Commentary on Plato's Republic, Book I
Socrates,
Meet Thrasymachus
After silencing Polemarchus,
Socrates is confronted by the Sophist Thrasymachus. The sketch of Thrasymachus
in the book is rather detailed and important, and begins as follows:
While we were speaking Thrasymachus often started to interrupt, but he was restrained by those who were sitting by him, for they wanted to hear the argument to the end. But when we paused after these last words of mine he could no longer keep quiet. He gathered himself together like a wild beast about to spring, and he came at us as if to tear us to pieces.
Polemarchus and I were afraid and flustered as he roared into the middle of our company: What nonsense have you two been talking, Socrates? Why do you play the fool in thus giving way to each other? If you really want to know what justice is, don't only ask questions and then score off anyone who answers, and refute him. You know very well that it is much easier to ask questions than to answer them. Give an answer yourself and tell us what you say justice is. And don't tell me that it is the needful, or the advantageous, or the beneficial, or the gainful, or the useful, but tell me clearly and precisely what you mean, for I will not accept it if you utter such rubbish. (Polemarchus, 336b-d).
Socrates claims to be startled and responds
"trembling": "[D]o not be hard on us,
Thrasymachus, if we have erred in our investigation . . . be sure that we err
unwillingly." (336e). After a long back and forth about the
unreasonableness of Thrasymachus' demand (Socrates claims that it's
unacceptable for Thrasymachus to rule out answers, potentially correct ones at
that, in advance) and the unreasonableness of Socrates always playing the role
of questioner never answerer (Thrasymachus says that he told the others that
Socrates would not answer the "What is justice?" question and would
pretend ignorance), Thrasymachus suggests he can give "a different and
better" answer to the question than any provided so far and wonders
whether Socrates will be willing to "pay a penalty". After one more
Thrasymachus dig at Socratic method, Socrates says:
My dear man, I said, how could one answer, when in the first place he does not know and does not profess to know, and then, if he has an opinion, an eminent man forbids him to say what he believes? It is much more seemly for you to answer, since you say you know and have something to say. Please do so. Do me that favour, and do not begrudge your teaching to Glaucon and the others. (Socrates, 337e ff.).
Eventually, Thrasymachus offers his account
of justice, initially claiming, "the just is nothing else than the
advantage of the stronger." Under
Socratic questioning about the meaning of the statement, Thrasymachus says that
every city has a government/rulers and that it is the government or ruling
element in each city that rules and has power. In particular, Thrasymachus
claims that each government/ruler "makes laws to its own advantage",
"declare [the laws] to be just for their subjects" and "punish
[anyone] who transgresses the laws as lawless and unjust." Thus, for Thrasymachus, "justice
is, the same in all cities, the advantage of the established government, . . .
the advantage of the stronger." (338e,ff.).
At this point in the game, Thrasymachus has
offered us not only a descriptive account of justice but
one that purports to give an operational definition of the term,
"justice". One thing I mean by this is that the account is not, even
implicitly, a normative account, on any level. That is, both of the previous
accounts of justice can be said to be normative, prescriptive, on two levels.
Not only could we preface Cephalus' and Polemarchus' accounts of justice with
"One ought" (so, one ought to tell the truth and pay back debts, or
one ought to help friends and harm enemies; more on this shortly), it is also
plausible to see both men as offering an account of justice that ought to obtain
or be followed, irrespective of whether it actually is so. That is, both
Cephalus and Polemarchus can be seen to be recommending justice, can both be
taken to be saying, not only that one ought to be just but also that this is
what justice ought to be. None of this, it seems, can be said of Thrasymachus'
account of justice. Thrasymachus' notion of justice is descriptive in that it
does not consist of a recommendation of behavior at all but rather offers us
several fundamental facts ABOUT justice, viz., it is an invention of
governments/rulers and it is to the advantage of the government/rulers. This is why Thrasymachus' account of
justice cannot be plausibly prefaced with, "One ought", even if
Thrasymachus is offering facts about justice that he believes ought to obtain.
It is important to appreciate these
differences in the accounts of justice offered by Cephalus and Polemarchus and
that offered by Thrasymachus. In particular, Thrasymachus' answer to Socrates'
"What is justice?" question reveals an ambiguity in the question.
Whereas one could understand the question as asking for an account of what one
must do in order to be just, or an account of the common feature(s)of all just
actions, the question can be taken such that it is to be answered by citing
fundamental facts about justice. For example, "What is religion?" is
similarly ambiguous. It can be plausibly answered by saying that it's the
belief in and worship of a, superior being. Or by saying that it's an invention by humans that is a
result of their fears and which attempts to calm them. Both answers are legitimate enough
perhaps but if one wants to know what activities distinguish the religious from
the nonreligious, only the former answer gives us that straightaway. Since it
seems clear that Socrates does wish to find out what actions one must perform
to be just, Thrasymachus' account forces us to tease out the answer to the
question, "What must one do in order to be just, what actions constitute
just actions?" The answer, of course, is not hard to find. Thrasymachus
would contend that being just is a matter of following the rules, obeying the
laws of the government/ruler (and thus, doing what is advantageous to the
government/ruler).
