Book I of Plato's Republic

I haven’t written here in a while, which I apologize for if there was anyone that was hoping for more regular updates. When I started this, I said I would write as often as I read things I felt I could say something about worth reading. It turns out that may include some substantial gaps. In any event, I am currently doing a reading group on Plato’s Republic, which is a text I’ve wanted to try writing about for some time. So, I will dive right in. This essay is on Book I, and if all goes as planned I will regularly or semi-regularly post pieces on each individual book of the dialogue as I read through them. All quotations are from the Allan Bloom translation.

When reading Plato’s dialogues, it’s important to pay at least as much attention to the dramatic setting and action as to the spoken arguments, and I think that’s especially true of Republic. The opening page or so really sets the stage for the entire dialogue. Socrates and his companion, Glaucon, have left Athens and gone down to Piraeus, the port-town that was connected to the city by the famous “long walls”. It’s about 6 miles or so from Athens proper. If you’ve read any of Plato’s other dialogues, you probably know how averse Socrates is to leaving Athens. It comes up a lot, so even venturing down to Piraeus is a rare thing for him. Piraeus, as the port, is obviously the point at which Athens makes a lot of its contact with the outside world and with alien influences. As it turns out, that is connected to why Socrates and Glaucon are here. They have come to see a religious festival dedicated to the goddess Bendis.

Bendis was a Thracian goddess associated with hunting and the moon, sometimes identified by the Greeks with their own Artemis. She was brought to Athens by Thracian immigrants in the 5^th century BC, and she had a temple in Piraeus where her cult was celebrated. Since the celebration of a festival dedicated to her is the occasion of Socrates’s coming down to Piraeus, it is the occasion of Republic as a whole. The opening lines of the dialogue, spoken by Socrates, are telling in this respect:

“I went down to the Piraeus yesterday with Glaucon, son of Ariston, to pray to the goddess; and, at the same time, I wanted to observe how they would put on the festival, since they were now holding it for the first time. Now, in my opinion, the procession of the native inhabitants was fine; but the one the Thracians conducted was no less fitting a show.”

Socrates is doing a number of striking things. He has left Athens, which is rare for him. In the port of Piraeus, where Athens makes contact with the outside world, he is seeking to pray to a foreign goddess. He witnesses a new thing, or a new thing in this part of the world: a religious procession that has not been celebrated before. And in evaluating it, Socrates expresses the opinion that the foreigners (the Thracians) perform no less nobly than the natives (the Athenians or the inhabitant of Piraeus, which is separated from Athens proper but subject to it). All of this is important to the dialogue: Socrates has separated himself, to some degree, from the customs, religion, and mores of his home city. The principal theme of Republic will be justice. Where do all of us primarily learn about justice? From the customs, religion, and mores of our homeland. By separating himself from these things, and by exposing himself to alien customs which he judges “no less fitting”, Socrates occupies a space where justice can be questioned. It loses the garb of implicit assent with which it is typically adorned and is in some sense exposed. The dialogue continues:

“After we had prayed and looked on, we went off toward town.

Catching sight of us from afar as we were pressing homewards, Polemarchus, son of Cephalus, ordered his slave boy to run after us and order us to wait for him. The boy took hold of my cloak from behind and said, ‘Polemarchus orders you to wait.’

And I turned around and asked him where his master was. ‘He is coming up behind’, he said, ‘just wait.’

‘Of course we’ll wait,’ said Glaucon.

A moment later Polemarchus came along with Adeimantus, Glaucon’s brother, Niceratus, son of Nicias, and some others – apparently from the procession. Polemarchus said, ‘Socrates, I guess you two are hurrying to get away to town.’

‘That’s not a bad guess,’ I said.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘do you see how many of us there are?’

‘Of course.’

‘Well, then,’ he said, ‘either prove stronger than these men or stay here.’

‘Isn’t there still one other possibility…,’ I said, ‘our persuading you that you must let us go?’

‘Could you really persuade,’ he said, ‘if we don’t listen?’”

Polemarchus and his companions are resolved not to listen to Socrates at this moment. The example is a playful one – Socrates is not in danger from these men (at least, not yet: the eventual trial and execution of Socrates by his fellow Athenians looms large in just about all of Plato’s dialogues). Rather, he is being invited to the home of Cephalus (the father of Polemarchus) to spend the afternoon visiting, prior to the festival in honor of the goddess that is to be celebrated that night.

