A Challenge Old and New | Just Prospering? Plato and the Sophistic Debate about Justice | British Academy Scholarship Online (2024)

Merrick Anderson

In no dialogue is Plato’s familiarity with the 5th-century debate about justice more pronounced than in Republic. From the moment Thrasymachus interrupts Socrates’ discussion with Polemarchus until Socrates completes his defence of justice, the spirit of the sophistic debate pervades this dialogue. The project of this and the following two chapters is to demonstrate that this is so.

We begin the present chapter with a consideration of the two immoralist challenges that Socrates encounters in Republic. After a brief treatment of Socrates’ discussion with Thrasymachus in Book I, I turn to Book II and offer a historically informed analysis of the famous challenge posed by Glaucon and Adeimantus. The theoretical core of this challenge is substantially reconstructed from the ideas of the 5th-century sophists—and especially from the ideas of the Moral Cynics. For this reason, it can be seen as an ‘old’ challenge to justice. But Plato also has the brothers introduce one theoretical innovation that is designed to expose a serious weakness in past attempts to defend the value of justice. This innovation comes into play with the character I call the ‘Dorian Rogue’, an individual who is thoroughly unjust yet nevertheless manages to win a reputation for justice through their injustice. As I argue in the latter sections of this chapter, the Dorian Rogue is introduced to respond to the sorts of considerations utilised by Immortal Repute, and by incorporating the Rogue into their challenge the brothers are able to show decisively why many past attempts to defend justice’s value have failed. In particular, it allows them to show that strategies which appeal to the Refined External Goods of repute and social esteem function more as defences of the value of being recognised as just by other agents than as defences of justice itself. On the back of this insight, the brothers urge Socrates to offer a new defence of justice that makes no reference to the good things that come about from being recognised as just by others. This aspect of Glaucon and Adeimantus’ challenge is genuinely novel, and for this reason the challenge also deserves to be called ‘new’ as well. The chapter ends by noting that Book II can be read as a Platonic commentary on the state of the debate about justice in his own time.

Book I

Thrasymachus appears here to be offering a conventionalist account of justice, very much akin to the accounts we saw earlier in OT and SF.1 He is suggesting that justice is a matter of acting in accordance with the laws of one’s city and, as we later learn, treating others fairly (e.g. 343d1–e1). However, in contrast to the authors we discussed earlier, Thrasymachus adds a sceptical twist to his conventionalist account. Based (presumably) on his own experience visiting different cities, he suggests that the true purpose of the laws in any given πόλις is to materially advantage those in the ruling regime. This particular suggestion is new, yet the philosophical motivation lying behind it should be familiar to us. Thrasymachus’ purpose here is to debunk the authority of the laws and expose some unsavoury truths about justice, which is all quite reminiscent of Pheidippides in Clouds.2

This speech is important for a number of reasons. It introduces the tyrant as a paradigm of injustice and therefore anticipates the argument of Book IX, which casts tyranny as the purest instantiation of injustice. More importantly, it exposes Thrasymachus’ real concern. It turns out the sophist is not that interested in Socrates’ question of what justice is.4 In truth he is concerned to convince his listeners that injustice is better than justice. And he thinks that drawing his audience’s attention to the example of the tyrant will make this point. When Socrates claims not to be convinced that injustice is better than justice and asks for Thrasymachus to say more, the latter responds: ‘And how will I persuade you? Since if you’re not persuaded by what I just now said, what more should I do for you?’ (345b5–6). The example is supposed to have decisive persuasive force.5

Socrates, of course, remains unconvinced. Despite Thrasymachus’ exasperation, he would like to continue talking about the just life, the unjust life and which is better. And this brings us to the most important consequence of Thrasymachus’ speech at 343b–344c. The speech explicitly raises the question of justice’s value for the first time in the dialogue, and by holding up the completely unjust tyrant as the model of human prospering it assigns a very high value to injustice. This is a provocation that Socrates cannot ignore, and after it the explicit focus of the pair’s conversation shifts dramatically. Originally, the focus of the discussion was—officially, at least—the nature of justice and what it is. But after Thrasymachus’ tirade the conversation turns to the prosperous human life and what role justice and injustice play in it.6 This marks a pivotal moment. For the remainder of Book I—and, indeed, for the remainder of the dialogue—the question to be answered becomes: ‘Is justice or injustice more profitable for human beings?’ Answering the question of what justice is becomes instrumental to answering this pressing practical question (cf. 354b6–c3).

