Playing With Pointers

Glaucon comments that there are three classes of good things: things which are good in themselves (simple, harmless pleasures), things which are good because they have good consequences (exercise, timely health checkups) and things which are good for both the above reasons. Socrates says he’d like to place justice in the third category — “which will be valued by one who is in pursuit of true happiness, alike for their own sake and for their consequences”. Glaucon does not concur, and wants to place it in the second category, something that people pursue solely for favorable consequences.

What Glaucon says next seemed a lot like Rawls’ theory of a social contract (I have not read Rawls’ work in detail, and might be standing on mount stupid). The case for justice, he says, is that the pain of suffering injustice outweighs the pleasure of committing it. Hence, we “find it expedient to make a compact of mutual abstinence from injustice” and that “there is certainly no one else who is willingly just; but it is from cowardice, or age, or some other infirmity, that men condemn injustice [...] this is proved by the fact that the first of these people who comes to power is the first to commit injustice”

Glaucon then goes on to compare the ideal just man and the ideal unjust man. In fact, he makes the distinction between being just and the appearance of being just — if Socrates defends a just man who is known for his justice, he is not defending justice but merely its appearance. The ideal just man has the worst reputation for injustice, he says, without being guilty of a single unjust act; and the ideal unjust man is the opposite. It is easy to see how such an ideal unjust man will trump the ideal just man in every situation; he sums it up by saying “to be just without also thought just is no advantage to me, but only entails manifest trouble and loss, whereas if I am unjust and get myself a name for justice an unspeakably happy life is promised me”.

One deterrent to injustice is the promise of afterlife — people who have lived just and honest lives spend eternity carousing with the gods while the ungodly and unjust are plunged into Hades, condemned to carry water in a sieve. However, there is no shortage of soothsayers and quacks who claim to have powers to amend crimes committed in this world — unjust people (who are usually rich enough to afford such luxuries) tend to hire such people to insure their afterlife. Such practices are further encouraged by poets like Homer, Glaucon says, by spreading stories how not just individuals but whole cities can petition a god’s forgiveness by offering the right sacrifice.

It does not seem like (not to me, at least) that Socrates actually makes a proper attempt to address the concern (that the unjust man is always better off than the just man), but diverges to another direction entirely. He starts the discussion by talking about justice in a city; hoping to get some helpful insight into the nature of justice. He first talks about specialization. Once the basic needs of the citizens are met, need will be felt to “cut ourselves a slice of our neighbour’s territory” for greater luxury and comfort. This adds another specialization that a healthy city needs — warriors, or guardians. These guardians needs to be gentle to their friends and dangerous to their enemies. This way, I think, Socrates links the qualities of the warriors to that of a just man, as discussed in book one.

I find the next argument (primarily by Socrates) very absurd. Firstly, they somehow convince themselves that a high-spirited gentle man is a contradiction. Socrates resolves this contradiction by comparing such a man with a dog; and noting that a dog equates acquaintance with friendship and “How, I ask, can the creature be other than fond of learning when it makes knowledge and ignorance the criteria of the familiar and the strange?”. This is clearly well-fermented manure — in fact, that a dog refuses to use any other (more reliable) criterion to judge animosity and friendship shows that it is not fond of learning and self-correction. Even if you disregard the absurdity of this argument, there is no way such a predicate can be literally translated over to a human. The comparison of human and animal behaviour in most contexts is dubious at best and in my opinion, breaks down completely when you try to draw such sweeping conclusions.

Anyway, once they’ve concluded that the nature of the guardians are supposed to be “philosophical, high-spirited, swift-footed and strong”, the focus goes to their education. Socrates has something against the poet-educated culture (he definitely has reason to :)) and suggests a censor on the kind of folklore a future guardian is exposed to in his childhood. Socrates is concerned that exposure to folklore that depict gods and other respectable engage in immoral, unjust behaviour, sets a bad example for children to aspire to. He gives various examples I won’t repeat.

Book two ends with Socrates arguing that since

• gods are perfect beings
• gods can only change their form only by exerting their own will
• the human form is imperfect

they never impose themselves on us by sending signs, apparitions or by appearing in our dreams. Doing so would involve debasing themselves, which no god would ever do. This is a clear case against poets who often use gods as characters in their storytelling. He says when “a poet uses such language concerning the gods, we shall be angry with him and refuse him a chorus, neither shall we allow our teachers to use his writing for the instruction of the young”. The rift between the philosophers and the poets is clearly visible at this point.