Although the scenario is playful, what it speaks to is serious. Having exited the city and the protection of its customs, Socrates and Glaucon seek to return. But they cannot: they are waylaid. Without the customs and the religion of the city to protect them, they can contest their “abduction” only by appeal to strength or by persuasion. Persuasion, of course, requires interlocutors who are willing to listen, as Polemarchus and his companions are not at just that moment. Soon enough they will be. In fact, Socrates and his companions will never attend the festival for the sake of which they are being “compelled” to remain in Piraeus. Rather than attending to the rites of the goddess, the inhabitants of the house of Cephalus will remain with Socrates to discourse on the nature of justice. Enraptured by the speech of reason, they will prove forgetful of the duty of religion.

For now, all that remains in the future of the dialogue. Arriving at the home of Cephalus, Socrates finds him adorned for the sacrifices which he will be overseeing. Cephalus admonishes Socrates for not coming to visit more often, and mentions that in his old age, he finds himself more amenable to the pleasures of conversation and speech-making, for which Socrates is well known.

Socrates, for his part, wants to know how Cephalus is bearing the pains of his elderly state. Cephalus answers:

“Some of us who are about the same age often meet together and keep up the old proverb. Now then, when they meet, most of the members of our group lament, longing for the pleasures of youth and reminiscing about sex, about drinking bouts and feasts and all that goes with things of that sort; they take it hard as though they were deprived of something very important and had then lived well but are now not even alive. Some also bewail the abuse that old age receives from relatives, and in this key they sing a refrain about all the evils old age has caused them. But, Socrates, in my opinion these men do not put their fingers on the cause. For, if this were the cause, I too would have suffered these same things insofar as they depend on old age and so would everyone else who has come to this point in life. But as it is, I have encountered others for whom it was not so, especially Sophocles. I was once present when the poet was asked by someone, ‘Sophocles, how are you in sex? Can you still have intercourse with a woman?’

‘Silence, man,’ he said. ‘Most joyfully did I escape it, as though I had run away from a sort of frenzied and savage master.’ I thought at the time that he had spoken well and still do. For, in every way, old age brings great peace and freedom from such things. When the desires cease to strain and finally relax, then what Sophocles says comes to pass in every way; it is possible to be rid of many mad masters.”

Cephalus cites as an authority Sophocles, the Greek poet and playwright. This is important in itself, as the question of the authority of the poets will be a major one in Republic. Moreover, this particular story seems to give us some insight in to Cephalus’s character, both as a young man and today. In his younger days it seems likely that he was given over to pursuit of the passions of the body – hence he identifies with Sophocles’ characterization of those passions as “mad masters”. Today, in old age, his passions have naturally cooled, and he is glad to be rid of them. He earlier told us he has now come to appreciate more fully the pleasures of philosophic speech-making of the type Socrates practices.

Eros, and the danger posed by it, is here raised for the first time in the dialogue. It will be a major theme in what follows. If justice is the central theme of Republic, eros is in many ways its central problem. Eros is what leads us to resist the law with its obligations, and what leads us to place our own good above the good of the city. It can lead us to live the life of the tyrant, or in a few of us, the life of the philosopher. The tyrant and the philosopher are twins in a way, rare men dedicated to the pursuit of eros above all else, albeit each is preoccupied with a desire of a very different kind. Both are, in their ways, a threat to the city and its laws. There will be more to say on this in later books.

For now, Socrates questions Cephalus further, inquiring if it is not his great wealth (Cephalus is a rich man) that has allowed him to endure old age with equanimity. Cephalus agrees that it is so, but citing a story of Themistocles (another traditional authority, this time in statesmanship) he deflects: while even a virtuous old man would be unhappy in poverty, a vicious one would be no happier for having wealth, because he would not know how to use it well. This leads Socrates to inquire of Cephalus what is the greatest good he has gained from his wealth. Cephalus replies:

“’What I say wouldn’t persuade many perhaps. For know well, Socrates,’ he said, ‘that when a man comes near to the realization that he will be making an end, fear and care enter him for things to which he gave no thought before. The tales told about what is in Hades – that the one who has done unjust deeds here must pay the penalty there – at which he laughed up to then, now make his soul twist and turn because he fears they might be true. Whether it is due to the debility of old age, or whether he discerns something more of the things in that place because he is already nearer to them, as it were – he is, at any rate, now full of suspicion and terror; and he reckons up his accounts and considers whether he has done anything unjust to anyone. Now, the man who finds many unjust deeds in his life often even wakes from his sleep in a fright as children do, and lives in anticipation of evil. To the man who is conscious in himself of no unjust deed, sweet and good hope is ever beside him – a nurse of his old age, as Pindar puts it. For you know, Socrates, he put it charmingly when he said that whoever lives out a just and holy life

Sweet hope accompanies,

Fostering in his heart, a nurse of his old age,

Hope which most of all pilots

The ever-turning opinion of mortals.’”

