Grote, G. A History of Greece. London: J. Murnay, Hourani, C. Johnson, C. Journal 40 : Kerferd, G. The Sophistic Movement. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Maguire, J. Nicholson, P. Reeve, C. Princeton: Princeton University Press, Strauss, L. Natural Right and History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Taylor, A. Plato, the Man and his Work.
London: Methenn, White, S. Willamowitz-Moellendorff, U. Platon I. Zeller, E. Let us assume that Thrasymachus recognizes the argument as logically valid. If he wants to resist its conclusion—which presumably he does, since it says that his account of justice is false—he must think at least one of the premises is false. P1 seems unassailable: at least insofar as strength is understood in terms of political power, the law-making rulers are stronger than their subjects.
I cannot help but think that these are winks or gentle nudges to prod readers to look more closely at P2. Many readers will think that there is a presumption in favor of obeying the laws of our communities: obedience is the default position.
But fewer will think that this presumption is exceptionless, for there seem to be times when this presumption does not hold—for example, if a law is unjust. It is a subtle but important difference, apparently unnoticed but accepted by Thrasymachus.
On this view, all there really is to justice is obeying the rules, regardless of their content. Justice on such a view is merely a matter of convention: there are no mindor culture-independent facts about whether something is really just or not. Some readers—though fewer now than sixty years ago—will agree with this, holding that one should always obey the law, even laws one considers unjust, though one can work within the system to change unjust laws.
All there is to justice on such views is following whatever rules there are, regardless of their content, and there is no way to assess that content morally.
This is something that few people are willing to accept, upon reflection. The contrast between nature and convention— between what is mind- and culture-independent and what is mind- and culture-dependent—is a pervasive theme in the Republic. The border between Illinois and Wisconsin seems purely conventional, the result of a decision to draw the line in a particular place.
The border between Wisconsin and Minnesota seems more natural, since the Mississippi and St. Croix rivers are natural objects, existing whether we think they do or not. But even this boundary is not completely natural, since it is the border only because people decided it was.
And if we do, we might well think that P2 is false or at least in need of serious revision, even if no one in the Republic questions it. He will reject P3, which he initially assented to but now, on reflection, finds problematic. Polemarchus objects that is not what Thrasymachus said. This suggests that, contrary to what Thrasymachus says about him, Socrates is not primarily interested in winning an argument; he is interested in getting at the truth.
What he meant is more important than what he said, for Socrates. To think otherwise would be a foolish consistency indeed. Instead, he does what philosophers often do: he makes a distinction between different senses of a key term or concept. In the strict or precise sense, rulers do not make mistakes, he claims. A craftsperson, after all, possesses expertise and knowledge; the names for possessors of such expertise—carpenter, shepherd, doctor, teacher, etc.
Someone might be on the roster as quarterback or employed by the university as a teacher. This issue, by the way, is an important one in Confucianism. Someone who regularly fails to display the required filial piety does not deserve to be called a son—or, as Thrasymachus would put it, is not a son in the precise sense.
There is a certain logic to his view. Since a craftsperson is so called because they possess the requisite knowledge, when they make a mistake, they seem to lack this knowledge—or at least they are unable to act on it at that moment.
When he agreed with P3 earlier 1. But is he overstating his case in holding that any error renders the craft-title in question inapplicable? Does expertise really require such infallibility?
A baseball player need not throw a perfect game in to be called pitcher in the precise sense. If Thrasymachus were right, there have only been twenty-three genuine pitchers in the history of major league baseball. And it is not just a matter of human imperfection. Rather, it seems that some level of failure is consistent with possessing the relevant expertise, which is rarely an all-or-nothing matter. The best hitters in baseball, after all, make outs more often than they get hits.
What level of imperfection is acceptable varies by craft: a batter who gets a hit only a third of the time is an excellent hitter; an orthopedic surgeon who successfully sets a broken bone for only a third of their cases seems far from competent.
Instead, he turns the distinction back against Thrasymachus in what we will call the Craft Argument. Doctors, for example, insofar as they are doctors, seek to heal their patients; horse-breeders seek to raise healthy horses; etc. Stated in premise-conclusion form, the Craft Argument begins thus:. All crafts seek to benefit the objects over which they rule, not their practitioners. All objects over which a craft rules are weaker than the craft, which is stronger.