But this presents an obvious problem, viz.,
it is clear that Thrasymachus' account of justice is such that being just is
not something to be recommended in all cases, is not something that one ought
always to do or aspire to do, not something, in short, that is an excellence (arete) or virtue. On the contrary, any
right thinking person probably would find it unacceptable to be told that one
ought always and everywhere to do what is advantageous for one's
government/rulers, and that doing so was an excellence or virtue. Indeed,
something stronger seems in place, viz., one ought not always do what is
advantageous to one's government/rulers (unless, of course, one is convinced
that there is a symbiotic relationship between the advantage of one's
government/rulers and one's own advantage. However, not only have I no idea how
such a relationship could be created [unless one is part of the government,
rendering one's own interest identical with the interest of the government,
which is a bit of a cheat, it seems], I would also question the worth of
creating any such relationship. It
is healthy, I think, for a government and the governed to have some competing
interests. Unfortunately, I have
neither time nor inclination to set out my reasons for this here. The upshot
seems to be then that Thrasymachus' account of justice has the odd feature of
being something we would neither recommend nor commend others for doing.
This is especially problematic given the
discussion up to this point. For in both of the earlier discussions about
justice, Socrates found the inability to recommend or commend a particular
course of action a sufficient reason for rejecting the accounts of justice
under discussion. For example, in the case of Cephalus, Socrates found the fact
that it was not always right to tell the truth to a crazed man, or not always right
to return weapons to crazy people, a sufficient basis for rejecting Cephalus'
account of justice. And it was because Socrates couldn't commend the
"useless" activity of guarding things, and couldn't recommend or
commend stealing, or harming the good, or making people unjust, that he claimed
that Polemarchus' account of justice wouldn't do. In short, the entire
discussion up to this point has depended heavily on the assumption that justice
is a good thing, something one ought to try to achieve, an excellence or
virtue. So much is obvious from the fact that anytime an account of justice
offers us a course of behavior that turns out to be something that cannot be
recommended or commended, it is taken as sufficient grounds for rejecting that
account as a correct account of justice. However, Thrasymachus has offered us
an account of justice that not only is not offered as an account of right or
recommended or commendable behavior but one which actually veers in the
opposite direction, viz., it makes just behavior out to be behavior that is not
to be recommended, is not commendable, is not right. Clearly, Thrasymachus'
account of justice is at odds with the common assumption that justice is
necessarily a good thing, something that can be and ought to be recommended and
commended.
There seem to be two possible maneuvers here.
One is to simply point out to Thrasymachus that since his account of justice
offers us just behavior as behavior that cannot be recommended or commended,
the account is off the mark. That is, the fact that Thrasymachus is not willing
to recommend or commend the behavior said to be just by his account of justice
shows that he has failed to offer a viable answer to Socrates' question. The
other maneuver is to claim that Thrasymachus and Socrates are talking by each
other because they possess different conceptions of justice. In particular, for
Socrates, justice is something that necessarily is an excellence, a virtue,
something that can and ought to be recommended to others. It is also something whose
existence and properties are independent of human opinion and convention in the
same way we would say the existence and properties of the sun are so. Most importantly, perhaps, Socrates
clearly believes that justice is always and everywhere one and the same. (More
on this below. Obviously there is a can of worms opened here. In particular,
some believe that it is wrong to say that the sun being yellow is a property of
the sun that is independent of human opinion and convention, for not only is it
one of our conventions to use 'yellow' as we do, but it is also the nature of
our perceptual capacities (or incapacities, depending on one's outlook!) that
gives rise to color perceptions and concepts.
In short, it is because we are as we are that we hold that there are colors and
shapes and things in our world. Change our human capacities and you change the
furniture of the world, or so it is alleged. We make the world what it is, we
are worldmakers, etc., etc. Such arguments are, to be kind, sophistic, in the
worst sense of this pejorative term. In particular, they do violence to our use
of 'sun', 'yellow', 'color' and most importantly, 'independent of', and 'human
convention'. Properly understood, it is the case that the sun's existence,
color, heat-producing capacities, etc., are not due to us, or our conventions.
For they are independent of them in at least this sense, viz., if all humans
died tomorrow, it would (or could) still be true that the sun exists, is
yellow, produces such-and-such amount of heat, etc.
Exactly why Socrates possesses this
conception of justice, or whether Socrates has any good reason to understand
justice in this way, or whether there are any good reasons for this notion of
justice, I will not pause to consider. The fact is that he has such a
conception. It is also important to note that these properties trump all others
in the sense that if we are offered a candidate for justice, if it is seen not
to possess these properties then it is not really justice (cannot be justice or
Justice). (An aside on the history of Western Philosophy: Is it really to be
marveled at that no one is able to satisfy Socrates' request for definitions
given that his standards for measuring the legitimacy and accuracy of a
definition are ideal and abstract whereas the proffered definitions are cashed
out in terms of everyday, sublunary objects. In short, satisfying Socrates that
one knows what X is is as impossible as finding an everyday, sublunary object
that has the properties requisite for Platonic forms!).