Cephalus has again cited a poetic authority. Again he has given some intimation of a possibly misspent youth – how does he know that those guilty of unjust deeds are like to wake in their sleep, frightened as children? But Cephalus is thankful. He has great wealth, and using great wealth, he is able to make recompense for past wrongdoing and assuage the wrath of the gods. By these means does he aim to buy himself a happy immortality. Cephalus continues:

“How very wonderfully well he says that. For this I count the possession of money most wroth-while, not for any man, but for the decent and orderly one. The possession of money contributes a great deal to not cheating or lying to any man against one’s will, and, moreover, to not departing for that other place frightened because one owes some sacrifices to a god or money to a human being. It also has many other uses. But, still, one thing reckoned against another, I wouldn’t count this as the least thing, Socrates, for which wealth is very useful to an intelligent man.”

Now Socrates asks the question that will be fateful for the rest of Republic. Is this the nature of justice, to tell the truth and to pay one’s debts? Cephalus believes that it is – but Socrates offers a possible counterexample. What of a man who has deposited arms with us, and asks for their return when he is in a state of madness? Surely it would not be just to give weapons into the hands of a madman?

Polemarchus interjects at this point. Giving what is owed must be just, if Simonides (a poetic authority) is to believed. This interjection prompts the exit of Cephalus. He must go to attend to the sacrifices, and will entrust the argument to his son:

“’Well, then’ said Cephalus, ‘I hand down the argument to you, for it’s already time for me to look after the sacrifices.’

‘Am I not the heir of what belongs to you?’ said Polemarchus.

‘Certainly,’ he said and laughed. And with that he went away to the sacrifices.”

The old man has no need of the discourse surrounding the nature of justice. He knows what is just: it is given to him in the religious rites and traditional authorities of his homeland. A discussion surrounding the nature of old age or of justice may provide a pleasant diversion for a moment, but when the time for the sacrifices has come, he will excuse himself. It falls to the young man to “inherit the argument” – to take up for its own sake the question of what reason can discover about the nature of justice. The young men who remain in the house of Cephalus with Socrates will not follow the former to the sacrifices tonight.

Cephalus, the representative of the gods, has departed. The discourse of Socrates can exercise no further power over him. Likewise, the interlocutors have been left at peace to discover what they can about justice by unaided reason. Religion is not present to them. The conversation of Republic will take place in the house of Cephalus, in the absence of its master, over the course of a single night. As the festival of Bendis is celebrated outside, inside is an island where the claims of religion are not, and the rational discourse of Socrates must defend justice, or fail to, on its own terms.

Socrates does not begin by straightforwardly contradicting Simonides to Polemarchus. Rather, he asks what he can mean if (as Polemarchus also agrees) it is unjust to return arms to a man in a state of madness. Polemarchus amends the position of Simonides to suggest that we owe our friends good and our enemies harm. Giving to each what is owed, then, is doing good to our friends and harm to our enemies. Socrates remarks that Simonides must have been speaking in the nature of a riddle, as is typical of the poets.

Irony aside, the position staked out by Polemarchus is not a totally unfamiliar one. There are many ordinary people, and even some who have dared to call themselves philosophers, who have believed that justice is defined by the friend-enemy distinction, and essentially consists in helping one’s friends & harming one’s enemies.

Socrates is skeptical of the utility of justice in such a case. Glossing (somewhat questionably) the position staked out by Polemarchus as “it is just to give to everyone what is fitting”, Socrates cites examples of a number of arts, and asks whether it is the just man, or the man proficient in the relevant art, who best knows how to give what is fitting. In the case of cooking, it is the cook, in the case of navigation, the pilot, and so on. Socrates asks just when it is that the just man is of unique value. Polemarchus suggests it is when things must be given over to be kept in deposit. Socrates suggests amusingly that it is Polemarchus’s opinion that justice is useful when the things with which it deals are useless.

