Republic Book I - Justice and Societal Organization
Justice and Its Manifestations
The central question in Plato's Republic is the meaning of Justice and its realization in society.
The Greek word for 'just' encompasses various meanings, similar to the English word 'right,' including:
Observance of custom or duty
Righteousness
Fairness, honesty
Lawfulness
Entitlement, rights
Moral obligation
Justice covers an individual's conduct affecting others, defining what they have a right to expect.
A common saying equates justice with the entirety of virtue.
The Ideal of Justice
Defining Justice suggests a unifying principle behind its various applications.
The aim is to organize human life in a way that creates a just society with just individuals.
Societal justice ensures members fulfill duties and enjoy rights.
Individual justice means the soul or personal life is ordered regarding the rights and duties of one's nature.
The Ideal Society as a Standard
An ideal society acts as a benchmark for evaluating existing societies.
Societies are judged based on how closely they align with this ideal.
Reforms are assessed by their progress towards this ideal.
The Republic is the first attempt to describe this ideal as a practical framework for human well-being and happiness.
Without such a goal, governance lacks direction and pursues flawed objectives.
Initial Views on Justice
Socrates explores initial views on justice through dialogue, revealing their shortcomings and hinting at guiding principles.
Setting the Scene
The conversation takes place at Cephalus' house in Piraeus.
The participants include Glaucon, Adeimantus, Polemarchus, Lysias, Euthydemus, Thrasymachus, and Socrates' young friends.
The occasion is the festival of Bendis, a Thracian goddess.
Cephalus: Justice as Honesty and Righteousness
Cephalus embodies the wisdom gained from an honorable life in business.
He values money for the peace of mind it brings through honesty and fulfilling obligations to gods and men.
He defines 'right' conduct or justice as such fulfillment.
Socrates and Glaucon's Visit
Socrates recounts visiting the Piraeus with Glaucon to pray and observe the Bendis festival.
They are invited to stay by Polemarchus and others.
They gather at Polemarchus' house, meeting Cephalus and others.
Cephalus' Perspective on Old Age
Cephalus is depicted as aged but welcoming, enjoying intellectual discussions.
Socrates seeks his perspective on old age.
Cephalus notes that while some old men lament the loss of youthful pleasures and feel disrespected, he finds that the key to contentment in old age lies in one's character, not age itself.
He recounts Sophocles' relief at being freed from passions, likening it to escaping a madman.
Cephalus believes a peaceful mind makes old age bearable, while a troubled mind makes any age painful.
Wealth and Peace of Mind
Socrates suggests that wealth makes old age easier, a notion Cephalus acknowledges has some merit.
He references Themistocles' retort about fame being tied to one's city, applying it to wealth and contentment.
Cephalus states that riches alone cannot make a bad man content.
Cephalus' Financial History
Cephalus inherited and maintained his wealth, aiming to leave at least as much to his sons.
He is portrayed as not overly attached to money, unlike those who solely focus on accumulating it.
The Greatest Advantage of Wealth
Cephalus considers the greatest benefit of wealth to be the peace of mind it provides when facing death.
Wealth can prevent one from fearing having wronged others or being indebted to gods or men.
A clear conscience brings 'sweet Hope' in old age, while a life of wrongdoing brings terror.
Wealth enables a 'right-thinking man' to avoid fearing the afterlife due to unresolved debts or wrongdoings.
Questioning Cephalus' Definition of Justice
Socrates questions Cephalus' definition of justice as simply telling the truth and repaying debts.
He presents the scenario of returning a weapon to a mad friend, arguing that it would be wrong.
Cephalus concedes and passes the argument to Polemarchus.
Transition to Polemarchus
Cephalus departs to attend to a sacrifice, bequeathing the discussion to Polemarchus.
Polemarchus: Justice as Helping Friends and Harming Enemies
Criticism begins, noting that justice cannot be a list of external actions.
The same action can vary with context.
Polemarchus cites a maxim from the poet Simonides, defining justice as 'giving every man his due.'
Socrates questions the implications of this definition.
Vague Ideas and Absurd Conclusions
Socrates aims to expose the vagueness of Polemarchus' ideas by leading him to an illogical conclusion.
Analogy to Crafts
Plato compares morality to useful arts like medicine and navigation.
He views justice as an art.
He believes in an art of living, analogous to a craftsman's knowledge, where morality enables one to live well by knowing life's true end and values.
Moral virtue is the knowledge that constitutes the art of living.