It would be natural to suppose that the rest of Socrates’ conversation with Thrasymachus might be useful for understanding our 5th-century debate. The historical Thrasymachus was a 5th-century sophist interested in politics and morality.7 Unfortunately, what follows is far too short, and, in any case, the conversation is dominated by Socrates. There are some brief but tantalising connections between what we find in Book I and the work of the earlier Cynics, which I have tried to draw out. But these connections don’t amount to much. For our purposes, the true importance of Book I lies not in the fact that it preserves arguments used in the 5th century. Its importance lies, rather, in how Thrasymachus’ intervention sets the stage for a reconsideration of justice’s value. Socrates begins his conversation by posing the typically Platonic question of what a particular virtue—in this case, justice—is. This theoretical question is more than enough to occupy the dialogue’s first two interlocutors. Yet no sooner does Thrasymachus enter the fray and provide his answer about justice than Socrates is pulled into a discussion about the value of justice, which he apparently was not planning to have. The sceptical conventionalism the sophist first puts forward gives way to the Cynical idea that the individual would do best to violate justice in the pursuit of their own prospering. The introduction of this idea short-circuits Socrates’ theoretical investigation and alerts him to the much more pressing practical question of justice’s value. It is almost as if Republic’s sole sophist is there to remind readers of the unresolved status of the 5th-century debate about justice.

An Old Challenge to Morality

Book II opens with Glaucon announcing that he is unpersuaded by Socrates’ attempts to defend the value of justice. The problem is not only that Socrates’ arguments were problematic or poor in their own right (though a number of them are).8 The more pressing problem is that, apparently, a defence of justice can only be persuasive if it is made in response to a genuine and forceful defence of injustice. But no such defence occurs in Book I. Glaucon feels that Thrasymachus was ‘charmed’ sooner than he needed to be and didn’t really make a compelling case on behalf of injustice. And so he claims that he has yet to hear a sufficient demonstration of the value of either justice or injustice (358b2–4). To rectify the problem, Glaucon suggests that he ‘rehabilitate’ the argument of Thrasymachus and present the strongest case he can for the value of injustice (ἐπανανεώσομαι τὸν Θρασυμάχου λόγον, 358b8–c1). Only in response to this philosophically sophisticated attack on justice will Socrates be able to offer a compelling defence of its value.

Glaucon has heard the argument on behalf of injustice compellingly stated from a number of sources. But he has not yet heard the argument on behalf of justice stated to his liking.

The problem with these past praisers is not that they don’t exist; it is that they argue in philosophically unsatisfying ways. They appeal to the good reputation, honours and gifts that come to be from justice. But they do not explain what justice does all on its own. I shall return to this somewhat confusing contrast in the following chapter. For the moment, the point to bear in mind is that the brothers clearly refer to two sets of arguments made in the past.

In referring to these arguments the brothers seem to be thinking about a relatively institutionalised debate. There appear to be clear rules governing the way the two different sides operate, for example. One argues on behalf of justice by showing that the just life is better and leads to more prospering than the unjust life; similarly, the other argues on behalf of injustice by showing the opposite is the case (358c4–d8). At one point, we even learn about a taxonomy of the types of arguments advanced earlier. Adeimantus distinguishes between ‘kinds’ of λόγοι made about justice and injustice using the same word that Glaucon uses to distinguish between the different kinds of goods in his division of goods (ἄλλο αὖ εἶδος λόγων περὶ δικαιοσύνης τε καὶ ἀδικίας, 363e5–6). This all gives the distinct impression that the brothers take themselves to be thinking about an existing, quasi-established debate over the place of justice (or lack thereof) in the well-lived human life. They also clearly understand themselves as making their own points largely by reconstructing views expressed in that debate. Recall that Glaucon explicitly claims to be rehabilitating the argument of Thrasymachus and others in Book II, not presenting his own views.

The brothers thus present themselves as reflecting upon an existing debate about the value of justice and, further, as using the resources of that debate to construct their challenge to Socrates. As the reader no doubt suspects, this debate is the one discussed in Part I. For that debate also had two well-defined sides, one arguing on behalf of justice and the other on behalf of injustice. And, as the brothers here suppose, participants of that earlier debate argued on behalf of justice or its opposite by showing that it was profitable and contributed to human prospering.11 Moreover—and this is the second indication that Glaucon and Adeimantus’ challenge is reconstructed from earlier texts and ideas—the theoretical core of the brothers’ challenge clearly bears the mark of sophistic methods and ideas. The three central parts of Glaucon’s contribution to the challenge all exhibit similarities in content and method to the texts and arguments encountered earlier.