Furthermore, Socrates asks, if the boxer who is best skilled at warding off a blow will be best skilled at landing one, and the one who is best at curing disease will be most knowledgeable in producing it, will it not be the case that the man who is best able to guard deposits knows himself best how to steal them? Polemarchus agrees that this will be the case. Whereas before Socrates had avoided expressly contradicting the poet Simonides, he is now willing to attack the poets openly, and he chooses the biggest target available – Homer:

“’The just man, then, has come to light as a kind of robber, and I’m afraid you have learned this from Homer. For he admires Autolycus, Odysseus’ grandfather on his mother’s side, and says he surpassed all men ‘‘in stealing and in swearing oaths’’. Justice, then, seems, according to you and Homer and Simonides, to be a certain art of stealing, for the benefit, to be sure, of friends and the harm of enemies. Isn’t that what you meant?’

‘No, by Zeus,’ he said, ‘but I no longer know what I did mean. However, it is still my opinion that justice is helping friends and harming enemies.’”

At this point, Socrates tries a new tack. He asks Polemarchus if a man’s friends are those who are truly good, or those who seem good to him. Polemarchus responds that each man’s friends are likely to be those who seem good to him. When Socrates ask if men are prone to be mistaken about who is truly good and who is truly evil, Polemarchus agrees that they are. Is it the case, then, that it is just to harm the good and help the evil, if the evil are our friends and the good our enemies? Polemarchus does not think that this can be the case. He amends the position of Simonides further: Our true friends are those who both appear good and are in truth – while our true enemies are those who appear evil and are in truth.

Under the pressure of upholding the position of Simonides against the questioning of Socrates, Polemarchus’s position has now undergone three transformations. First justice was to repay what is owed. Then it was to do good to one’s friends and harm to one’s enemies. Now it is to do good to the good and harm to the evil. Socrates presses the attack further. If one were to harm a horse, is a horse made better or worse by being harmed? Worse, Polemarchus agrees. And it is made worse with respect to the proper virtue of a horse? Polemarchus agrees this is true. The same argument is repeated with a dog, with the same effect. Socrates asks Polemarchus if harming a man will make him worse – it will. In a significant move, Socrates ask Polemarchus whether justice isn’t human virtue. Without appearing to pause to give it much thought, Polemarchus agrees that yes, justice is human virtue. Socrates draws the inference: to harm a man is to make him less just.

The just man, then, by doing justice, seeks to make the unjust man ever more unjust. Socrates balks at this conclusion, as does Polemarchus. Socrates asks whether it is not rather the office of the just man, in doing justice, to make unjust men more just. Polemarchus agrees that it is. And this is to benefit, rather than to harm, the unjust man.

From affirming the original claim that justice is to give to each what is owed, Polemarchus has been brought to assent that true justice is to do good to all and harm to none. The views of Cephalus and of his son Polemarchus, I believe, represent “ordinary consciousness” for want of a better term. Cephalus and Polemarchus are respectable citizens, holding respectable views learned from respectables sources – chiefly traditional religion and the poets. Their views are not the considered views of Socrates. But, under his guidance, they can be led without excessive trouble to a happier conclusion (for the moment at least).

This is the point at which Thrasymachus, a very different interlocutor, enters the dialogue. Thrasymachus’s views are not those of the ordinary citizen, respectable & conservative without being terribly well considered. Thrasymachus is a sophist, meaning a kind of professional intellectual who taught rhetoric to members of the Athenian political class, and also purported to be able to teach the art of ruling well and wisely. Thrasymachus has what he regards as a much more well-considered and realistic view of justice: it is simply the advantage of the stronger. After all, do not democratic cities make democratic laws, oligarchic cities oligarchic ones, and tyrannical cities tyrannical laws? Do they not each call their respective laws “just”? And what do these laws aim at, if not the promotion and preservation of the regimes that legislate them?

Thrasymachus represents the true danger that attends the departure of Cephalus. Polemarchus more or less continued the argument of Cephalus in more or less the same vein. Perhaps a bit less emphasis was given to the gods and a bit more to the poets, but essentially the same principles and conclusions were upheld. In Thrasymachus we see typified a charge that has been levied at philosophy since its earliest days. Without the gods, without the customs of the city, what upholds justice? If the pillars of justice are exposed to the harsh winds of reason, what assurance do we have that they will not come tumbling down? If Thrasymachus is right, philosophy may well be the danger to the city that the eventual accusers of Socrates would claim, and his conviction may have been well-founded. If Socrates is to defend the philosophic life as the best life (as he is always wont to do) it is urgent he answer the charges of Thrasymachus.