In contrast, Thrasymachus believes justice is
very much a human creation and invention. Furthermore, and in distinction to
Socrates' own account, it will turn out for Thrasymachus that the actual
dictates of justice can be quite different, city to city.
For Socrates, if one finds different cities with different rules of justice,
this is evidence that some or most of these cities have faulty ideas about
justice is and what it demands. For Thrasymachus, this is obviously not the
case. Justice is, for Thrasymachus, relative to the city in which one finds
oneself. If City A regards gambling as just then it is so, in City A; if city B
regards gambling as unjust, then it is so, in City B. And if one is tempted to
ask, But is gambling just or not, Thrasymachus would regard the question as a
bad one, in need of being relativized to some city or other. (As I said
earlier, Thrasymachus is a Sophist and thus would be a fan of the Sophist's
most notorious truth, viz., the dictum of Protagoras that man is the measure of
all things; of the things that are that they are and of the things that are not
that they are not).
Another important feature of Thrasymachus' account is that it presupposes
egoism is the name of the game. For Thrasymachus regards it as obvious that anyone
who is in charge of a city's government would make laws in his/her own
interest, as far as that is possible. And anyone in such a position who
wouldn't do so is a fool, according to the Sophist handbook on life. Finally,
it is also the case that what is central to Thrasymachus' conception of
justice, that is, what Thrasymachus takes to be the identifying marks of
justice, is that justice has something to do with the laws of one's community.
For Thrasymachus, it's obvious that justice is to be found in, indeed, is
defined by, the laws of cities. As such, Thrasymachus would regard it as a
ludicrous suggestion to be told that justice is to be found anywhere other than
in the laws of a city or community. At best, one might get Thrasymachus to
agree that some particular city's laws ought not be regarded as a particularly
fine example of justice but one could never get Thrasymachus to accept that
justice involves anything other than the explicitly stated laws of a city or
community.
It is important to appreciate that Thrasymachus implicitly appeals to everyday
ideas about justice, and so offers a very different approach to the problem of
justice from that offered by Socrates. The key difference in
their respective approaches, of course, can be put most simply by saying that
whereas Thrasymachus is a realist, Socrates is an idealist. That is, for
Thrasymachus, you look for justice in the laws in a city. That is where it is
to be found. Whatever you find there must be what passes for justice in that
city. Thrasymachus also offers us a fact which he claims is true of the laws in
each city, viz., they are made by the rulers for their own advantage. Socrates
however believes that long before cities ever got around to setting out laws
for their citizens to follow, indeed, long before there was anything worthy of
the name 'city', there was justice in the mind of humans. It is this idea that
constitutes justice and it is this idea that Socrates wants to try to
understand and articulate. Obviously, the many and varied attempts by humans to
create laws that somehow correspond to, or embody, the idea of justice may not
always hit the mark. As such, Socrates is not going to assume that the laws of cities is where one must find justice. On the
contrary, it is clear that the idea of justice is what ideally should be
guiding the construction of a city's laws. Thus, the notion of justice sought
by Socrates is prior to and independent of any particular city's laws.
The point I am making here can be made
clearer, perhaps, by an analogy! Suppose someone asked you: What is art? You
could say (as many do) that art is whatever is hanging, or on display, in art
museums or galleries (or, more exhaustively, what could be so hanging or
displayed). This answer is perfectly acceptable and certainly not wrong. But it
is a realist answer, in several senses. First, it is an answer that assumes
that the proper boundaries of art are sufficiently clear so as to render the
gathering of art into art museums and galleries a relatively easy task. It is
also realist in that it is practical. That is, one need only go to museums or
galleries to see what art is. Of course, one will see many different sorts of
objects in the museums and galleries, so many in fact that one may be impressed
and bewildered by the variety of the objects displayed therein. At this point,
things can go in one of two directions. One may be untroubled by the variety
and declare that art is a notion which covers a great variety of objects, not
unlike the notion of food or living thing.
Like the latter notions, art is constantly evolving so that it is anybody's
guess what will count as art tomorrow. On the other hand, one may suppose that
underneath the variety there lies a common thread (or threads), a common
feature (or features), an IDEA, which serves not only to unify the various
objects we call art but also serves to permit us to distinguish tomorrow's art
from tomorrow's nonart (as well as distinguish yesterday's real art from the
nonart, despite the fact that it was all displayed in an art museum or
gallery). In short, one may suppose that the notion of art as what is or could
be displayed in art museums or galleries fails to appreciate that the gallery
and museum directors decide what is or is not to be put in their galleries and
museums. This fact makes it clear that the directors harbor ideas about what is
or is not art that is different from, and prior to, the definition of art as
whatever is displayed in galleries and museums. These ideas, the idealists
claim, are part of our human endowment and anyone who wishes to know what art
is must be able to articulate and understand these ideas, as well as be able to
critique them, if necessary.
