[434c]
is the greatest injury to a state and would most rightly
be designated as the thing which chiefly1 works it harm.”
“Precisely so.” “And the thing that works the
greatest harm to one's own state, will you not pronounce to be
injustice?” “Of course.” “This,
then, is injustice.”“Again,2 let us put it in this way. The proper
functioning3 of the money-making class,
the helpers and the guardians, each doing its own work in the state, being
the reverse of that4 just described, would be justice and would render the city
just.”
2 πάλιν, “again,” here means conversely. Cf. 425 A. The definition is repeated in terms of the three citizen classes to prepare the way for testing it in relation to the individual soul, which, if the analogy is to hold, must possess three corresponding faculties or parts. The order of words in this and many Platonic sentences is justified by the psychological “investigation,” which showed that when the question “which do you like best, apples, pears, or cherries?” was presented in the form “apples, pears, cherries, which do you like best?” the reaction time was appreciably shortened.
3 οἰκειοπραγία: this coinage is explained by the genitive absolute. Proclus (Kroll i. p. 207) substitutes αὐτοπραγία. So Def. Plat. 411 E.
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5 & 6 translated by Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1969.
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