properties of just conduct to the man so defined (442D 10). That is, he gets his interlocutor to agree that such a man will not commit any of the ordinary acts of injustice (442E-443A). And he explains that the possession of psychic justice will be the cause (aition) of just action (443B1-5). Thus he explicitly defends a conditional like JV in one direction (from right to left) as a causal statement in moral psychology, but with ordinary justice substi- tuted for 'just1'. To paraphrase the text slightly; if a man is Pla- tonically just according to JM, it will be impossible for him to act unjustly in the ordinary sense, that is, it will be necessary for him to act toward others according to behavioral justice.7 But his true justice-which is an intrinsic good-will lie in the internal activity of his soul and not in the external actions which are a kind of image of this psychic state. (Compare 443C4-D5.)

(ii) Just actions in turn are so described because they tend to produce and preserve this psychic condition, whereas unjust actions are those which tend to destroy it (443E2-8). This is what Plato offers by way of a causal implication in the other direction, from behavioral to psychic justice. It is Plato's version of the para- dox that Aristotle formulates in different terms: virtuous actions are by definition such as a good man would do; but a man acquires virtue by acting virtuously. The man who regularly acts unjustly will never become just in the sense of JM.

Plato has not tried to show that every just action (in the ordinary sense) is its own reward, and he surely does not believe this to be so. What he does claim is that true justice in the soul is its own reward, and that such justice is a regular (probably an inevi- table) cause of ordinary justice in action. The good man is happy because he is just, in the sense of JM. And because he is just in this sense, he will also act justly in the ordinary sense. The man who

7 Sachs would reply that Plato must "prove" this connection and not merely assert it (op. cit., pp. 154f). But proof in moral psychology is hard to come by. I agree with Vlastos that in the Republic as a whole (supplemented by the Phaedo and by the concrete portrayal of Socrates as a just man) Plato has done what can be done to make this claim plausible.




regularly acts unjustly will never become just, and so will never be happy.

IV. JUSTICE' AND HOMONYMY

Plato's definition of psychic justice (JM) by analogy with the pre- ceding definition (JC) of justice in the good city depends upon the principle that the two cases "will not differ at all according to the very form or property (eidos) of justice" (435B1). Let us call this the principle of univocity. Vlastos regards this as a fundamental logical erorr which underlies the flaw in Plato's argument.8 He suggests that Plato could easily have avoided the fallacy if he had seen the importance of what Aristotle described as homonymy and more particularly pros hen homonymy or (in G. E. L. Owen's phrase) "focal meaning." If he had seen, that is, that different uses of the same predicate may have a common semantic core or a common point of reference while differing considerably in the property they attribute in different cases, Plato could have avoided the mistake in his defense of justice. Now this objection can be understood in two ways, and the Platonic answer to it will differ accordingly.

(i) If the objection means that the principle of univocity should be sacrificed for an open-texture or family-resemblance theory of meaning, it goes to the heart of Plato's view of language and reality. If the meaning of basic evaluative predicates like 'just', 'good', and 'beautiful' is to be understood as a function of the shifts in connotation, speaker's intention, points of contrast, and other variable features of particular uses of the term in different contexts, then the doctrine of Forms must be abandoned as an account of the fixed sense or signification of general terms. But a criticism of univocity along these lines would seem to misconstrue the principle as a false empirical claim about ordinary language as ordinarily used. Plato is not concerned with lexicography, not even with the philosophical lexicography of Metaphysics Delta. His principle of univocity is an epistemological postulate, a device for getting from ordinary language to the true meaning of justice, beauty, and the like, the meaning that is fixed in the nature of things by an invariant Form. For Plato, the key terms in ordinary language must signify such a Form if they are to signify reality and

8 "Justice and Psychic Harmony in the Republic", this JOURNAL, LXVI, 16 (Aug. 21, 1969): 516-520. As already indicated, I do not agree that Plato's argument here depends upon this assumption, though of course not only the definition of psychic harmony by analogy with justice in the city, but in fact the whole theory of Forms does depend upon this principle of univocity. Note that this and the previously cited paper of Vlastos are published in a revised form as "Justice and Happiness in the Republic" in Vlastos, ed., Plato, ii (New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1971), pp. 66-95.




convey truth at all-regardless of the phonetic variation in the words actually used and regardless of the psychological variation in the intentions of speakers who use these words. It is not for me to defend this principle. But I do not see how it could be attacked on empirical grounds, as a kind of error of fact, any more than one can so attack Frege's somewhat comparable theory of a thought as the timeless, eternal, and unchangeable sense of an indicative sentence. The principle of univocity is a thesis in philosophy proper, not in empirical linguistics; and Plato cannot abandon this principle without jeopardizing his whole philosophic position.