Socrates'
First Argument against Thrasymachus
Though it seems clear that
Thrasymachus and Socrates are doomed to talk by each other because of their
different conceptions of justice, and relatedly, their different assumptions
about the identifying marks of justice, a lively discussion does take place
between them. Socrates' first move against Thrasymachus resurrects a complaint
he made against Polemarchus and suffers from the same difficulties I noted in
previous remarks, i.e., Socrates brings up the possibility of mistakes. In this
case, the possibility of mistakes by the rulers about what laws
are or are not in their interest. If such mistakes are made, says
Socrates, it turns out that it will be just for subjects to "do not only
what is to the advantage of the stronger [rulers], but also the opposite, what
is not to their advantage." (339d). Now as I noted in the case of
Polemarchus, the fact that one's account of justice can be misapplied or
mistakenly applied (by human beings no less, in the real world!) is hardly to
be considered a telling complaint against that account.
If Socrates is looking for an account of justice which
is error-proof, it should be clear that such an account necessarily will say
nothing about this world or its inhabitants. (As my understanding of the
Buddha's first noble truth has it, ain't nothin'
perfect in this world. Of course, this point is also well-appreciated,
to put it mildly, by Plato. It is also obvious that the problem of mistakes can
be raised against Socrates' own preferred account of justice, as many have
pointed out). For this reason alone there is nothing to like about Socrates'
first complaint against Thrasymachus. If Socrates was
playing fairly, he would have ignored the appeal to mistakes as being
irrelevant. (A clever move which Thrasymachus could have made here is to point
out to Socrates that subjects, no less than rulers, are liable to mistakes
about what laws to obey and so might fail to obey the laws which the rulers
mistakenly thought were to their advantage, thereby leading to a no harm/no
foul situation).
But there are other difficulties here as
well. Socrates gets Thrasymachus to agree that a subject's obedience to the
rulers is also just. But this is surely problematic, by anyone's lights. No one
believes that justice requires subjects to obey the laws of the rulers,
regardless of whether those laws are to the advantage of the rulers. The
possibility of unjust laws (even from a divine lawgiver; surely all sane people
allow that God's command to Abraham to kill his son Isaac, was an unjust
command) is something everyone recognizes. Of course, the fact that
Thrasymachus has rulers making laws to their own advantage renders the idea
that justice requires subjects to obey the laws of the rulers even more
ludicrous. Even Thrasymachus allows that someone who faithfully obeys the laws
of the rulers in such cases is at best a "high-minded fool" and at
worst, a sap. Obviously then there is something very wrong with Thrasymachus'
account of justice and it has nothing to do with the possibility of mistakes by
the rulers.
Be this as it may, Thrasymachus thinks he
must respond to Socrates' "possibility of mistakes" complaint but
before he gets a chance to respond, Polemarchus and Cleitophon argue about
whether the possibility of mistakes complaint causes Thrasymachus any trouble.
Cleitophon says that Thrasymachus claimed that it is just [for subjects] to
obey the orders of the rulers. As such, regardless of whether the subjects are
obeying laws that are in the rulers' interest or not, Cleitophon says that the
subject's obedience is sufficient to satisfy Thrasymachus' notion of justice.
Polemarchus responds by noting that Thrasymachus also said that justice is the
advantage of the stronger. And clearly this is incompatible with subjects
obeying laws that are not in the rulers' interest. To this Cleitophon says that
what Thrasymachus meant was that the advantage of the stronger is "what
the stronger believes to be of advantage to him. This the weaker must do . . . ." (340b). While this certainly resolves the conflict
by dissolving the problem about mistakes (while it makes sense to imagine the
rulers making mistakes about their own interest, it seems a stretch to imagine
them, or anyone, making mistakes about what they believe to be in their
interest; the very notion seems absurd), Thrasymachus refuses Cleitophon's
helpful suggestion.
Instead, Thrasymachus makes the seemingly
absurd and patently false claim that a ruler, "in so far as he is a ruler,
unerringly decrees what is best for himself and this the subject must do."
(341). Stranger still is the fact that Thrasymachus accuses Socrates of being captious for supposing
that Thrasymachus "would call stronger a man who is in error at the time
he errs." (340c; it's hard to conceive someone not being in error at the
time he errs.). For it is surely Thrasymachus who is being captious in arguing
that "precise speech" demands that we not call a man a physician at
the time he errs in the treatment of patients, nor call a man an accountant at
the time he makes a miscalculation. For errors with respect to one's craft reveal
that one's special skills have, for at least the time of the error, abandoned
one. If we are to speak with precision then, we must not say physicians make
medical mistakes, nor accounts accounting mistakes, nor rulers make ruling
mistakes. For "[i]t is when the knowledge of his
craft leaves him that he errs, and at that time he is not a practitioner of
[his craft]." (Thrasymachus, 340d).