Misdirected actions result from false ends like wealth or power.
Society should be ruled by those trained to understand goodness.
Questioning Simonides' Saying
Socrates questions Polemarchus on Simonides' saying that justice is rendering every man his due.
He points out the contradiction in returning a weapon to a madman.
Polemarchus clarifies that Simonides meant doing good to friends and not harm.
Dealing with Enemies
Socrates asks if one should render what is due to enemies, implying injury.
He notes that poets often use hidden meanings.
He questions whether Simonides defined justice as rendering what is appropriate, calling it one's 'due.'
Analogies to Other Arts
Socrates draws parallels to medicine and cookery.
He suggests justice leads to rendering services or injuries to friends or enemies.
Polemarchus agrees that justice means doing good to friends and harm to enemies.
Competence and Usefulness
Socrates questions who is most competent to treat friends and enemies in matters of health.
He extends the questioning to voyages and war.
He asks when the just man is most competent to do good or harm, and Polemarchus says in war.
Socrates notes that doctors and ship captains are useless when one is well or on shore, respectively.
He then inquires if the just man is useless in peacetime, to which Polemarchus says no.
Utility in Peacetime
Justice is useful in peacetime, like farming or shoemaking.
He asks for what purpose justice is useful in time of peace, and Polemarchus answers for business.
Socrates asks if, in partnerships, the just man is as good as an expert at specific tasks like draughts, bricklaying or music, to which Polemarchus says no
Polemarchus says the just man is especially useful where money is involved; Socrates counters when it is deposited for safe keeping, when the money is idle.
Uselessness in Using Things
Justice is only useful when money is out of use, like a pruning-knife, shield, or lyre when they are not being used.
Socrates argues that justice is never of any use in using things, and becomes useful when they are useless.
He says justice can hardly be a thing of much value.
Skill in Opposites
Skill in boxing involves both dealing blows and avoiding them.
Doctors can cause disease, and generals can deceive enemies.
Experts in keeping things safe will also make expert thieves.
Justice as a Kind of Thief
The just man, being good at keeping money safe, will also be good at stealing it.
Socrates jests that this idea comes from Homer's portrayal of Autolycus.
Justice is portrayed as skill in cheating to help friends or harm enemies.
Questioning the Motive
Polemarchus protests this notion, but still believes justice involves helping friends and harming enemies.
Socrates questions whether friends and enemies are defined by belief or reality.
He posits it is natural to respond with love for those who love you and hate for those who hate you, but notes this depends on what one believes.
Mistaken Identity
People mistake honest men for rogues and vice versa, leading to misdirected help and harm.
Ill-treating the Innocent
It would be morally wrong to mistreat a man who does no wrong.
This leads to the conclusion that wrongdoers should be harmed, and the honest helped.
The Bad Judge
For a bad judge of character, it will often be right to injure his friends when they are rogues, and to help his enemies when they are honest men
Polemarchus concedes they must shift their definition of friend and enemy.
Defining Friends and Enemies
A friend is defined as one who is truly honest, not merely seeming so.
On this basis, good people are friends, and wicked people are enemies.
Refining Justice
Justice means doing good to friends who are good, and harm to enemies who are wicked.
Harming Any Human Being?
Socrates questions whether harming any human being can be just.
Harming animals makes them worse, less perfect creatures.
Harming Humans
Harming humans makes them worse by the standard of human excellence.
Justice is a peculiarly human excellence.
Harming a man means making him unjust.
The Function of Goodness
Musicians and riding-masters cannot make pupils unmusical or bad riders.
It cannot be the function of goodness to do harm any more than heat can cool, or drought can produce moisture.
Harming people belongs to the unjust, not the just.
Revisiting Simonides
It was not a wise saying that justice is giving every man his due, if that means harm is due from the just man to his enemies, as well as help to his friends.
It is never right to harm anyone.
Rejecting the Doctrine
Socrates and Polemarchus will make common cause against anyone who attributes that doctrine to Simonides, or to any of the old canonical sages, like Bias or Pittacus.
Polemarchus is prepared to support.
The Despot's Doctrine
The account of justice as helping friends and harming enemies must be due to some despot who thought he could do as he liked, such as Periander, or Perdiccas, or Xerxes, or Ismenias of Thebes.
Polemarchus and Socrates dispose of that definition of justice, someone is requested to suggest another.
Thrasymachus: Justice as the Interest of the Stronger
Polemarchus' acceptance prompts Thrasymachus' protest, who represents the doctrine that might is right in an extreme form.
