Notes for Lecture #3

1. Republic II.  Glaucon.  Thrasymachus has given up on arguing that injustice is better than justice.  Now Glaucon takes up the argument, though he is very careful to say that he doesn’t actually agree with it.

• Three kinds of things that are worth seeking: those worth seeking on their own and for other purposes (e.g., knowledge), those worth seeking only on their own (e.g., joy), and those worth seeking for other purposes only (e.g., amputation).  G. asks S. which justice is.  S. says the first.
• So, now G. wants to hear justice praised for itself, for its intrinsic value.  We’ve all heard justice praised for its effects.  “If you’re honest, other people will trust you.”  “If you lie, people will eventually catch you.”  “If you treat other people well, they will treat you well.”  “People will speak well of you if you are honest.”  G. is worried that justice thus will be in the third class, like amputation: things bitter in themselves but with good results.
• If justice were worthwhile on its own, people would willingly be just.  Now, G. gives us three arguments to show that people are not willingly just but are forced.
• Argument 1.  First, G. gives an argument as to why he thinks justice came about.  358e.  While it’s good for one to do injustice, the argument says, it’s much worse to suffer injustice.  Thus, people come to agreements not to do injustice, with punishments, etc.  These agreements are for mutual benefit.  Still, one would do best if one could do injustice and avoid punishment.  For those who can’t, there is justice—but they do not willingly practice it.  But those who can—it would be mad to be just. 
• Argument 2.  The Ring of Gyges.  Invisibility.  Can do anything with impunity.  Glaucon claims that even a just person would practice injustice.  Therefore, justice is not practiced willingly by the just man.  Justice is not worthwhile, Glaucon argues, on its own.
• Discussion.  What would you do with the ring?  Why should you do what is just? 
• Argument 3.  If justice is worth seeking, the completely just man will be “happier” than the completely unjust man.
  • “Happiness” = eudaimonia.  This is whatever it is that is worth having in life, that makes a life be a good life.  It may or may not be a feeling.  The Epicureans thought that happiness was pleasure, and thus a feeling.  But not so others.  There is a famous ancient Greek saying: Count no man happy until he is dead.  Sometimes we cannot tell if we are happy now, but only in retrospect we can tell that we were happy, or else by seeing the whole shape of our lives.  The question many of the Greeks were interested in was: What is happiness?  Plato will say that virtue is at least the main part of happiness.  Obviously, virtue is not a feeling, and so happiness is not a feeling.
• Now, we want to make sure that the happiness/unhappiness we are looking at is one that is entirely due to justice/injustice, and not due to something else.  It wouldn’t be fair to compare a very rich and healthy just person with a very sick unjust person, if the riches do not come from the first person’s justice and the sickness from the second one’s injustice.
• The unjust man practices injustice for the sake of attaining various goodies.  We imagine that the perfectly unjust man is perfectly good at this.  He provides himself with a great reputation for justice, and will only damage it if it is worth his while.  Obviously, it’s beneficial to have a good reputation.
• However, now consider good things that an ordinary just person has.  For instance, good reputation.  This does not come from being just, however, but from appearing just.  Nor is it something that the just person tries to achieve by trying to be just.  He would not be completely just if he was trying to be just for the sake of maintaining a good reputation.  So, even though he does not injustice, we can imagine he has the an extreme reputation for it.  People will say “that a just person in such circumstances will be whipped, stretched on a rack, chained, blinded with fire, and, at the end, when he has suffered every kind of evil, he’ll be impaled, and will realize then that one shouldn’t want to be just but to be believed to be just.”  Moreover, he won’t even be able to help his friends as well as the unjust man!
• This is the challenge to S., to show how the completely just person’s lot is better, independently of everything else.
• Is this asking for too much?  An unfair comparison?  Maybe it’s not unfair, though.  After all, the unjust man, we suppose, has all he was trying to accomplish through his injustice—and nothing more.  The just man, on the other hand, was trying to be just for the sake of justice.  He has that—but nothing more.  Or does he have that?  After all, one of the things a just person will try to do is to benefit his friends, and on this account he will fail.  The failure, however, will not make him any the less just, since it’s not through his own fault that he fails.  (On the other hand, failure by the unjust man would not make him any the less unjust, either, if it was not through his own fault that he fails.  But the unjust person is not merely unjust, but unjust for selfish reasons.  These are the terms of the character comparison.)
• Discussion.  Which of the two persons is it better to be?  Why?
• Is Glaucon forgetting anything?
• Well, the gods.  But now Glaucon suggests that even if there are gods and even if they care about what we do, they can be bought off with sacrifices, prayers, etc.
  • Clearly this rests on the popular polytheistic system of the Greeks.  It’s quite doubtful that Plato himself thinks the gods can be bought off.  We read later that he thinks the gods are unchanging and perfect.
  • But what if the gods demand restitution for injustices performed?
  • The furies, too, cannot be bought off.
  • However, these sorts of considerations are beside the point given what Glaucon is trying to show.  For if it is out of fear of the gods that the just person is just, then justice is not something he seeks for its own sake.  Justice still, then, is something done unwillingly.  The rewards are not within justice itself but are something added on by the gods.