Socrates accepts this rather sophistic
maneuver around the "possibility of mistakes" complaint but it would
be wrong to suppose that Socrates has thereby granted the irrelevance of
mistakes by the rulers in assessing Thrasymachus' account of justice. For
Socrates' "mistake complaint" has forced Thrasymachus (or so he
believes) to speak of "rulers in the precise sense", i.e., rulers
considered simply as rulers, or rulers qua
rulers, as it is often stated. And Socrates will use the notion of a ruler qua ruler to his advantage against
Thrasymachus.
In an effort to better understand
Thrasymachus' notion of the ruler "in the precise sense", Socrates
asks whether a physician in the strict sense is a money-maker or someone who
treats the sick (getting the answer, someone who treats the sick) and whether a
ship's captain in the strict sense is a ruler of sailors or a sailor (getting
the answer, a ruler of sailors). From these admissions, Socrates tries to show
that craftspeople in the precise sense never seek their own advantage but
rather always seek and secure the advantage of the things their respective
crafts "rule and have power over", whether it be a patient's body (in
the case of medicine), horses (in the case of horse-breeder), sailors (in the
case of the ship's captain), etc. The upshot of Socrates' argument, of course,
is that rulers in the precise sense never seek their own advantage but rather
seek the advantage of their subjects.
At this point, Thrasymachus asks Socrates
whether he has a nanny and why she lets him "go around with a snotty nose
and does not wipe it . . ." (343a). Thrasymachus says that Socrates' ideas
about rulers in the precise sense always seeking the advantage of their
subjects is hopelessly naive and that if Socrates had ever been out of his
front yard he would appreciate that rulers are like shepherds and cowherds
(rather than doctors or ship's captains). Both rulers and shepherds think of
their own good first, looking after their subjects only with an eye to what can
be got from them. Thrasymachus also claims that subjects, by obeying the
stronger (the unjust), "do what is of advantage to the [ruler], the
stronger, and, by obeying him, they make him happy, but themselves not in the
least." (343d). Thrasymachus insists that the just (the rule followers)
are always at a disadvantage against the unjust (the one who either makes the
rules or refuses to follow them when it is not to his advantage), including
partnerships, paying taxes, holding public office. The upshot for Thrasymachus
is clear: Injustice (or injustice on a grand enough scale) is a "stronger,
freer and more powerful thing than justice", yielding the greatest
happiness to the wrongdoer and leaving the victim of the wrongdoing "most
wretched".
Clearly, Socrates and Thrasymachus are still
on two different pages. In this case, Socrates is still on the ideal page while
Thrasymachus seems to have turned to a page that is both cynical and
unrealistic. I like to say that the two are arguing from the extremes, or the
fringe, where no one really lives or could live. For Socrates, ruling is all
giving and no getting and even if this is true of the ruler in the precise
sense, it reveals the irrelevance of this notion. For no
human being is, or could be, simply and solely a "ruler in the precise
sense". For Thrasymachus, ruling is (or ought to be
) all getting and no giving, which gives us an account that is just as
irrelevant to the real world as the notion of a ruler in the precise sense. The
truth about ruling is that it is going to involve both giving and getting. I do
think, however, that rulers who put the advantage of their subjects foremost in
their minds are better rulers. Whether they are happier, freer and stronger
than rulers who put their own interests first, I am not sure.
Socrates is not ready, however, to concede
defeat and contends that even in the case of the shepherd, he is concerned to
provide what is best for the sheep. Socrates adds that whatever benefit the
shepherd gets comes to him not qua shepherd but qua money-maker/pay-earner (a
craft that only Socrates could invent!). Generalizing the point, Socrates says
this holds for every craft or rule, viz., it doesn't provide for its own
advantage but rather what is of advantage to the subject (the weaker), and that
is why craftspeople and rulers ask for pay, because their crafts and rule
affords no benefits to its practitioners. Socrates also adds that good men will
not be willing to rule for either money or honor; only the fear of being ruled
by inferiors leads the good man to rule at all.
Although Socrates is satisfied that he has
established that the nature of the "true ruler", the ruler in the
precise sense, is not to seek his own advantage but rather that of his
subjects, I think all is less than well for Socrates here. First, is it
possible, even in theory, to distinguish the advantage of the ruler from the
advantage of his subjects? If one regards it as advantageous to be a ruler
then, ceteris paribus, a ruler who
seeks the advantage of his subjects is much more likely to continue ruling than
one who does not do this. But then it seems that seeking the advantage of his
subjects is itself advantageous to the ruler. The two are the sides of the same
coin. Another problem concerns the possibility of determining what is or is not
advantageous to one's subjects. In particular, should the ruler envision his
subjects' advantage individually or as a group?
