CTI 302 - Thrasymachus (Aug 31-Sep 2, copy 3)

Thrasymachus' definition of justice=The advantage of the stronger. Whatever the ruling element makes law to serve itself.;

Why Thrasymachus bursts in at 336b=Socrates only questions and refutes without asserting anything, which he reads as a dodge. He is also a paid sophist watching Socrates work for free.;

Two implications of "advantage of the stronger"=(1) Justice is conventional, not natural, varying with who rules. (2) Justice is another's good, served at your own expense.;

Who would hold Thrasymachus' view=Political realists and the ambitious. Athens' own imperial rhetoric is the live example.;

Socrates' first counterargument (339b)=Rulers sometimes mistake their own advantage, so obeying them would be both the advantage and the disadvantage of the stronger.;

Why Socrates' 339b move is surprising=He ignores the moral ugliness entirely and attacks on a technicality instead.;

Cleitophon's proposed repair=Justice is what the ruler believes to be his advantage, not what actually is.;

Thrasymachus' "precise sense" move (340d)=A ruler qua ruler never errs. Error means he has ceased to be a ruler in the strict sense.;

Why the "precise sense" move backfires=It commits him to ruling as a craft, which is exactly what lets Socrates run the craft argument.;

Three shifts in Thrasymachus' speech at 343b=Definition becomes evaluation. The ruler's standpoint becomes the subject's. Description becomes open advocacy.;

Shepherd and sheep analogy (343b)=Shepherds fatten sheep for their own profit, not the sheep's, so rulers tend subjects for their own gain.;

Euetheia=High

minded simplicity or naivete. Thrasymachus' label for justice after 343b.;

How Thrasymachus rates injustice at 343b=As prudence and good counsel, even a virtue. Tyranny is complete injustice and the happiest life.;

The craft (techne) argument=No art seeks its own advantage but the advantage of its subject. Medicine serves the body, not the doctor.;

Why rulers need wages (345e

347d)=Because ruling as such benefits the ruled, not the ruler, so nobody would rule for its own sake.;

Three wages for ruling=Money, honor, and the penalty of being ruled by someone worse.;

Weakness of the craft argument=It concedes justice IS another's good, abstracts ruling from real human motives, and Socrates' own wage

earner's art admits practitioners chase gain.;

Role of law in Book I=Central at first, since justice is obedience to law, then it quietly vanishes. The tyrant stands outside law and the craft analogy brackets it.;

The three arguments of 347e

354c=348b

Pleonexia argument (348b

351c)=The just seek to outdo only their unlike. Experts don't try to outdo fellow experts, so the just resemble the wise.;

Why the pleonexia argument is weakest=It rests on a bare analogy and on Thrasymachus getting flustered rather than convinced.;

Faction argument (351c

352d)=Injustice breeds internal conflict. A city, army, or even a gang of thieves cannot act together if thoroughly unjust.;

Limit of the faction argument=It shows SOME justice is needed among partners, not that COMPLETE justice serves the individual. A tyrant needs only honor among thieves.;

Ergon or function argument (352d

354a)=Everything has a work it alone does best. Virtue lets it do that work well. The soul's work is living, and justice is its virtue.;

Circularity in the function argument=It assumes justice is the soul's virtue, which is the very point in dispute.;

Socrates' glutton confession (354b

c)=He grabbed at each dish, asking whether justice is wisdom and whether it pays before ever settling what justice IS, so he knows nothing.;

Why the glutton confession matters=It marks Book I as a dialectical win over one man rather than a demonstration, and is the honest reason Books II

X exist.;

Glaucon's three classes of good (357b

d)=Good for itself alone. Good for itself AND its results. Good only for its results.;

Where justice belongs among the goods=Socrates puts it in the second, finest class. The many put it in the third.;

Glaucon's account of justice's origin (358e

359b)=Doing injustice is good and suffering it worse. Those too weak to have the first without the second make a compact neither to do nor suffer. Justice is that covenant.;

Why the origin of justice matters=If justice is born of weakness and calculation, nobody ever chose it as good in itself. Its genesis reveals its status.;

Ring of Gyges=Give invisibility to a just and an unjust man and their behavior converges, showing nobody is just willingly.;

Why the ring of Gyges is not sufficient=It is a thought experiment, not evidence, and it presumes the just man's justice was only external restraint, which is the point at issue.;

Glaucon's rigged comparison (360e

362c)=The perfectly unjust man with a spotless reputation set against the perfectly just man taken for a criminal.;

Socrates' reaction at 361d=He whistles. Glaucon has scoured both men clean like statues polished for judgment. Admiration and alarm at once.;

Adeimantus' target (362d

367e)=Not the advocates of injustice but the conventional praise of justice for reputation and divine reward, which teaches that SEEMING just is the prize.;

Why Adeimantus attacks the poets=They are the authoritative teachers about gods and justice. They promise the just grow rich and depict gods as bribable by sacrifice.;

Glaucon vs Adeimantus=Glaucon argues from nature and self

interest. Adeimantus argues from speech, education, and public opinion.;

What Adeimantus' speech sets up=The censorship of poetry and the education of the guardians in Books II

III.