The conversation opens with some comedic back and forth. Socrates asks Thrasymachus to clarify what he means. Thrasymachus demands Socrates name what penalty he will undergo if Thrasymachus is able to answer to his satisfaction (foreshadowing the accusers of Socrates, who would likewise demand he name his own penalty). Socrates proposes that, as the ignorant man, he will undergo the penalty of learning the truth. Thrasymachus demands money, lampooning his role as a sophist and betraying the fundamentally adversarial view he has of dialogue. Glaucon and the others agree to front the money for Socrates, and Socrates begins his cross examination in earnest.

  Socrates asks Thrasymachus whether it is possible for the rulers to be mistaken about their advantage. Thrasymachus answers that it is possible (it must be, or the sophist Thrasymachus, who makes his living in supposedly teaching them how to rule well, would have little to do). Socrates wonders then, is justice both the advantage and disadvantage of the stronger? If we obey the commands of the stronger when they are mistaken about their advantage, we will pursue their disadvantage in doing so.

Thrasymachus hedges, claiming that the ruler insofar as he is a ruler is infallible with respect to his own advantage, just as the grammarian is infallible about grammar qua grammarian or the doctor infallible about sickness and health qua doctor. Thrasymachus seems not to notice the implication that it will sometimes be just to disobey the commands of actual rulers, since no human ruler will be an ideal ruler who pursues the art of ruling infallibly. Indeed, it will be just to disobey a human ruler just as often as that ruler is mistaken about the nature of their true advantage, if we know better. If the stronger qua stronger is infallible about their own advantage, then the man who has a truly just claim to rule will be the one who has wisdom about the nature of the good.

However, Socrates does not initially draw out this conclusion in explicit terms. Rather, somewhat surprisingly, he asks about money-making. Specifically, he wants to know whether a doctor qua doctor is a maker of money, or a healer of the sick. Thrasymachus agrees a doctor qua doctor is a healer of the sick. The question is repeated with other arts, such as a pilot and etc. I think there is an unspoken mockery of the sophist profession here. Thrasymachus must affirm that the doctor qua doctor is a healer of the sick and not a maker of money. After all, is not Thrasymachus himself, qua sophist, a teacher of wisdom? If the sophist qua sophist is only a maker of money, this opens the door to wondering whether he is not simply a crook and a crank.

In any event, Thrasymachus winds up agreeing that each art in itself, in its ideal form, is practiced for the good of the patient, the client, etc. It is by a separate art, that of money making, that the practitioner of each art must seek his recompense. Rulers too seek recompense in the form of wage or reward for ruling. Socrates draws the conclusion that rulership (and therefore justice) must be for the sake of the ruled rather than for that of the ruler. By implication, no human ruler is the true ruler (just as no human grammarian is the true grammarian, in the sense of a perfect & infallible practitioner of the art of grammar). In any given human ruler, the art of ruling is mixed with the art of money-making, and of other arts. But, insofar as rulership qua rulership is practiced for the good of the ruled (just as medicine qua medicine is practiced for the good of the patient, etc) the true ruler will be one who rules for the sake of the ruled.

Thrasymachus mocks this conclusion, and retrenches his position. Is Socrates not familiar with shepherds and cowherds? They “rule” their sheep and their cattle not for the good of those creatures, but for the good of themselves. Likewise with rulers:

“Because you suppose shepherds or cowherds consider the good of the sheep or the cows and fatten them and take care of them looking to something other than their masters’ good and their own; and so you also believe that rulers in the cities, those who truly rule, think about the ruled differently from the way a man would regard sheep, and that night and day they consider anything else than how they will benefit themselves. And you are so far off about the just and justice, and the unjust and injustice, that you are unaware that justice and the just are really someone else’s good, the advantage of the man who is stronger and rules, and a personal harm to the man who obeys and serves.”