Most importantly, however, there is the question of who is to determine what is
or is not advantageous to one's subjects. Is the ruler to be given complete, or
ultimate authority about this? If so, one can well imagine cases where the subjects
disagree with the ruler's claim that such and such a law is to their advantage.
For illustrative purposes, consider the case of the shepherd again. It's quite
possible for the shepherd to see himself as doing what is to the advantage of
his sheep. However, the sheep may see things quite differently. At the very
least, to say that a ruler who ignores his subjects' ideas about what is to
their advantage is nonetheless doing what is to the advantage of his subjects
seems at best problematic and at a worst, unacceptable. It would have been wise
for Socrates to have told us who determines what is advantageous for subjects
in the course of arguing that no ruler seeks his own advantage but only that of
his subjects. In particular, if Socrates believes that rulers are to be given
complete or ultimate control over determining the advantage of their subjects,
what sounds good in theory could turn out to be anything but good.
Socrates'
Second Argument against Thrasymachus-- The argument from pleonexia
At 348 or thereabout, Socrates takes up the
matter of whether Thrasymachus is right to say that the life of the unjust man
is to be preferred to that of the just man. Under Socratic questioning,
Thrasymachus claims that injustice is a virtue (excellence, arete) but stops short of calling
justice a vice, preferring to say instead that it is "high-minded
foolishness". Socrates responds by asking whether this means that being
unjust is low-minded. Thrasymachus says he regards being unjust as "good
judgment", wise and virtuous, especially so for those "who are able
to carry injustice through to the end, who can bring cities and communities of
men under their power." (348d). Thrasymachus makes a point of saying that
he is not talking about the injustice of purse-snatchers or temple-robbers, and
other "small timers"; rather, he is talking about injustice on a
grand scale. However, one suspects that Thrasymachus would still claim that
purse-snatchers and temple-robbers get the better of just people, so long as they
don't get caught.
Socrates ask Thrasymachus whether the just
man wants to get the better of, or "overreach", "outdo" (pleonexia) the just, or the unjust.
Thrasymachus says the just man wants to outdo the unjust only (even though he
cannot). Thrasymachus also claims that the unjust man "deems it right to
get the better of everybody", just and unjust alike. Socrates contends
that this shows the unjust man is like the ignorant and that it is the just man
that is like the knowledgeable or wise. For only the ignorant man will try to
outdo everyone; the wise only try to outdo those who
are not wise. Socrates makes the case for this by appeal to craftsmen like
musicians and doctors, claiming that the musician, who is wise in musical
matters, does not try to outdo another musician but only the unmusical.
Similarly, the physician doesn't try to do better than another doctor but only
the non-doctor. Assuming that the wise are good, Socrates claims that the wise
and good do not try to do better than other wise and good people but only those
who are unwise or bad. It seems then that the just person is like the wise and
good and the unjust person is like the ignorant and bad. Socrates concludes
that justice is virtue and wisdom and injustice vice and ignorance.
The argument from pleonexia has had many critics, rightfully so by my lights. It has
many flaws. Having Thrasymachus blush in the face of the argument strikes me as
unrealistic editorializing by Plato, for it is an argument that cuts no ice
against his position. First, pleonexia
is something of a term of derision for the Greeks. It applies in cases where
one is thought to be seeking more than one ought to seek, trying to get more
than one ought. For example, if 3 friends and I are going to share a pie I
would be guilty of pleonexia if I
insisted on getting more than a quarter of it. It is odd, I think, to apply the
term to the case of experts and non-experts. While it is not wrong to say that
no expert tries to outdo or overreach another expert, it is more than odd to
say that all experts try to outdo or overreach non-experts. It is more accurate
to say that experts try to achieve that which non-experts cannot, be it hitting
the right note, finding a cure, or whatever.
Most importantly, it is clear once again that
Socrates and Thrasymachus are using terms differently.
When Thrasymachus says that the unjust person will try to outdo everyone, what
he means is that the unjust person will try to acquire more of the goodies of
life than anyone else, especially things like money and power and all the
things this brings, including clothes, food, drink, sex, travel, etc. In short,
Thrasymachus claims that the unjust person will try to outdo everyone else in
the game of acquiring material goods. As such, Thrasymachus need not be troubled
by Socrates' argument that no expert tries to outdo other experts. For that
argument has nothing to do with outdoing others in the game of acquiring
material goods. Socrates' argument simply reminds us that whenever and wherever
there are clear-cut goals and ends, like hitting the right note or finding a
cure, or getting the answer to a math problem, etc., only the fool would try to
outdo others who are capable of reaching the goal. And this is because there is
no such thing as outdoing in such cases. At best there is only "tying for
first place". Thrasymachus could readily allow that wherever the notion of
outdoing others is impossible or otherwise makes no sense, there the unjust
person will not try to outdo others. It's clear that trying to get more
material goods than everyone else at least makes sense in a way that trying to
outdo someone who has already done the best that can be done does not.
This raises the question, of course, of
whether it is possible for the unjust person's desire for material goods to
reach insane levels, i.e., to lead him to madness in the unsatisfiable quest
for more and more material goods and pleasures. Of course it is possible.