(ii) If the objection is understood as a request not that the principle of univocity be abandoned but that it be supplemented by a recognition of obvious linguistic facts-such as the fact that 'healthy' does not have precisely the same sense in 'healthy man' as in 'healthy food', 'healthy climate', or 'healthy complexion'- then Plato can easily grant the request, and tacitly does so at many points. For this modification of the principle amounts to little more than a recognition of the phenomenon of ellipse, which leaves the principle itself intact. Thus 'healthy', which typically means 'possessing health' (or, in Platonic terms, 'participating in Health'), may in some uses, e.g., in 'healthy food' or 'healthy climate', be regarded as an abbreviation for 'promoting health' (Pla- tonically speaking, 'causing or facilitating the participation in Health'). In other uses, as in 'healthy complexion', it may be read as short for 'reflecting health' or 'indicating health' ('indicating the participation in Health'). As long as the focal meaning of 'health' is left invariant, as naming or signifying a single Form of Health, the recognition of ellipse or homonymy in this sense presents no challenge to the principle of univocity. Indeed, Plato shows an awareness of precisely this phenomenon when he com- pares 'doing just deeds' to 'healthy things' (ta hygieina) and 'acting unjustly' to 'unhealthy things' (ta nosode) at 444C-D. For, in his own words, "healthy things produce health, unhealthy things produce disease," and, by analogy, "acting justly produces justice, acting unjustly produces injustice" (444C8-D1). Plato did not need Aristotle's example to discover homonymy in this rather trivial sense.

V. CONCLUDING SPECULATION ON THE FORMS

A. Is the realm of Forms as a whole a case of Justice? There are occasional hints of this in the dialogues, the clearest

of which is perhaps the passage at 500C, where the virtuous order in the philosopher's own soul is described as an assimilation to




and imitation of the eternal order of the Forms "which neither do injustice to nor suffer injustice from one another." It is at least plausible to suppose that Plato thought of the entire realm of Forms as a well-ordered whole, a unity of differentiated parts, each with its own nature, such that each performs the task for which it is best or uniquely fitted, according to J'. In that case the philosopher's soul would become just not by imitation of the Form of Justice alone, as it were in splendid isolation, but by assimilation to the entire ordered plurality of the Forms. And on this view the Form of Justice would function twice: it will be counted first as one Form among others, the opposite of Injustice (which is itself mentioned as a Form at 476A4); and it will function again as the unified system of all Forms, including Injustice (and perhaps including itself as a first-order Form). We would thus find a bifurcation in the role of Justice as ordinary form and as super-Form, or Form of Forms, which is comparable to that which can be noted for the so-called categorial Forms like Unity, Good, and Rest or Changelessness. (As super-Forms, these also apply to their opposites: Many, Bad, and Motion). But whereas categorial Forms may apply to other Forms one by one, Justice as super-Form would apply to them as a system, within which each Form would function as a part. What the justice of the whole system might mean, in terms of the function of the parts, can be seen by taking precisely this pair in which we are interested: first- order Justice and Injustice. Theoretically considered, the function for which this pair of opposite natures is uniquely fitted is to articulate the entire conceptual field we have been considering, by serving as the source of all justice and injustice in the phenomenal world. Practically considered, the function of this pair is to serve *as paradigms "established in reality" to articulate a fundamental moral choice confronting every man, who must decide how to live his life. (Compare Theatetus 175C and 176E.)

B. How is the Form of Justice dependent upon the Form of Good? On this I can offer only an imprecise guess. Consider the purely

conceptual or theoretical notions of Unity, Plurality, Part, Whole, and distinctive Nature (which can perhaps be analyzed in terms of Sameness with itself and Difference from others). To construct the definition of Jusice suggested in J', we must add the notions of performing a work or function (ergon) and of doing so well. Now the notion of function itself involves the notion of aim or goal (to hou heneken) and hence of Good (Rep. 505DII). So the




Form of Justice could be seen as a particular configuration of Unity, Plurality, Part, Whole, and other conceptual (or "value- free") Forms, as structured in a certain way by the Form of Good. The adequate definition of Justice would thus indicate how this Form is to be analyzed in terms of the relations of other Forms. Generalizing this insight now at the level of super-Forms, we may say that every Form so analyzed would be seen as a Unity of Many under the aspect of Good, a well-ordered unity of distinct parts or conceptual factors.