To see this, begin by considering the outlines of Glaucon’s contribution to the challenge. As he himself explains to Socrates near the beginning of Book II, his contribution will fall into three distinct parts. He will rehabilitate the Thrasymachean view by explaining (358c1–5):

A consideration of the arguments offered to defend these claims shows that each has notable and distinct parallels to a number of arguments and ideas found in earlier sophistic texts.12

This passage begins by introducing several purported facts about human nature and history. Apparently, humans by nature desire to perpetrate injustice upon others and find this good. This natural proclivity of ours explains why early humans harmed one another and why we once lived in a state of widespread aggression. At some point in the past, however, some of our ancestors realised that it would be advantageous to overcome this condition of mutual aggression. They subsequently introduced a contract for everyone to neither do nor suffer injustice, and they created laws to enforce this contract. This results in the origin (γένεσίν) of justice itself.

Of all three parts of Glaucon’s challenge, this one has the most obvious affinities with earlier sophistic texts and ideas. Two particular points are revealing in this respect. Firstly, as was characteristic of the 5th-century Cynics and Friends, Glaucon offers a loose historical account that features a discussion of the origin and purpose of the laws and justice in human communities. The point of this narrative is not primarily to state or establish historical facts. It is, rather, to derive truths about justice and the laws as they currently exist by exploring how they came to be. Glaucon’s account is particularly similar to the one found in SF, for that text also suggests that humans originally lived in a condition characterised by violence and force which was overcome, at least in part,13 once they decided to institute laws so that justice would rule (DK88 B25.1–8).14 And secondly, Glaucon draws a clear distinction between the demands of conventional justice and the demands of our nature. As we have seen, this was a standard move in the playbook of the sophists critical of justice, who often urged individuals to follow the demands of nature rather than the law. Like those earlier sophists, Glaucon believes it is in the individual’s interest to violate justice if they can do so without getting punished. He even ends this section of his speech by claiming that no ‘true man’ would ever agree not to perpetrate injustice on others (359b2–4).15

These two points are striking, and they have not gone unnoticed in the past. It is common for scholars to identify sophistic influence in this passage.16 What is less often realised is that the second and third parts of Glaucon’s contribution also exhibit a notable sophistic influence.

There is good reason to believe that this argument was also deeply influenced by the sophists and that it may have been particularly influenced by one passage or view found in AI.

Consider first that it was something of a trope for early critics of morality to hypothesise the existence of an exceptionally talented or strong agent in order to show that injustice is reasonable, desirable or both. In one way or another, the Wrong Argument of Aristophanes’ Clouds (1075–82), the Athenian envoys in Thucydides’ History (5.89 and 5.105.1–3) and Callicles in Plato’s Gorgias (484a2–c3) all stress that human or state actors with above average power can or will get away with profitable unjust behaviour. These texts offer examples of intelligent or strong actors doing what they do in order to argue that (at least for those in a position to abuse their power) injustice is good or even necessary. This is very much in keeping with Glaucon’s thought experiment, which asks us to imagine giving exceptional power to hitherto normal people and then to consider what they would do with that power.

This passage was quite possibly a direct influence on Plato’s composition of 359b7–360d7. Not only is AI unique among earlier texts in hypothesising the existence of a supervillain with genuine superpowers, but its author also suggests that thinking about such a character will lead some people to conclude that it would be in their interest to try to get more. This is striking because Glaucon’s thought experiment is similarly designed to show that with the power of invisibility anyone would turn to injustice out of πλεονεξία (359c4–5). Of course, as the last line of the AI passage indicates, the example of the supervillain is introduced only so that these people’s reactions to it may ultimately be exposed as dangerously misguided. But this arguably reinforces the parallel to Republic—for Plato will eventually have Socrates show that justice is genuinely worth choosing as good for everyone, even a hypothetical invisible regicide.19

Now consider two final peculiarities that further suggest a direct influence. In both Republic and AI, the supervillains are introduced immediately after a speculative historical discussion about the origin of the laws and justice. Glaucon’s discussion of Gyges’ ancestor comes directly after the narrative discussed above, while AI’s adamantine individual follows the more optimistic historical narrative discussed in detail in Chapter 3. The placement of the two thought experiments is thus similar in the two texts. And, finally, we must note that Plato chose to use the word ἀδαμάντινος at 360b6. This is a relatively rare word in Greek, and it is normally used to indicate physical strength.20 Physical strength is alluded to by Plato the one other time the adjective appears in his corpus: a conclusion is said to be held down and bound by arguments of iron and adamant at Gorg. 509a1.21 Yet in Republic it is used of someone who is able to resist moral corruption—that is to say, it is here about strength of character. Given that there were other words for moral strength ready for the taking, Plato’s choice of ἀδαμάντινος at 360b6 calls out for explanation. It seems plausible that Plato chose that word in order to allude to or engage with AI (or perhaps some common source with which both texts engage).22 Of course, with no direct evidence this suggestion must remain somewhat speculative. But the indirect and circ*mstantial evidence is fairly impressive. At the very least, we should now be convinced that this part of Glaucon’s challenge is as likely to have been influenced by sophistic texts and ideas as the first part.

