Ancient Philosophy - Lectures 1 & 2 (Part Three)
What is the Good of Justice?
Books One and Two of the Republic
At this point in the discussion the topic shifts from defining justice to considering whether justice benefits the just person. Thrasymachus suggests that on a conventional view of justice, it pays to be unjust and exploit the patterns of behaviour of those who wish to behave justly.
Socrates responds by arguing that even given this conventional account of justice, we can see a connection between being a just person and a flourishing and fulfilled person. This time he offers three arguments.
1. The knowledgeable person doesn’t seek to outdo other knowledgeable people. Similarly the just person doesn’t seek to outdo other just people. However the unjust person seeks to outdo both just people and other unjust people. He overreaches himself, and fails to show due restraint. Therefore it is the just person and not the unjust person who most resembles the knowledgeable person. And as the knowledgeable person is acknowledged in respect of his knowledge to be wise and good, it is the just person who has the better claim to be considered wise and good.
2. Without justice social cooperation is impossible. Even gangs of thieves could not succeed in their enterprises if they did not have a disposition to act justly towards each other.
3. Everything has a function (ergon) that it alone can do, or that it does better than anything else can. The excellence or virtue of a thing is that which makes it perform its function well. The function of the soul (psyche) is living. The excellence or virtue of the soul accordingly is that which makes it live well. Justice is the virtue of the soul and hence the just live well.
These arguments suffice to silence Thrasymachus, though Socrates professes himself to be dissatisfied by them because he has not adequately answered his original question about what justice is.
Given the extremely dubious nature of the foregoing arguments, it is perhaps not surprising that in Book Two of the Republic, Socrates is challenged to offer a better defence of the supposition that being just benefits the just person. This time the challenge comes from Glaucon and Adeimantus, Plato’s two half brothers. They profess to share Socrates’ confidence that justice does benefit those who practise it, but they attempt to present a strong version of the case for supposing that it is not always better to be just than unjust so that Socrates can refute this position.
Glaucon begins by distinguishing between things that are good in themselves, things that are good in themselves and have good consequences, and things that are not desirable in themselves but are valued for the rewards and good things that accompany them.
He argues that whereas both he and Socrates would wish to place justice in the second and highest class of goods, it could be argued that it actually falls into the third and least desirable category.
Glaucon’s case has three main components.
1) An explanation of why justice comes to be conventionally praised. Those who lack the power to prevent injustices being done to themselves band with other people for protection and in return for that protection agree not to behave unjustly. A bargain based on weakness and lack of strength because the benefits of behaving unjustly towards others are outweighed by the damage done to your interests when others act unjustly towards you.
2) A thought-experiment. What would anyone of us really do if we possessed a ring, the ring supposedly discovered by the ancestor of Gyges of Lydia, that could render us invisible and invulnerable to detection while we carried out crimes and other nefarious activities?
3) The example of what would befall two people if one were actually just but had a reputation for being unjust and the other were unjust but had a reputation for being just.
Adeimantus then reinforces Glaucon’s case by pointing to the following:
1) The way justice is recommended to people. Virtually all the praise heaped upon justice actually relates to the advantages of having a reputation for being just, or relates to supposed consequences in some afterlife.
2) The way in which injustice seems naturally to appeal to us when we think that we have the strength to get away with it; whereas things that we take to be genuinely bad for us have no such appeal.
3) Appeals to the after-life not only imply that injustice is, of itself, good and beneficial, but they also undermine themselves even in terms of ultimate consequences because the same poets and religious authorities who tell us that the Gods punish the unjust also describe how the Gods can be bribed by sacrifices and suitable prayers and incantations to refrain from such punishments.
Thus the challenge confronting Socrates is to show, without taking questions of reputation into account, ‘what each itself does, because of its own powers, to someone who possesses it, that makes injustice bad and justice good’ (367b)
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