POLI 333 Midterm
Eva Zimmer
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In Plato’s Republic, various views on justice and virtue are narrated by Plato through the voices of its main characters. Thrasymachus (translated as fierce fighter), the sophist, is one of them. His views are immensely debated and often argued against by Socrates, the leading character in The Republic. Socrates and Thrasymachus’ individual views on the topic of justice are unarguably on the opposite ends of the spectrum. I will focus on a key quote from Thrasymachus, “justice is nothing but the advantage of the stronger”1 which challenges our inherent view of justice as a desirable outcome. What do they each consider as “just” and can we evolve to a new definition of Justice? Socrates and Thrasymachus both agree on the definition of justice as being “some kind of advantage” but disagree on its origins, and as to who it gives that advantages to: the city or the ruler? Is it in the end, a goal we should strive to attain in a city? I will see how their opinion diverges one from another notably through the topic of the ideal ruler and how a city should run. I will also expose how Socrates and Thrasymachus’ views can’t come to a par as Thrasymachus is the personification of counter philosophical discussions where an intervenient is unable to grasp the other’s idea as he refuses otherness and communication in its most literal sense.
I shall first present Thrasymachus’s views on the ideal city and how his argument partakes in putting down the idea of societal harmony. Justice works to the advantage of the rulers and to the disadvantage of the rest of the population. As unjust people flout the rules, they will gain more power and influence in the society whereas good citizens by remaining righteous will undermine their capacity to ever be more than weak individuals having no say in the city. Henceforth, being unjust would be a feature of genuine expertise. Justice is the reflect of the absolute ruler’s desires and interests. As Thrasymachus quotes: “You think that shepherds and cowherds seek the good of their sheep and cattle (…) looking to something other than their master’s good and their own…you believe that rulers in cities (…) think about their subjects differently than one does about sheep, and that…they think of something besides their own advantage…justice is really the good of another, the advantage of the stronger and the ruler, and harmful to the one who obeys and serves”. 2Indeed, the ruler will work as to always favor himself rather than the population. his argument for implying that justice benefits the strongest is that we call justice what benefits the elites in the aristocracy and what benefit the majority in democracy. Thrasymachus further continues “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 [1]once.”3 Hence, norms and morses are no more than conventions to keep the people obedient and servile. Thus business is only a war in disguise, and conventions are worthless. The naïve i.e. the sheep, believe in commitments and the skillful i.e the wolve, take advantage of his credulity.
I shall now present Socrates’ views on the city and how righteous his idea as it ensures the survival of the city. Following Thrasymachus’ opinion, people in the city would constantly fight for power and possessions but a wise man does not compete with other of his kind. Justice means adherence to a certain set of rules to enable group action. If acting justly presented no advantages whatsoever, people would never agree to act justly. Hence, allowing injustice is against wisdom. Contrary to Thrasymachus’ belief, the ruler/city’s main interest isn’t money or power. A city can’t function properly without a given degree of wisdom and virtue-which can only be found in a just city. Justice is the only thing allowing men to unite in the city: “if it’s the work of injustice, wherever it is, to implant hatred, then, when injustice comes into being, both among free men and slaves, will it not also cause them to hate one another and to form factions, and to be unable to accomplish anything in common with one another?”4. Even wrongdoers must be just to each other so as not to harm themselves. As we have now established, justice represents one of the first prerequisites for the city to go on and for its inhabitant’s survival. In his eagerness to enjoy everything, Thrasymachus forgets the role of the government itself. He depoliticizes politics and sees himself as the tyrant enjoying his goods, but not the city that allows him to enjoy them. To govern, according to Thrasymachus, is not to take care of the city, but of one’s personal fortune. To reign is not so simple, it is a real job which implies a perpetual engagement. That is why public servants ask for a salary: to govern means living up to one’s title rather than enjoying riches without any sense of obligation.
This point illustrates how idealist Thrasymachus can be and how far he dwells in his fantasy world, making it a challenge for Socrates to convince him. Socrates does not convince Thrasymachus that dialectic can do nothing against violence, nor wisdom against tyranny. Philosophy can only proceed if it becomes a cooperation and constructed endeavor, departure from aporia with Thrasymachus and goes on to elenchus with Glaucon and Adeimantus. In Book II, the torments endured by the wise man will clearly allude to Socrates’ death. Let the tyrant come to power, and he will silence by force the one he could not reduce by reason.
