Republic Outline IV, Book I
Prof. Bill Long 9/4/05
Continuing with Thrasymachus
Cleitophon and Polemarchus' disagreement in 340a, concerning whether Thrasymachus ("T") is speaking about those rulers who in fact act to their advantage or only seem to do so, led to this brief interlude in Socrates' questioning of T. Thus, to paraphrase T's definition, the question before the interlocutors now is whether the word "advantage" in T's definition of justice ("the advantage of the stronger") means what the stronger believes to be his advantage or what truly is his advantage.
With this question now directly before T, T gives an answer that we might not have expected. He first gives the illustration of a doctor erring and then asks whether such a doctor has ceased becoming a doctor when such a mistake is made. Then, with this in mind, he says:
"But the most precise answer is this. A ruler, insofar as he is a ruler, never makes errors and unerringly decrees what is best for himself, and this his subject must do. Thus, as I said from the first, it is just to do what is to the advantage of the stronger." 341a.
For T "no craftsperson, expert or ruler makes an error at the moment he is ruling." 340e.
Socrates Develops the Argument about Advantage
From 341e to 343a, in a very difficult passage, S tries to show that the one who exercises a craft, like a physician or a horsebreeder, seeks the advantage not of him/herself when exercising the craft, but the advantage of the one served. The questions in 342a-b are obscure, I believe, but they all lead to the issue of whether a craft seeks its own advantage or the advantage of something else. S emerges from the fog in 342c:
"Medicine doesn't seek its own advantage, then, but that of the body?" "Yes."
S then combines this with one other question/assertion--whether the crafts rule over and are stronger than the things of which they are the crafts. 342c. "Very reluctantly, he conceded this as well." Then S's conclusion follows: "No kind of knowledge seeks or orders what is advantageous to itself; then, but what is advantageous to the weaker, which is subject to it." 342d. Just to be sure that the reader doesn't miss this important point (for S), it is repeated:
"So, then, T, no one in any position of rule, insofar as he is a ruler, seeks or orders what is advantageous to himself, but what is advantageous to his subjects; the ones of who he is himself the craftsman. It is to his subjects and what is advantageous and proper to them that he looks, and everything he says and does he says and does for them" (342e).
Before looking at T's response, we might want to pause and see where the argument is going and whether it is persuasive to you. We can see that S will argue that rather than being the advantage of the stronger, justice has to be the advantage of the one served. All craftspeople work so that the recipient of the craft is advantaged. Thus, he will be trying to argue that T has a cramped view of justice. T sees that this is what S is doing, and that is why Plato says that T only conceded points "very reluctantly." But here is my question. Why do we have to believe that a ruler is analogous to a doctor or a horsebreeder? And why do we have to conclude that the advantage in an act only flows to one of the two parties in a transaction? Indeed, the philosophy of the 1990s was a "win-win" philosophy. Everyone can benefit by a transaction. Thus, is S's emphasis on justice and the doing of justice as analogous to healing patients helpful or correct? And, is his assumption that a craftsperson only benefits the recipient of his/her effort correct or useful?
Thrasymachus Retorts
T seems to have very little patience for S's quibblings. [Query: Is S here raising significant objections, or are his points really not very well taken?]. "Tell me, S, do you have a wet nurse?" "What's this..." "Because she's letting you run around with a snotty nose, and doesn't wipe it when she needs to..." 343a. In other words, S is raising an sniveling, irrelevant, carping objection that really has no merit to it.
In restating his position in 343b-e, however, T, in my judgment, introduces an ambiguity into his use of the term justice that will only be sorted out with difficulty as we proceed. Let's hear how he responds, and then, in the next essays, finish his argument in Book I.
If S can argue from crafts and trades, T can argue from shepherds and sheep.
"You think that shepherds and cowherds seek the good of their sheep and cattle, and fatten them and take care of them, looking to something other than their master's good and their own....You are so far from understanding about justice and what's just, about injustice and what's unjust, that you don't realize that justice is really the good of another, the advantage of the stronger and the rule, and harmful to the one who obeys and serves. Injustice is the opposite, it rules the truly simple and just, and those it rules do what is to the advantage of the other and stronger... 343b-c.
But note what T has done here. First he reiterates the point about the advantage of the stronger, and calls justice "the good of another," i.e., the thing that works to the advantage of someone else. Therefore, for the "little person," since justice is the "good of another," it is the advantage of the "big" person or, as he says, the "advantage of the stronger." But, second, he says that "injustice...rules the truly simple and just," and seems to be importing a second definition of justice into the discussion. Here the "just" are seemingly the long-suffering little people who do things for the benefit of their oppressors. So, we have two definitions of justice or just now in T's speech--it is the advantage of the stronger or the good of another, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the people who do things for the benefit of the other.
Conclusion
I am not sure why Plato is introducing so much confusion at this point (I am also not sure if all scholars would agree with me that he is being confusing), but I tend to believe that Plato may be realizing in his construction of this part of the argument, that the dialogue form, which served him so well in about 10 earlier dialogues, may not be the vehicle to get at "truth" which he thought it was. Plato may, therefore, be experiencing a bit of a crisis of literary form as he tries to have S criticize T's view of justice.
The next essay will continue to explore this inconsistency in terminology and show how S tries to answer T's definition/s.
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Copyright © 2004-2007 William R. Long
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