So, all crafts seek to benefit the weaker, not the stronger. So far, so good. Since Socrates needs to make this assumption, let us state it clearly in the second half of the Craft Argument:. Therefore, justice seeks to benefit the weaker, not the stronger. Therefore, justice is not the advantage of the stronger. And then C3 follows from C2, because if justice seeks to benefit the weaker, then justice is not the advantage of the stronger. Needless to say, such insult-ridden responses, sadly not uncommon in cyberspace, do not pass philosophical muster.
If he is any good at his job, he can teach his students to make a speech for or against any view. You want to argument that the defendant is innocent? You want to figure out whether the defendant is really guilty or not? Not my department.
Socrates thinks his method of elenchus , the method of question-and-answer that proceeds from premises his interlocutor agrees to, is a better way to get at the truth. Now if you already know—or, like Thrasymachus, think you know— the truth about an issue, a rhetorically sound speech or op-ed piece or book may be the best way to bring your audience around to your view.
But if, like Socrates, you do not think you know the answer to the question, Socratic cross-examination seems a better way to get at the truth, whatever it will turn out to be. This difference between their approaches is ultimately the difference between indoctrination and inquiry.
As is often the case in the Republic , we will have to do for one of the interlocutors what they cannot or will not do for themselves. For starters, Thrasymachus might question P1, the claim that all crafts seek to benefit their objects, not their practitioners. The trouble here is not that the argument Socrates gave in support of P1 is too brief, although it is that. From just a few examples of crafts that aim at the benefit of their objects rather than their practitioners, Socrates arrives at a general conclusion that all crafts are like this.
Perhaps more examples would strengthen this inductive argument. The function of a doctor, in the precise sense , is healing patients, not making money. And similarly for the other crafts Socrates lists: navigation, horse-breeding, etc.
Making money is the function of a different craft, the craft of wage-earning or money-making. If doctors and horse-breeders and ship-captains and teachers benefit financially from practicing their crafts, it is because they possess another craft, the craft of wage-earning.
Many readers will be familiar with chefs and carpenters and doctors who are truly expert at their crafts but who lack business sense. By now the point is probably obvious: the craft of money-making is practiced for the benefit of the practitioner. While medicine and teaching are other-focused, wage-earning is self-focused: it benefits the craftsperson. And it is true that you might practice this craft altruistically, as when you want to earn more money so you can better provide for your family or community, but the craft itself aims to benefit the craftsperson.
Of course, the conclusion of an unsound argument might still be true. Just as there is nothing inconsistent about a juror thinking the defendant actually committed the crime in question but voting to acquit because the state did not prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt, there is nothing inconsistent in believing that the conclusion of an unsound or invalid argument is true. If Thrasymachus were more fair-minded, he might concede that his definition of justice might be false but insist that Socrates has not shown that it is.
If justice is not a craft, then the general claim that crafts are other-focused would not apply to it. Now it looks like the argument is doubly unsound, since we have good reason to doubt both P1 and P3, so Thrasymachus is not rationally compelled to accept its conclusion.
Socrates might reply that even if justice is not a craft, ruling is. We might think this is true, at least of good rulers, but Thrasymachus could here raise the problems with P1, reminding Socrates that his own example of wage-earning is a counterexample to the general claim that crafts are not practiced primarily for the benefit of the craftsperson.
Why not think ruling is analogous to wage-earning, Thrasymachus could ask, and aims at the benefit of the ruler? At the very least, Socrates has not given him compelling reasons to think that it is not. If the assumption that justice is a craft is false, its reappearing as a premise here undermines the Craft Argument. Sometimes the dilemmas are intentionally artificial, to bring out larger moral principles lurking in the background. Other times, the dilemmas are more the stuff of everyday life: is aborting a pre-viability fetus permissible or not?
This approach, known as Virtue Ethics, has enjoyed a resurgence among moral philosophers in recent years, and though virtue ethicists often look to Aristotle for inspiration, we see its roots in the ethical thought of Plato and Socrates.
The question of whether a just life is happier than an unjust one has great practical implications, given the overwhelmingly plausible assumption that each of us wants to be happy.
Few of us would dispute that the just life is morally better than the unjust life; the issue here is whether the just life is prudentially better—whether, as we put it in the Introduction, having a good life requires leading a good life. If Thrasymachus is right about which life is happier, then each of us has a strong reason to act unjustly: if a just or morally good life is always at odds with happiness, living a just life will inevitably frustrate a core desire each of us has.