I shall now present Thrasymachus’s ideal representation of a leader and why he should work for his sole good. This further delegitimization of justice has also individual implications. For Thrasymachus, it does no good to be just as it helps others more than it helps you. Thrasymachus views justice as always having to sacrifice our self-interests to the interests of others as “a just man always gets less than an unjust one”. Hence, justice is constraint on our natural desire to have more. We are not just beings and should not try to become one. This leads us to a new rationale, if something does not benefit me, I should just ignore it. It tackles on the same issues as other like-minded sophists such as Antiphon who adequately puts it in the following saying, “we ought to be unjust when being unjust is to our advantage”. For Antiphon, social justice is not beneficial to the individual. This concern stems from an examination of the physis-nomos relationship. Physis refers to the physiological features that are necessarily present in all people by nature. The physical conditions are “normal and not by consensus” and are technically impossible to break. Nomos refers to each society’s customs. Human life did not have order in the state of nature. As a consequence, humans have been unable to survive alone. Then as punishers, they set up nomoi so that there would be a reward for the good and a penalty for the poor, so they gave themselves up to nomos. The requirements of nomos conform to the requirements of each society’s particular rules and are secondary to physis. Antiphon argues that if he found the laws (nomois) important when witnesses are present, but the conditions of nature (physis) important in the absence of witnesses, a person would better use justice to his own advantage. In the same vein as Thrasymachus, Antiphon assumes that justice’s system of shame and gratification harm the victim conditionally to the involvement of witnesses to the crime, while in nature there is no such penalty.
Thrasymachus defines injustice as the true virtue of the tyrant, and justice a vice — a harmful blindness. He proclaims that injustice, pushed to a sufficient degree, is stronger, more worthy of a free man, more regal than justice. Thrasymachus’ impulsive interventions are somewhat foolish, in his mind the tyrant lives in an upside-down world: vice becomes virtue and vice versa…. The perfect tyrant expresses the violence of his own desires. Thrasymachus does not know how not to talk about himself. Thrasymachus’ argument resembles a vicious circle: the ruler is right because he is the ruler: “il duche a sempre ragione”. This way of thinking is equivalent to the very modern example that is fascism. This absence of reassessment possibility gave Mussolini total freedom engulfing Europe and the US in the second World war. Socrates’ challenge is to prove again that Justice is good and desirable that is to say, connected to objective standards of morality.
Let me now expose Socrates’s grasp on justice as a wiser path. Contrary to Thrasymachus’ belief, Socrates considers being just as a feature of genuine expertise. by nature, expertise brings what it operates on into a better condition. rulers should act in order to benefit the ruled: “every kind of rule (…) doesn’t seek anything other than what is best for the things it rules and cares for, and this is true both of public and public kind of rules”. One could illustrate the ruler’s interest by comparing it to a doctor’s. The later won’t think of gaining an advantage over his patient but rather work in the ill’s favor. In a city of good men, people would logically fight not to rule as the ruler serves others and never his interests.
Moreover, experts don’t measure success according to whether or not they’re outdoing others but rather if they are living up to the objective standards of what is bests. Non-experts will always have difficulty measuring their success and will hence need to compare themselves to others as he has no knowledge of the objective standards and can only estimate his success in comparatives terms. the unjust seeks advantage over everyone. As people are naturally more suited for certain tasks “each craft brings its own peculiar benefits”. Workers don’t get any benefit apart from earning money but greatly help other citizen. Hence by serving the city and the public each citizen can be certain his own interests will be considered as well. Thrasymachus promote injustice as a virtue, but that can’t be because injustice is contrary to wisdom, which is a virtue.
On a more superior level, we can denote the equivalence between man and the city, the microcosm and the macrocosm. Morality and Politics belong to the same register. Thus, it does not come to Plato’s mind to distinguish what is right before the court of conscience, from what is right before the laws of the city. No interiority, no moral conscience (unlike Christianity), the city reveals the forces within man: it is an enlarged image. And conversely, man is shaped and given birth by the city; he is the faithful image of it, he resembles it like a son to his mother. Justice is here considered as an objective truth, not as a subjective feeling. Justice is virtue of the soul, virtue of the soul is health of the soul, so should desire what is good for you. Justice is one of the greatest good as it gives rise to happiness. A city should make everyone happy, as much as nature allows it. This, to Plato equals true justice.
Even if Socrates and Thrasymachus both agree on the definition of justice as a kind of advantage, they disagree on its origins, and as to who it gives that advantages to, the city or the ruler. We have come to the conclusion that even if Thrasymachus does not give into Socrates’ argumentative work, Socrates’s view on justice as a desirable outcome can be considered true as it is necessary for the good of its citizens and for the survival of the city. Thrasymachus’s whole argument is based on the ignorance of what a true ruler should do for the city to run itself. The character in itself is childish is so many ways and can’t grasp the true utility of justice as a common good. This altercation between the two allows Socrates to evolve his speech to be even more persuasive and only concern opponents that have the mental strength to put their idea in a trial accepting the other as a collaborator in a sincere truth-seeking process.
Bibliography:
Allan Bloom, Plato, the republic, book 3, second edition translated with notes and an interpretive essay
Stephanie Mundhenk, Socrates, Antiphon and the true nature of justice
