In Plato’s The Republic, Socrates, acting as Plato’s mouthpiece, addresses human behavior and the preconceived notion of justice that the Athenians hold. Plato attempts to extinguish fixed notion of what justice is to set up his ideal society under the rule of philosopher-kings. The society that he describes comes off as being anti-democratic with hints of heavy authoritarianism. The problem that I will address in this paper is whether the society that Plato advocates for is idealistic or practical, and whether or not it is a good idea prima facie. As Socrates states in Book IV, “justice is minding one’s own business and not being a busybody” (Republic, 433a). This definition of justice that Socrates provides might initially seem foreign. Much like the beliefs of the contemporary reader, Glaucon, a man with whom Socrates argues, believes that justice lies “between what is best – doing injustice without paying the penalty – and what is worst – suffering injustice without being able to avenge oneself” (Republic, 359a). In other words, justice is the enforced compromise between doing injustice and having justice done unto oneself. Plato’s version of justice, however, is when everyone in a society is fulfilling their ideal roles by reaching their personal potential within a specific role and not partaking in any role outside of the ones meant for each individual. He insists that a society is just when people fall in line with their natural roles and are thereby just because it leads to balance and stability. As stated before, justice under Plato’s form of government is where there is a specific role that the leaders assign to each person. Under this vision of justice, a form of government that emphasizes the autonomy of the individual, such as democracy, poses a threat to this ordered society where people are pre-destined to a certain role, and is unnatural and unjust from Plato’s perspective. Much like how the state functions in an orderly manner, the soul also has order where the parts have a role to play. In order to have a just person there must be balance among these parts where they function together. When the person balances her parts of the soul, the person behaves according to reason and understands the role she plays in society. Now, it is important to realize how different Plato’s political ideology is different from the ones that we typically hold. The notion that the leaders categorize people in a way based on their value to society seems ludicrous to us. We see motivated and driven people who strive to be the best as reasonably possible in almost every area of their lives as positive; why else would we have distribution requirements at Wabash? This individualistic ideology has become commonplace in most modern cultures. Our society allows people to act on the opportunities provided to them, and the only actions that the government reprimands (or should reprimand) are ones that interfere with the autonomy of others. Nonetheless, Plato would view this type of structure as excessive because the moderation for which he advocates is non-existent. While it is possible to see some similarities between our idea of justice and Plato’s, it is reasonable to c