Republic Outline and Book I and thrasymachus and plato and socrates

S is trying to refute T and asks him, "Do you think that a just person wants to outdo someone else who's just" (349a)? Professor Reeve has a nice footnote on "outdoing" (the Greek verb is pleonexein, and the English word I will make up is pleonectic, though the word pleonexia is attested in dictionaries) on p. 20, and is the major term in the Republic Plato uses to describe those who want to have more and more. A pleonectic person is never satisfied, but just keeps wanting to attain more, stuff more into his/her mouth, gorge themselves in a vain attempt to attain satiety (Indeed Professor Reeve was a colleague of mine 20 years ago, and he used to do a very nice imitation of what he thought the pleonectic person was). Actually, this point is worth noting here, because ultimately Plato's approach to justice, his own understanding of justice, is where people are simply content with what is their own, to have one's own things and not strive for what does not belong to one (434a, 441e). Thus, Plato wants to ridicule the pleonectic person first by describing T's outburst as a kind of pleonectic fit but also by having S now make an argument about pleonexia.

So, S asks T whether a just person wants to "outdo" someone else who is just. 349b. T says no. What about an unjust person? "Of course he does; he thinks he deserves to outdo everyone" (349c). S pushes on and discovers that "a just person doesn't outdo someone like himself but someone unlike himself, whereas an unjust person outdoes both like and unlike" (349d). Also, for T, an unjust person is clever and good. S has gotten T to admit these things. He then returns to the tried and true examples of musicians and doctors (349c-350b) and discovers that a musician doesn't want to outdo another musician, but he does want to outdo a nonmusician, and a doctor doesn't want to outdo another doctor, though she does want to outdo a nondoctor. S extrapolates from this that a knowledgeable person only wants to outdo someone who is ignorant, while an ingorant person wants to outdo both a knowledgeable and ignorant one. Where is this going? Well, earlier they discovered that an unjust person wanted to undo both those like and unlike him (cf. 349d), while a just person only wanted to outdo one unlike him. The just person is clever and good, because a knowledgeable person possesses these attributes. Thus "a just person has turned out to be good and clever, and an unjust one ignorant and bad" (350c).

Plato then gives us a smile-inducing comment: "T agreed to all this, not easily as I'm telling it, but reluctantly, with toil, trouble and--since it was summer--a quantity of sweat that was a wonder to behold. And then I saw something I'd never seen before--T blushing" (350d). He seems to have agreed that justice "is virtue and wisdom and that injustice is vice and ignorance." But since knowledge is stronger than ignorance for Plato, it "will easily be shown to be stronger than injustice" (351a).

S's Final Argument in Book I

Thus, from the previous argument S has "proven" that justice is stronger and better than injustice. But he won't stop there. He wants also to "prove" that just people are happier than unjust people (352c). Actually, T takes on the posture of the "yes man" now, having been burned by S's facile arguments, even though he certainly doesn't seem to be convinced by S. S, though, will go on, getting T to be his "yes man" as he tries to show that "injustice has the power, first, to make whatever it arises in--whether it is a city, a family, an army, or anything else--incapable of achieving anything as a unit...and second, it makes that unit an enemy to itself and to what is in every way its opposite, namely, justice" (352a).

How does S try to prove that the just people are happier than unjust ones? By a rather obscure argument, I think. Here goes. He first talks about the "function" of the bodily organs as well as an object like a knife. (352d-353a). He decides that the function of each thing is what it alone can do or what it does better than anything else (the eyes see, a carving knife carves, etc.). Then he asks: "Does each thing to which a particular function is assigned also have a virtue?" (353b). He realizes this is difficult, so he takes us through a lot of questions. What he is getting at is the difference between function and virtue. The function of eyes is to see while the "virtue" of the eyes is not mentioned but may be either the capacity to see or the means by which one sees (light). So, leaving us in a little confusion, S continues by asking "Is there some function of a soul that you couldn't perform with anything else, for example, taking care of things, ruling, deliberating and the like?" (353d). T concludes that there is a function of the soul. There is also a virtue of the soul. The soul won't perform its function well if it is deprived of its virtue. As S then says, "We agreed that justice is a soul's virtue (where did they agree to that?), and injustice its vice" (353e), to which T meekly assents.

S then triumphantly concludes: "Therefore a just person is happy, and an unjust one wretched" (354a). But Book I closes with a realization dawning on S. Even if he has "proved" that justice is better than injustice (a claim that must be subject to examination), he has not advanced his own definition of justice. He just tries to show that T's definition is inadequate.

Conclusion

Where does this leave us after Book I? I would like to close with three very brief observations. First, I think S has convinced no one, and Book II explores that reality. Second, I think that P may also be commenting on the inadequacy of the "dialogue method" to get to truth. S might have come up with logically consistent arguments only to find that they really ring rather hollow. Third, you really have to ask yourself whether you buy into almost any of the moves that Plato/S make. Why should there just be one function of a ruler, for example? Why is a ruler analogous to a doctor? Why is questioning/answering a good way to get to knowledge? At least Plato, by posing this dialogue, creates the conditions for us to ask some of these questions.

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