C. The question of self-piredication. If by self-predication one means the harmless doctrine that the

Form deserves its own name in adjectival form, there is no doubt that Plato in the middle dialogues (and, I think, not only in them) accepted this without question. For him, 'Justice is just', 'Beauty is beautiful', 'Equality is equal' are obvious truths-much truer that the corresponding predications for non-Forms, such as 'Socra- tes is just', 'Phaedo is beautiful', 'These lines are equal', assuming that the latter are also true. But from his acceptance of self-predication in this minimal sense it does not follow that Plato thought of 'is just' as designating some projperty distinct from the Form itself and attributing this property to the form of Justice and to Socrates alike. Self-predication in this sense is such a monstrosity that it cannot be clearly stated without being rejected on the spot.

The problem, then, is to find an interpretation of 'Justice is just' which makes it an interesting philosophical claim, compatible with Plato's general position, and somehow parallel to the interpretation of 'Socrates is just'. (To be interesting, the claim must be more than a trivial statement of identity, like "A is A".) Now we know that, for Plato, 'Socrates is just' means that Socrates participates in the Form of Justice. Does 'Justice is just' mean that the Form participates in itself? I am not sure that Plato would reject the inference. Furthermore, in this case one can interpret self- participation as other than an empty formula. For we can understand 'Justice participates in Justice' to mean that the first-order Form of Justice participates in the super-Form of Justice by being one constituent part in the well-ordered system of the Forms (and also according to the last sentence under B above, by being, qua analyzed Form, a well-ordered unity of many "constituents"). But this solution is not general enough to deal with the question of self-predication in other cases, for example in 'Equality is equal' or 'Injustice is unjust', We must look then for another interpretation of 'Justice is just'.

Consider once more 'Socrates is just'. This means not only that



CONTENT AND CONSCIOUSNESS 579

Socrates participates in the Form. It also means that he satisfies, in some measure and in some respects, the definition of Justice, say J'. He does not do so in full measure or in all respects. This is, I take it, what Plato means by saying that a particular F is defi- ciently F: it is F in some respects but not in all, and that is why it can be said to be both F and not F (Rep. 479A-C). The Form, by contrast, is perfectly or fully F: it satisfies the definition entirely, without any qualification whatsoever. And this, I suggest, is what Plato means by saying that Justice is just. Indeed, it is perfectly just. Notice that this suggestion preserves strict univocity for the predicate 'is just'. In the last analysis there is only one meaning for 'justice' or 'just'. If the predicate had a different, weaker meaning in 'Socrates is just', then this statement could be wholly true, without qualification. It is precisely because a predicate 'F' has the same meaning when applied to a Form and to a particular that Plato can say that a particular is not wholly or perfectly F, that it is both F and not F.

Making use of our earlier suggestions, we can spell out the meaning of self-predication one step further. Suppose that the definition of Justice resolves it into the concepts of Unity, Plurality, and Goodness, among others. Then to say of x that it is just is at least to say that it participates in the Forms of Unity, Plurality, and Good. This statement will hold both for a Form that is just and for a particular that is just. In this sense, and in this sense alone, it will be true to say that the predicate 'just' attributes a common property to the Form of Justice and to a just man.

CHARLES H. KAHN

University of Pennsylvania

CONSCIOUSNESS: THE SECONDARY ROLE OF LANGUAGE*

M ANY philosophers have claimed that it is impossible to paraphrase an intentional sentence such as "A believes it is raining" by an extensional sentence that captures

its full meaning, and have argued that this refutes a materialist theory of mind. In his recent book, Content and Consciousness,t Dennett has argued that considerations from the study of brain,

* To be presented in an APA symposium on Content and Consciousness by D. C. Dennett, December 29, 1972; cosymposiasts will be Keith Gunderson and D. C. Dennett; see this JOURNAL, this issue, pp. 591-604 and 604, respectively.

t London: Routledge & Kegan Paul; New York: Humanities, 1969. All quota- tions in this paper are taken from Dennett's book, with the indicated pagina- tions. Dennett and I have agreed to drop the distinction between intention and intension which he tried to maintain in his book.



The meaning of Justice and the theory of forms

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