And further:

“And this must be considered, most simple Socrates: the just man everywhere has less than the unjust man. First, in contracts, when the just man is a partner of the unjust man, you will always find that at the dissolution of the partnership the just man does not have more than the unjust man, but less. Second, in matters pertaining to the city, when there are taxes, the just man pays more on the basis of equal property, the unjust man less; and when there are distributions, the one makes no profit, the other much. And, further, when each hold some ruling office, even if the just man suffers no other penalty, it is his lot to see his domestic affairs deteriorate from neglect, while he gets no advantage from the public store, thanks to his being just. The unjust man’s situation is the opposite in all of these respects.”

Finally, in an enormously important moment for the dialogue as a whole, for the first time Thrasymachus praises the life of the tyrant as the best of all human lives:

“I am speaking of the man I just now spoke of, the one who is able to get the better in a big way. Consider him, if you want to judge how much more to his private advantage the unjust is than the just. You will learn most easily of all if you turn to the most perfect injustice, which makes the one who does injustice most happy, and those who suffer it and would not be willing to do injustice, most wretched. And that is tyranny, which by stealth and force takes away what belongs to others, both what is sacred and profane, private and public, not bit by bit, but all at once. When someone does some part of this injustice and doesn’t get away with it, he is punished and endures the greatest reproaches – temple robbers, kidnappers, housebreakers, defrauders, and thieves are what they call those partially unjust men who do such evil deeds. But when someone, in addition to the money of the citizens, kidnaps and enslaves them too, instead of these shameful names, he gets called happy and blessed, not only by the citizens, but by whomever else hears that he has done injustice entire. For it is not because they fear doing unjust deeds, but because they fear suffering them, that those who blame injustice do so. So, Socrates, injustice, when it comes into being on a sufficient scale, is mightier, freer, and more masterful than justice; and, as I have said from the beginning, the just is the advantage of the stronger, and the unjust is what is profitable and advantageous for oneself.”

Here is the classical problem of justice stated most completely and perfectly in perhaps all of literature. The happy man is a rare man, for few have the courage or the ability to do what Thrasymachus calls “injustice entire”. Most of us, through lack of bravery or lack of ability, experience a fear of suffering injustice that outweighs our ambition to do injustice ourselves. As such, we blame injustice, and seek the protection of rulers, who we implicitly acknowledge rule not for our good but for their own. We are happy enough and count ourselves fortunate if they offer us some degree of protection from those pettier injustices which more ordinary men seek to do, while not bringing the weight of their own rule down too heavily upon our backs.  

In responding to Thrasymachus, Socrates makes a brief and tantalizing reference to men who may rule for reasons other than those the sophist proposes. Such men, Socrates suggests, would see ruling for the sake of money as beneath them, and would disdain the “reward” of honor given by the common run of humanity, as the common run of humanity considers honor. Such men, Socrates suggests, rule not for riches or for honor, but out of fear of being ruled by men worse than themselves. To be ruled by his inferiors is the punishment the truly superior man suffers for remaining aloof from politics. However, Socrates does not pursue this line of reasoning here. Instead, he says, he wishes to investigate Thrasymachus’s claim that injustice is “stronger” than justice.

Socrates now pursues an argument which seems rather strange at first glance. He asks Thrasymachus whether the just man would seek to “get the better of” another just man, or of a just action? Thrasymachus says that he would not. But would the just man seek to get the better of the unjust man? Thrasymachus says that he would, but he would be unable to. And what of the unjust man? Will he try to get the better of the just man? Thrasymachus agrees he will. And would he even try to get the better of another unjust man? Again, Thrasymachus says he would. Socrates concludes that the just man seeks to get the better of the unlike, but not of the like, whereas the unjust man seeks to get the better of both like and unlike. Thrasymachus agrees. Socrates then asks whether the unjust man is prudent and wise, and is like those who are prudent and wise in other respects, whereas the just man is unlike them? Again, Thrasymachus agrees.

Socrates returns to the arts, asking to confirm whether the musical man is the prudent and wise with respect to musical matters, the medical man with respect to medical matters, etc. Thrasymachus agrees that they are. Socrates asks whether the musical man would claim to “get the better of” another musical man, in musical matters. This is somewhat opaque in the text, but it seems we are still thinking of the arts in terms of idealized practitioners. If two musical men were both perfect and infallible practitioners of music, neither would seek to “get the better of” or do anything that the other wouldn’t. Socrates repeats the example with the medical man. Thrasymachus, in any event, agrees. Socrates concludes that it is the ignorant man, who seeks to get the better of those who are like him and unlike him, who is the unjust man, whereas it is the just man who is wise and prudent.