(Compare Book IX, where Plato sketches the life of just such a person). But
contra Socrates and Plato, I don't see that the quest for material goods and
pleasures is necessarily any more dangerous in this regard than is the quest
for other things, say, the quest to be the best doctor, or musician or golfer
in the world. The bottom line here is that Thrasymachus and Socrates are once
again talking by each other.
Finally, it is also true that there is a very
obvious sense in which experts do try to outdo other experts. There are, after
all, musical competitions and rankings of doctors and other experts. All
experts are not equal nor are they content to rest with the status quo. Most
wish to be better than "the average expert". The point here is that
Socrates' claim that no expert tries to outdo another expert but only
nonexperts is true only in a very limited and esoteric sense. And in this
limited sense, it does nothing to show that the just person is like the wise
and virtuous and the unjust man like the ignorant and vicious.
Socrates'
Third Argument against Thrasymachus-- The "honor among thieves"
argument
Socrates begins this argument by claiming
that having established (at least to Socrates' satisfaction) that justice is
wisdom and virtue, "it will easily be shown to be also stronger than
injustice which is ignorance; nobody could still not know that." (351a).
However, Socrates still feels the need to show that justice is stronger than
injustice. (Perhaps this reveals that Socrates is aware that not everyone will
be convinced by his previous argument!). His argument plausibly contends that
even unjust people, say a band of thieves, will achieve more by not being
unjust to each other but rather by being just. This is because, says Socrates,
"injustice . . . causes factions and hatreds and fights with one another,
while justice brings a sense of common purpose and friendship." (351d).
While this is certainly a point well taken, we should also note that justice
does not guarantee success nor injustice failure in any endeavor. More
importantly, there are subtleties here that need sorting out. While it is true
that most people are likely to hate and quarrel with those they believe to be
unjust (especially so if the injustice hits close to home), they may be
powerless to thwart the plans of, or even punish the unjust parties. Some may
even be so powerless as to have no other option but to aid and abet those who
have done them injustices. Life is also crazy enough that those to whom one has
never done an injustice (or never been thought to have done an injustice) may
nonetheless hate you and quarrel with you and thus thwart one's plans, just
though they may be.
Be this as it may, another difficulty with
Socrates' argument here is that it leans on a case of black-and-white thinking.
In particular, Socrates seems to me to assume that so long as one is not being
actively unjust toward another (i.e., is not stealing, not clobbering someone,
not holding someone against his/her will, etc.) then one counts as being just.
For while it is true that a band of thieves that could not keep from stealing
from one another, or beating each other up, etc., would achieve nothing, it
seems strained to describe the relationship that exists among a successful band
of thieves as a case of justice. For example, if I enlist your help in robbing
a bank, all along planning to kill you when the job is done, I have not been
just toward you. And you may have similar ideas and so are
not being just toward me. However, since neither of us shared our ultimate
plans with the other, we can work together and achieve the unjust end of robbing
the bank. Our achievement ought not be said to have been made possible by justice
prevailing among us.
At best it relied on our not being actively unjust during the time of planning
and executing our operation. If one wishes to say that we were both actively
unjust during the operation because of our plans to kill the other, that's
fine, for it shows that achieving ends is possible even in the face of active
injustice, contrary to Socrates' claim. I would add however that plans and
reality are two different things and I may very well decide, upon completing
our job, not to kill you. So was I actively unjust toward you or not? Whatever
the answer, I still say that it's strained to describe me as being just toward
you. It is a mistake to regard people as at every moment and in every action
being either just or unjust and not both. It's a case of black-and-white
thinking.
Indeed, I think it is much more accurate to
describe people as not being unjust toward each other than it is to describe
them as being just toward each other. Although it is obviously unjust for me to
lie to someone, to steal from someone, to attack someone, etc., it sounds
strange to say that I am being just in not lying to people I never talk to or
in telling the truth about the weather or the previous night's ball game, or
not stealing from my neighbor or not attacking people I pass walking in the
supermarket. In all these cases I think my behavior is best described as being
not unjust rather than being just. And the vast majority of people, the vast
majority of the time, can be rightly said to be not unjust but ought not be
said to be just. Telling the truth when not lying could benefit me or prevent a
harm to me can be said to be just; returning money found on the street to its
rightful owner can be said to be just, confronting an attacker can be said to
be just, etc. As such, it is much more accurate to say that a band of thieves
must not be unjust toward each other if they are to achieve their unjust ends
than it is to describe them, as Socrates does, as relying on justice.
Another difficulty here is that there is
nothing to prevent Thrasymachus from biting the bullet and agreeing with
Socrates that any successful operation, whether its end be
just or unjust, requires the presence of justice among its participants. For
admitting this in no way threatens the claim that injustice is stronger than
justice. All Thrasymachus needs to claim here is that those who use justice to
achieve unjust ends will do better, will get more material goods, than those
who do not. Socrates' argument that justice is necessary to achieving any goal
does nothing to threaten this claim.