I’ve started reading Republic by Plato lately, and in order to publicly shame myself into actually reading it properly, I’ve decided to put up a blog post on each book. The post will consist of sort of a TL;DR with my opinions on the book (Republic refers to each chapter as a book, it consists of ten such books).

The first book begins by Socrates talking about old age with Cephalus and whether wealth has any role in keeping one happy in old age. Cephalus says that wealth helps one remain just. Since old people tend to worry more about afterlife (because death is now imminent) and the repercussions of being immoral play out in afterlife, wealth in general contributes to happiness in old age. This steers the conversation towards discussing what is meant by being just.

Socrates says it can’t merely be returning to people what they owe you — you would not return a knife a friend lent you when your friend is mad with rage (and likely to do something rash). Polemarchus takes up this argument and says (quoting Simonides) that debt of friend to friend is to do good to one another and not harm. Then Socrates goes on to conclude that justice is useless when a thing is in use, but useful when it is out of use. I personally could not follow this argument — Socrates says, for instance, “well, in what partnership is the just man superior to the harp player?”. The point being missed, I think, is that justness and the ability to play a harp are not exclusive properties. You can be a just harp player (in which case you’ll wrong your enemies and help your friends) or an unjust one; and your justness has nothing to do with your harp playing, like the wetness of an apple has nothing to do with its redness.

Moreover, Socrates says, a person is likely to make a mistake or two in choosing his friends. He might end up regarding a good, just person an enemy and a thieving, malicious person as a friend. And now if he follows the doctrine of hurting his enemies and helping his friends, he’ll end up doing something that is clearly wicked.

Hearing this, Polemarchus makes a change to his definition of justice, changing it to mean hurting enemies who are bad and helping friends who are good. Again Socrates goes into an argument which my spoonful of cognition can’t decipher. He concludes by saying that justice, by its virtue of justness can not make other people unjust. But, since hurting anyone makes them less excellent in human virtues and since justice is a human virtue; justice, but justness can not hurt anyone. I have two problems with this argument.

First is with the conclusion: if being just implies hurting no-one, it only cements Thrasymachus’s argument that will appear later. The second is with the actual argument: Socrates asks, for instance, “can musicians, by their art of music, make men unmusical?”. While Polemarchus answers no, I think yes. Specifically, I think it is a musician who has the most ability to render men unmusical; by using the art of music. The art of music itself does not have values. In fact, it has been agreed only pages before that “a man can guard expertly whatever he can thieve expertly” and that in cases of illness, a physician is the person who can do more harm to enemies and more good to friends.

After this, we see Thrasymachus in the scene. After a brief squabble with Socrates, he gives his view of justice: that it is the interest of the stronger. He talks about how rulers legislate laws which are in the interest of the rulers themselves. Socrates employs the pattern he just used, talking about how rulers are apt to make mistakes and legislate laws that are not in their favor. Is following those laws (which are not in the interest of the stronger) also just? Thrasymachus parries with the abstract concept of a ruler who does not make mistakes. A rules is not a ruler in the time he makes a mistake, just like a cook is not a cook at the time he forgets to season his dishes.

Then Socrates says that the art of ruling, in its highest form, is the art of taking care of the subjects being ruled. This implies that the rulers will end up legislating in interest of the people being ruled and not the rulers themselves. In fact, he says, the reason why people contest of government offices is not because they want power, but because they are averse to being ruled by an unjust man. Thrasymachus’s response is that while a shepherd tends to his sheep and has their interests in his mind; those interests stems from how he’ll harvest their wool and eat their meat later, not a genuine sense of service.

Before this argument proceeds further, Thrasymachus says something more important — that an unjust man is always better off than a just man. He gives reasons that are essentially obvious. Socrates has a bit of trouble arguing with this one. He finally ends the conversation with a teleological argument, saying that it is the property of the soul to be just and an unjust person cannot be better off than a just person since he is violating the very purpose of his soul. This argument did not make much sense to me.

In my opinion, the problem in book one is that justice is being considered a property of an individual, when it is the property of social structures. I see justice as a set of strategies which ensures a stable society — in principle, it is always more profitable for an individual to be unjust.