If it is unclear to you what this argument is really supposed to prove, you are not alone. But I do believe it gets fleshed out a bit when Socrates starts to put in more concrete terms what he is thinking of. He asks Thrasymachus whether a band of robbers or pirates, or even a city which seeks to dominate other cities in war, can practice “perfect” injustice. Won’t such groups need to have a measure of justice within themselves in order to facilitate their cooperative collective action?

“’…do you believe that either a city, or an army, or pirates, or robbers, or any other tribe which has some common unjust enterprise would be able to accomplish anything, if its members acted unjustly to one another?’

‘Surely not,’ he said.

‘And what if they didn’t act unjustly? Wouldn’t they be more able to accomplish something?’

‘Certainly,’ he said.

‘For surely, Thrasymachus, it’s injustice that produces factions, hatreds, and quarrels among themselves, and justice that produces unanimity and friendship, isn’t it so?’

‘Let it be so, so as not to differ with you.’”

Having gotten Thrasymachus to consent that unjust enterprises require at least a measure of internal justice, Socrates then asks Thrasymachus to consider the state of a soul that is riven with internal injustice:

“’And then when it is in one man, I suppose it will do the same thing which it naturally accomplishes. First it will make him unable to act, because he is at faction and is not of one mind with himself, and second, an enemy both to himself and to just men, won’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘And the gods, too, my friend, are just?’

‘Let it be,’ he said.

‘Then the unjust man will also be an enemy to the gods, Thrasymachus, and the just man a friend.’

‘Feast yourself boldly on the argument,’ he said, ‘for I won’t oppose you, so as not to irritate these men here.’”

Socrates has been seemingly able to tame Thrasymachus by pointing out the debilitating effect injustice has on action. Whether injustice is present in a city, army, band of robbers, or even a single man, it creates quarrels and factions and hinders seriously the ability to act. Two things jump out here. The first is that the argument has not really proven that we should always be interpersonally just. Certainly it may be prudent to be just insofar as we anticipate the necessity of some collective action with our interlocutor, but this will hardly cover all morally relevant cases. The second is that Socrates’s transition to the individual soul is rather sudden and underdetermined. What does it mean for there to be injustice “within a man”? It seems like it intends to describe a man that is not at one mind with himself. But it is hardly clear that a man that is at one mind with himself will necessarily be a man who is just in the ordinary moral sense of the term. The rest of the dialogue will pick up these questions in various ways, but they are not dealt with here.

The final explicit argument Socrates offers in Book I is a “function” argument that looks like a possible precursor to a similar argument given in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Socrates gets Thrasymachus to agree that the virtue of the eye is that whereby it sees well, the virtue of the ear is that whereby it hears well, the virtue of a knife is that whereby it cuts well, and etc. If Justice is the virtue of the soul (Thrasymachus, somewhat strangely given his other commitments, has agreed that it is), then Socrates concludes that justice must be that whereby man lives well. The unjust man, then, can only be the unhappy man.

Thrasymachus congratulates Socrates, we sense somewhat bitterly, but Socrates is not satisfied himself:

“’Then, my blessed Thrasymachus, injustice is never more profitable than justice.’

‘Let that,’ he said, ‘be the fill of your banquet at the festival of Bendis, Socrates.’

‘I owe it to you, Thrasymachus,’ I said, ‘since you have grown gentle and left off being hard on me. However, I have not had a fine banquet, but it’s my own fault, not yours. For in my opinion, I am just like the gluttons who grab at whatever is set before them to get a taste of it, before they have in proper measure enjoyed what went before. Before finding out what we were considering at first – what the just is – I let go of that and pursued the consideration of whether it is vice and lack of learning, or wisdom and virtue. And later, when in its turn an argument that injustice is more profitable than justice fell in my way, I could not restrain myself from leaving the other one and going after this one, so that now as a result of the discussion I know nothing. So long as I do not know what the just is, I shall hardly know whether it is a virtue or not and whether the one who has it is happy or unhappy.’”

The question of what the nature of justice is, and consequently whether the just man can be said to be happy, will occupy much of the rest of Republic. I hope to write on it more as I proceed through the ten books of the dialogue with my reading group. I’ll publish here as regularly as I am able, so if you have enjoyed this I’ll hope you’ll stay tuned for the rest. Thanks, and that’s all for now.