Another element of Socrates' argument here is
his trying to extend it from the case of a group of people to that of an individual.
At 351e, Socrates asks: Does injustice, my good sir, lose this capacity for
dissension when it occurs within one individual, or will it preserve it
intact." Socrates goes on to claim that injustice in an individual
"makes that individual incapable of achievement because he is at odds with
himself and not of one mind." (352a). Socrates concludes that 'those who
are completely evil and completely unjust are . . . completely incapable of
achievement." (352c). Obviously, Socrates has been hoist on his own petard
here for if he is correct, it follows that we have nothing to fear from those
who are completely unjust, since they can achieve nothing.
I only wish that such were the case. I also fail to understand, first, how
injustice can be said to occur within an individual. I understand how an
individual can be unjust (e.g., s/he could rob a bank, assault someone, etc.)
but this cannot be the same thing since it is obvious that such injustice can
be repeated again and often is, so obviously this sort of injustice in an
individual does not render the unjust "incapable of achieving" more
unjust ends. Second, I fail to understand why or how injustice in an individual
puts him at odds with himself. I am sure there are unjust people aplenty who
have no internal conflicts concerning their unjust behavior.
Socrates'
Fourth Argument against Thrasymachus-- The "function of the soul"
argument
Socrates' final salvo against Thrasymachus
attempts to show that unjust people do not live better, are not happier, than
just people. This argument leans heavily on Socrates argument that justice
rather than injustice is a virtue (the conclusion of the argument from pleonexia). To begin with, Socrates
appeals to the notion of the function of something. For the Greeks, the function
of something was that thing's unique abilities (what it alone can perform) or
else what could be done best by using the thing (what it can perform better
than anything else could). So the function of the eyes is to see, of the ears
to hear and of a knife to cut, etc. (One might be able to use a knife as a
paperweight but its function is still cutting since it cuts things better than
a paperweight that isn't a knife cuts things). Relatedly, the virtue or
excellence (arete) of a thing is that
which enabled a thing to best perform its function. For a knife, its excellence
is a sharp blade, or sharpness, since that allows it to properly perform its
function, viz., cutting things.
Socrates claims that the function of the human soul is thinking, reasoning, deliberating,
and most generally, living. (The soul is the breath of life for the Greeks). A
soul deprived of its excellence will not think well, reason well, etc., and
will not live well. A soul that possesses its excellence will live well and
thus be blessed and happy. Since justice is a virtue of the soul, it is clear
that just people will live well and be happy and unjust people will live badly
and be wretched, or so Socrates claims.
Of course, one difficulty with this argument
is its dependence on the pleonexia
argument. Since the latter argument isn't successful the function of the soul
argument cannot be successful either. It simply has not been properly
established that justice is a virtue, let alone a virtue of the soul. Nothing
has been said in any of the arguments so far to show that justice is an
excellence of the soul or that injustice ruins the soul. Of course, Socrates
has not given any arguments designed to establish that there even is a soul,
let alone what its function is and that it needs justice to perform this
function well. Although it is clear that Socrates' last argument of Book I
anticipates key elements of the main argument about justice in the rest of the Republic, he has not done nearly enough
here to provide a convincing case for the conclusion that just people live
happily and unjust people unhappily.
One of my stock complaints against Socrates'
arguments about justice in the Republic
is that they are too ambitious. That is, Socrates typically attempts to show
too much in his arguments. Here he attempts to show that just people live happy
lives while unjust people do not. But surely this is overkill, not to mention
very difficult indeed. It is not difficult to imagine that there could be happy
tyrants or wrongdoers; indeed, I am sure there have been a number of them over
the years, with more to come in the future.
It is even less difficult to imagine just or good people who are not
particularly happy, perhaps even unhappy. It also doesn't take much to conceive
of just people who are happy but whose happiness depends very little on their
being just. All of this suggests that being just is neither necessary nor
sufficient for happiness. Socrates however is convinced that justice is at
least necessary, and perhaps sufficient, for happiness. Needless to say, the
task of showing this by argument is a formidable one. Should we be surprised
when he fails to pull it off?
The final paragraph of Book I is a kind of object
lesson on why philosophers are such fans of Plato and his writings. For in this
paragraph, Socrates pretty much confesses that all of his arguments in Book I
are rendered suspect by the fact that he failed to answer the question of what
justice is. Because of this, he cannot really be sure that the just are wise,
that justice is more profitable than injustice, nor that the just man is happy
and the unjust man unhappy. Although I have already confessed that I do not
accept Socrates' belief that knowing anything at all about a particular concept
X presupposes knowing the answer to the Socratic "What is X?"
question, it is nice to see Socrates respecting his principles. Although
Thrasymachus has been silenced, Plato has Socrates confess that little of
import has been established at this point.
Last
modified September 7, 2011
JAH,
Professor
Dept. of Philosophy