[433e]
the virtue of state?” “By all
means.” “Consider it in this wise too1
if so you will be convinced. Will you not assign the conduct of lawsuits in
your state to the rulers?” “Of course.”
“Will not this be the chief aim of their decisions, that no one
shall have what belongs to others2 or be deprived of his own?
Nothing else but this.” “On the assumption that this is
just?” “Yes.” “From this point of
view too, then, the having3 and doing
1 So Phaedo 79 Eὅρα δὴ καὶ τῇδε. It introduces a further confirmation. The mere judicial and conventional conception of justice can be brought under the formula in a fashion (πῃ), for legal justice “est constans et perpetua voluntas ius suum cuique tribuens.” Cf. 331 E and Aristotle Rhet. 1366 b 9ἔστι δὲ δικαιοσύνη μὲν ἀρετὴ δι᾽ ἣν τὰ αὑτῶν ἕκαστα ἔχουσι, καὶ ὡς ὁ νόμος.
2 τἀλλότρια: the article is normal; Stallb. on Phaedrus 230 A. For the ambiguity of τἀλλότρια cf. 443 D. So οἰκείου is one's own in either literal or the ideal sense of the Stoics and Emerson, and ἑαυτοῦ is similarly ambiguous. Cf. on 443 D.
3 ἕξις is still fluid in Plato and has not yet taken the technical Aristotelian meaning of habit or state.
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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