Justice or right is nothing but the name given by the men actually holding power in any state to any actions they enjoin by law upon their subjects; and that all their laws are framed to promote their own personal or class interests. 'Just' accordingly means what is for the interest of the stronger, ruling party. Right and wrong have no other meaning at all. This is not a theory of social contract: it is not suggested that the subject has ever made a bargain with the ruler, sacrificing some of his liberty to gain the benefits of a social order. The ruler imposes his 'rights' by sheer force. The perfect example of such a ruler is the despot (the Greek 'tyrant'), whose position Thrasymachus regards as supremely enviable. He is precisely the man who has the will and the power to 'do good to himself and his friends and to harm his enemies!
Ambiguities of the Formula
The word 'stronger' commonly means also 'superior' or 'better'; but 'better' has no moral sense for Thrasymachus, who does not recognize the existence of morality.
The superiority of the stronger lies in the skill and determination which enable them to seize and hold power. 'Interest,' again, means the personal satisfaction and aggrandizement of the ruling individuals.
*ALL this time Thrasymachus had been trying more than once to break in upon our conversation; but his neighbours had restrained him, wishing to hear the argument to the end. In the pause after my last words he could keep quiet no longer; but gathering himself up like a wild beast he sprang at us as if he would tear us in pieces. Polemarchus and I were frightened out of our wits, when he burst out to the whole company:
Thrasymachus' Interruption
Thrasymachus interrupts, frustrated with Socrates' method of questioning.
He demands that Socrates provide his own definition of justice.
Thrasymachus claims it is easier to ask questions than to answer them.
Socrates' Hesitation
*Socrates admits he doesn't know how to answer, and asks Thrasymachus to explain.
*He agrees to give money for learning about justice, and says that Thrasymachus should receive that from the company.
*Thrasymachus should also not be ungrateful to the group.
Thrasymachus' Definition
Thrasymachus defines 'just' or 'right' as what is in the interest of the stronger party.
Socrates' Response
Socrates seeks clarification.
He counters that Polydamas' diet is not universally beneficial.
Explanation of Thrasymachus' Statement
The laws are made by the ruling party in its own interest; a democracy makes democratic laws, a despot autocratic ones, and so on. By making these laws they define as 'right' for their subjects whatever is for their own interest, and they call anyone who breaks them a 'wrongdoer' and punish him accordingly. That is what I mean: in all states alike ‘right' has the same meaning, namely what is for the interest of the party established in power, and that is the strongest. So the sound conclusion is that what is 'right' is the same everywhere: the interest of the stronger party.
Questioning the Definition
Socrates agrees that right is a matter of interest, but questions whether it is always in the interest of the stronger party.
Obeying the Men in Power
Socrates asks if it is always right to obey the men in power.
He questions their infallibility.
Fallibility of Rulers
Thrasymachus concedes that rulers can make mistakes in framing laws.
Laws Not in Their Own Interest
When rulers make laws not in their own interest, they do so badly.
Subjects must obey any law, even if it is not in the rulers' interest, and in so doing they will be doing right
This means that by following this law, the subject will be doing what is not in the stronger party's interest.
Cleitophon's Intervention
Cleitophon suggests that Thrasymachus meant whatever the stronger believes to be in his own interest.
This introduces the element of perceived interest rather than actual interest.
Socrates' Clarification
Socrates asks Thrasymachus to clarify whether he means what the stronger thinks is to his interest, regardless of whether it actually is.
The Precise Definition
Thrasymachus refines his position, stating that a ruler, in so far as he is acting as a ruler, makes no mistakes and consequently enjoins what is best for himself; and that is what the subject is to do. So, as I said at first, 'right' means doing what is to the interest of the stronger.
Defining 'Interest'
Socrates probes the meaning of 'interest' in the context of various arts and skills.
Asking for More Definition
You believe my questions were maliciously designed to damage your position?
I know it. But you will gain nothing by that. You cannot outwit me by cunning, and you are not the man to crush me in the open.
Bless your soul, I answered, I should not think of trying. But, to prevent any more misunderstanding, when you speak of that ruler or stronger party whose interest the weaker ought to serve, please make it clear whether you are using the words in the ordinary way or in that strict sense you have just defined.
