Plato's discussion of public and private lives

Clearly our spheres of interaction are deeply connected. Out of necessity and attention towards quality of product, Plato argues, people form states and a subsequent public image, as is compulsory when a group of people maintain interactions. Plato’s Republic rests on a certain ambiguity in differentiating between public and private natures in an individual. Both being part of the same one person, Plato recognizes that each is at least influenced if not dictated by the existence of the other. Plato claims that the only way to achieve justice within a government of people is for the public part of society to ultimately satisfy the private agenda of individuals. Similarly, Plato compares the grander state to the single person, relaying that justice is only achieved in the individual when the rational, or obligatory, sphere corresponds to the irrational, or passionate sphere, and they are one in the same. In book II, Plato reminds us that “we are not all alike” and continues to say that “there are diversities of natures among us which are adapted to different occupations” (370b). In this he constructs his idea of justice in relation to a public sphere. Each person must make him or herself available to the job for which they are naturally best suited. It is this “nature” of a person that Plato deems his private sphere. Where an individual is needed is determined not only by talent given by birth, but by the society itself, thus pressing the importance of a public influence over personal mission, as Plato implies that passion follows civil obligation to society in a perfectly ordered world.The allegory of the cave describes the scenario in which all people are born- it takes a sense of self and ambition to achieve what Plato terms true wisdom. Here the person who is noblest and wisest of all, having found his private self completely part of his public image, is viewed with the least respect in the community. To the man who has unanimity between private a public principles is no longer riddled with the trivial aspects of human nature, as he sees justice and beauty as but the shadows they are within the cave, despite everyone else’s ignorance. Plato’s realization is that if everyone could be exposed to the sun, a symbol for truth, petty and earthly conflicts would become a matter of perspective, which would incite peace and justice. Furthermore, he argues that it is the ignorance of the rest of the population that makes a public sphere necessarily different from a private one, as those who show their true selves are rendered useless and ridiculed for insanity. Plato discusses the importance of the rational principle holding power over the irrational, claiming that “in all of us, even in good men, there is a lawless wild-beast nature” (572b) and relates this to the honesty of the guardians, whose true natures are tested before they can be proper rulers, discussing again the difference in natures of men. Through education and testing, the guardians are the epitome of truth, as their public self is fully their private self, and vice versa.The two general parts of an individual dictate that person, there being “the one with which man reasons, we may call the rational principle of the soul [i.e. the public]; the other, with which he loves, and hungers, and thirsts, and feels the flutterings of any other desire, may be termed the irrational or appetitive [i.e. the private].” (439d) It is not so much the notion that public alters private sphere that Plato seeks to convey, but rather that for justice to be tangible, public must either mold or completely inspire an individual’s private sphere.