We really cannot maintain that the "other" Thrasymachus speaks of at c is the many because this "other" is immediately qualified as "the man who is stronger and rules" or the tyrant. The tyrant, in acting unjustly towards the many, wants the many to act justly towards the tyrant. However, from the standpoint of the tyrant Thrasymachus cannot endorse the injustice he defines.
When all is said and done, it seems apparent that Thrasymachus was not concerned with this inconsistency and that the utter power and strength associated with the notion of injustice became his real concern. Hourani would have a clear case for his position. In either case, justice would be defined legalistically as an obedience to the given laws of the tyrant at a given time and place.
If this were the case then justice would be defined as the ruled many obeying the laws of the tyrant. But Thrasymachus is interested in the tyrant only insofar as such an individual is understood as the stronger. In this way, justice is the interest of the stronger, tyrant who happens to be the ruler of the society.
Unfortunately, the problem of envisioning the same situation as being both just and unjust at the same time from the points of view of the many and the tyrant remains. However, if we take what Thrasymachus is saying regarding justice and injustice as applicable to the stronger, the inconsistency issue is skirted. This is to say that from the standpoint of the stronger, what is unjust would be disadvantageous both for the many as well as for the tyrant.
The "other" which was the cause of inconsistency and concern for Kerferd and Annas can be either the ruled or the ruler or both. It makes no difference as both the ruled and the ruler are exploited by the kreitton. The many follow laws and are exploited by the tyrant.
The stronger individual realizes this and does what is unjust, in terms either of breaking the laws or of exploiting the many. So, in this sense, the stronger individual, if he or she can get away with it, always seeks to exploit the exploited as well as exploit the exploiter.
A tyrant just does not come out of nowhere and rule over a group of people. I believe that, in his conversation with Socrates and Cleitophon, Thrasymachus is offering us a developmental account of how the stronger individual detaches from the many to rise to the ranks of tyranthood by leading a life of injustice.
At the same time, this life of injustice must be buffered, I believe, by a seeming or an appearance of justice whereby the stronger individual can dupe both the tyrant and the many in the ascent to tyranthood. Both the ruler and the ruled become exploited by the kreitton. The task, then, for the stronger individual becomes devising ways in which to always get away with the exploitation. Thrasymachus suggests that stealth be used by the perfectly unjust tyrant who possesses unlimited strength.
Furtive and covert unjust activity masked by outward signs of justice and integrity would enable the stronger individual to get away with exploiting the exploited and the exploiter. I have suggested that seeming or appearing to be just in the public realm while privately pursuing injustice would be conducive to this stealth that is endorsed by Thrasymachus. Thus, the double life of justice and injustice that the stronger individual leads.
One would find it necessary to put up a deceptive front or an "appearance" of leading a life of justice so as to have the freedom to pursue what is entailed in the unjust life. However, when all is said and done about the kreitton or the tyrant who spend so much of life in the realm of appearance, the question arises as to whether such individuals are truly "most blessed and happy.
Consider what Socrates says about those afflicted with a tyrannical nature in Republic IX:. The tyrannic nature never has a taste of freedom and true friendship. Also see G. Cropsey Chicago: Univ. Sparshott, "Socrates and Thrasymachus" The Monist 50 , pp. Cross and A. Hourani down-plays statements 1 and 3 in favor of 2 because he takes statement 2 to be definitional and therefore, thinks that Thrasymachus is a legalist.
It is clear that Hourani is advocating an ideal of definition which is more consistent with contemporary linguists and philosophers of language. Annas prefers to use the term "immoralism" rather than "injusticism" to refer to the fact that Thrasymachus advocates a life of injustice.
According to Annas, Thrasymachus is rejecting conventionalism in favor of an immoralism because he thinks that 1 "justice and injustice do have a real existence independent of any human institutions" and 2 injustice is to be preferred as a better way of life pp. Other commentators who would agree with Annas' interpretation regarding Thrasymachus' immoralism include G.
Kerferd and T. See G. Cross and Woozley state that Thrasymachus "has advanced two different criteria of justice Maguire, in his article entitled, "Thrasymachus II, p. See also H. But Thrasymachus' rejection of Cleitophon's suggestion commits him to the immoralist position and quite unfortunately to an inconsistent position overall. As they see it, there would then be "no conflict between its being just to serve what the stronger ruler believes to be his interest and its being just to obey the ruler, for while a ruler may make a mistake as to what actually is his interest he will hardly make a mistake as to what he believes to be his interest; and if it is right for subjects to do what the ruler believes to be in his interest, it will not matter what the ruler is mistaken in believing so.
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