Playing With Pointers

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.