Transition to the Art of Government
Since a craft exists only in the man who embodies it, and we are considering the man only as the embodiment of this special capacity, neglecting all personal characteristics and any other capacities he may chance to have. When Socrates talks of the art or craft in this abstract way as having an interest, he means the same thing as if he spoke of the interest of the craftsman qua craftsman. Granted that there is, as Thrasymachus suggested, an art of government exercised by a ruler who, qua ruler, is infallible and so in the full sense 'superior, the question now is, what his interest should be, on the analogy of other crafts.
*Then, said I, the art of medicine does not study its own interest, but the needs of the body, just as a groom shows his skill by caring for horses, not for the art of grooming. And so every art seeks, not its own advantage for it has no deficiencies-but the interest of the subject on which it is exercised.
Thrasymachus Shifts Ground
*He takes up the analogy of the shepherd and applies once more Thrasymachus' own distinction of 'capacities. The shepherd qua shepherd cares for his flock; he receives wages in a different capacity, qua wage-earner. The fact that the rulers of mankind expect to be rewarded shows that the proper task of governing is commonly regarded as an irksome and unprofitable business.
The Interests of the Ruled
*At this point, when everyone could see that Thrasymachus' definition of justice had been turned inside out, instead of making any reply, he said: Socrates, have you a nurse?
Why do you ask such a question as that? I said. Wouldn't it be better to answer mine?
The Critique of Justice
*Socrates presents that in politics, the genuine ruler regards his subjects exactly like sheep, and thinks of nothing else, night and day, but the good he can get out of them for himself. You are so far out in your notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice, as not to know that 'right' actually means what is good for someone else, and to be just means serving the interest of the stronger who rules, at the cost of the subject who obeys; whereas injustice is just the reverse, asserting its authority over those innocents who are called just, so that they minister solely to their master's advantage and happiness, and not in the least degree to their own. Innocent as you are yourself, Socrates, you must see that a just man always has the worst of it. Take a private business: when a partnership is wound up, you will never find that the more honest of two partners comes off with the larger share; and in their relations to the state, when there are taxes to be paid, the honest man will pay more than the other on the same amount of property; or if there is money to be distributed, the dishonest will get it all. When either of them hold some public office, even if the just man loses in no other way, his private affairs at any rate will suffer from neglect, while his principles will not allow him to help himself from the public funds; not to mention the offence he will give to his friends and relations by refusing to sacrifice those principles to do them a good turn. Injustice has all the opposite advantages. I am speaking of the type I described just now, the man who can get the better of other people on a large scale: you must fix your eye on him, if you want to judge how much it is to one's own interest not to be just. You can see that best in the most consummate form of injustice, which rewards wrongdoing with supreme welfare and happiness and reduces its victims, if they won't retaliate in kind, to misery. That form is despotism, which uses force or fraud to plunder the goods of others, public or private, sacred or profane, and to do it in a whole sale way. If you are caught committing any one of these crimes on a small scale, you are punished and disgraced; they call it sacrilege, kidnapping, burglary, theft and brigandage. But if, besides taking their property, you turn all your countrymen into slaves, you will hear no more of those ugly names; your countrymen themselves will call you the happiest of men and bless your name, and so will everyone who hears of such a complete triumph of injustice; for when people denounce injustice, it is because they are afraid of suffering wrong, not of doing it. So true is it, Socrates, that injustice, on a grand enough scale, is superior to justice in strength and freedom and autocratic power; and 'right,' as I said at first, means simply what serves the interest of the stronger party; 'wrong' means what is for the interest and profit of oneself.
The Importance of the Argument
*Having deluged our ears with this torrent of words, as the man at the baths might empty a bucket over one's head, Thrasymachus meant to take himself off; but the company obliged him to stay and defend his position. I was specially urgent in my entreaties.
My good Thrasymachus, said I, do you propose to fling a doctrine like that at our heads and then go away without explaining it properly or letting us point out to you whether it is true or not? Is it so small a matter in your eyes to determine the whole course of conduct which every one of us must follow to get the best out of life?
Defining Wages
*Don't I realize it is a serious matter? he retorted.
Apparently not, said I; or else you have no consideration for us, and do not care whether we shall lead better or worse lives for being ignorant of this truth you profess to know. Do take the trouble to let us into your secret; if you treat us handsomely, you may be sure it will be a good investment; there are so many of us to show our gratitude. I will make no secret of my own conviction, which is that injustice is not more profitable than justice, even when left free to work its will unchecked. No; let your unjust man have full power to do wrong, whether by successful violence or by escaping detection; all the same he will not convince me that he will gain more than he would by being just. There may be others who feel as I do, and set justice above injustice. It is for you to convince us that we are not well advised.