The social design of a community speaks to its fundamental beliefs and the truths that it holds. Accordingly, when asking what kind of community we wish to create, we must consider the basic philosophical concepts that inform human existence: how will we interpret justice? How will we structure our social relations to each other? How will we define what is true and what is false?

These are clearly imposing questions, without any definitive answer. The diversity of human approaches to society underscores this point. At the same time, these are questions which every civilization addresses in either a conscious or an unconscious manner, in so far as these civilizations are formed by norms concerning what is right and wrong, what is sacred and what is profane, and what kind of lives we wish to lead.

When thinking about these questions, we can refer to Plato’s great work The Republic. For in The Republic, the fundamental question is how do we create an ideal city, a social system in which all its citizens are fulfilled? It is significant that this inquiry into what makes the ideal society or city-state in the precise wording of The Republic is inseparable from a question of justice. For the interlocutors of The Republic, in other words, to ask the question of how to design the ideal city is essentially to understand what is justice.

Why is this the case? On an intuitive level, Socrates and his interlocutors understand justice to be something universal. To consider something to be just means that it is valid for all. The concept of justice must be explored: for when we are discussing a society in its entirety, we are not merely speaking about individuals within this society. We are not speaking about the desires of individuals separated from each other. This, arguably, following the logic of The Republic, is the very antithesis of what a society or city means: societies and cities are constructed around a concept of community. Therefore it needs a universal law, a just law that is for all the people in the community and not merely for some in the community. If we do not accept this fact, then we are not creating a society, a community or a city, but instead creating rules for particular individuals.

In this sense, following the logic of Plato, there is no question about individual vs. group when we our project is to construct an ideal city. The city is by definition a collection of individuals, not in the sense that they are separated, but rather it is there relations to each other that define them. When we wish to create the ideal city, we must therefore ask what kind of social relations we want to initiate, to uphold, to believe in and to take as fundamental truths.

This is why the question of justice cannot be separated from the question of what is the ideal city. Who would say that a city lacking justice is an ideal city? Perhaps for the corrupt rulers and the individuals who control the city. They, having been granted hegemony and power, would be satisfied with such an arrangement of social relations, to the extent that these social relations feed their desires, and furthermore, to the extent that this hegemonic class is only concerned with preserving its survival. But for those who live under the tyrannical hegemonic class would not consider this to be an ideal city: they would consider it, instead, to be a type of hellish nightmare, one of exploitation and corruption, and not an ideal city. In other words, this is a city, from the perspective of all those in the city, that is lacking justice. The city cannot be considered in terms of individuals since the concept of the individual does not address the city as a whole. This is not a city made for the group, but a city made for individuals: and in this sense it is difficult to even consider this a city, since a city is a community.

Certainly, it can be argued that the individual’s happiness may be made the measure of the community. However, different individuals have different definitions of happiness. Consider, in The Republic, how Socrates structures the city in terms of roles and castes. Some belong to the class of workers, some to the class of the philosopher-kings. The city is made up of individuals in a certain sense, but they are also groups, with shared desires and abilities. If we place the individual over the group, in other words, we risk creating a fragmented society, one where exploitation may easily be practiced. This is adequately explained in Plato’s myth of the cave, where the elite minority controls the populace through shadow and manipulation: they are unaware of the truth. The society is fragmented and the lives of some are not of the same quality as the lives of others.

A concept of exceptionless justice therefore transforms group into a community with equal rights before the law. But again, what is just? Consider, for example, Sophocles’ Antigone. Antigone rejects, for example, her uncle Creon’s declaration that her brother Polyneices cannot be buried in an honorable fashion, since Creon believes him to be a traitor. Antigone decies this decision is unjust and does not bow to the law of what we could call the city and instead commits to a higher form of law, a concept of justice. This is the great difference, in other words, between law and justice: law is merely a set of proclamations, there can be good laws as well as bad laws. But justice here is universal and cannot be corrupted: this is what Antigone’s rebellion means. In other words, some times the city fails to meet its ethical obligations to justice. It is based on self-interest and individual desire. When these situations arise, it is necessary to rebel against such a system, and instead follow an intuitive and deep-seeded concept of what is true, what is just, and what is right, even in the face of authority figures that declare the opposite to be true.

Certainly, this provides a problem for creating the ideal city: how can we know what is just and what is true? Are we not back to where we started in our argument? How does Antigone know that her acts are just in light of what Creon states? Once again, we return to the question of the individual and the group. There is some type of fundamental essence to the human being, something that is universal. Antigone can identify tyranny and self-interest with Creon’s acts. And this arguably is facile to do when we see that one acts as an individual and not as a group. This becomes a distinction, a distinction which is also relevant for the ideal society as opposed to the corrupt society: this universalism, the best interest of the group as a whole must be stressed above all.

Therefore, when we create our ideal society we must ask what is in the best interest of all. This is the same essence which the Socratic question in the Republic asks in terms of “what is justice?” We are attempting to define some type of system where the decisions of the society are clearly in the benefit of all, that is to say, in the benefit of the city in which we all live. Certainly, the realization of this justice is a struggle: however, when we consider this group perspective above selfish self-interest as the foundation of our inquiry and our desires, then we can move forward knowing that we are acting in the name of truth and justice, in the same manner of Socrates and in the same manner of Antigone.