It is as if the two lives are aesthetic objects of appreciation being readied for official judgement. And once they are shown side by side and judged against one another, it is supposed to be obvious which of their lives is better (362c4–6). The unjust life triumphs.

The clear purpose of placing these two passages side by side is to highlight how much better life in a just city is than in an unjust city. Hesiod exploits the contrast to show that justice is preferable to injustice and that all people should therefore respect the demands of justice. Another instance of an Evaluative Comparison and Contrast is found near the end of AI. In the text’s last transmitted section the beneficial effects of social lawfulness and justice are contrasted with the harmful effects of widespread lawlessness and injustice (P.101.17–103.21/B1 7.1–12). In this instance, which itself is clearly influenced by WD 225–47, the contrast between the two πόλεις functions as a consideration that justice is profitable and therefore desirable for individuals living in cities.

Glaucon’s argument is a descendent of Hesiod’s original—not quite a grandchild, but something like a great-nephew or niece. For unlike the Evaluative Comparisons and Contrasts found in WD and AI, the one in Republic II concerns individuals rather than states. It is, for that reason, closer in spirit to the central argument of CH. Recall that this text offers an illustrative description of the life Heracles can expect to live if he follows the path of vice, on the one hand, and the life he can expect to live if he follows the path of virtue, on the other. Because Heracles is a demigod and extremely capable, we can assume the text is presenting the best or most extreme cases for what the virtuous and vicious lives might look like. (NB Glaucon also claims to be presenting Socrates with the extremes of justice and injustice). And it is on the basis of comparing and contrasting those two lives that we are ultimately supposed to conclude that the virtuous life is better, both for Heracles and for ourselves. This, too, is a sort of Evaluative Comparison and Contrast.24

Of course, all three of these past texts purport to show that virtue and justice are better for cities and individuals than vice and injustice. This is obviously not Glaucon’s intention with his third and final argument. And to be clear: I am not claiming to have identified the text(s) that Plato drew from in writing this part of his dialogue. My claim is, rather, that he was adopting a form of argumentation that was prominent among earlier contributions to the debate about justice’s value and repurposing it to make his own argument. To engage in a brief comparison and contrast of our own, consider the way Plato and Aristotle sometimes think about goodness and prospering. They elsewhere identify formal aspects of the highest human good, such as completeness and self-sufficiency, and then use these criteria to discriminate between different conceptions of prospering.25 Arguments relying on these criteria are very different from Evaluative Comparisons and Contrasts, which may bottom out at intuitive or even aesthetic judgements.26 The fact that Glaucon’s attempt to demonstrate that the unjust life is better than the just life looks so much more like the arguments made by earlier authors than the arguments in Plato’s other dialogues suggests that earlier texts and ideas exerted a real influence on this part of Republic.

A New Challenge to Morality

Just before their formal introduction, the Rogue is compared to some ‘clever craftsman, such as a top ship captain or doctor’ who understands everything about their illicit craft (360e6–361a1). Indeed, so expert are they at doing injustice and cultivating a reputation for justice that they hoodwink not only other people but, Glaucon once suggests, even the gods themselves (362c1–6).

The Dorian Rogue is a curious character, and they do not appear in any of our sources prior to Republic. Certainly, no earlier extant contribution to the debate considers the possibility of an unjust individual who acquires an outstanding reputation for justice. Of course, earlier critics of conventional morality had stressed that one should practise injustice in secret to avoid being identified as unjust. We have already seen that Antiphon made this point clearly in OT: ‘When a person transgresses the laws, then, they are free from shame and punishment if they escape the notice of those who agreed on them; but if not, then they are not’ (DK87 B44 2.3–10). In advancing the argument on behalf of injustice, then, it was important to these earlier critics that one be able to practise injustice without incurring any serious harm as a result. However, none of the earlier critics suggested that, in addition to avoiding any penalty, someone was likely to win a good reputation. In general, it was understood that unjust people ran a great risk of acquiring a bad reputation. Yet Glaucon is making the shocking claim that it is precisely by means of their injustice that the Dorian Rogue will win a reputation for justice. This must be what he means by saying that ‘the extreme of injustice is to seem to be just although one is not’. And this feature of the Rogue is unprecedented in the past debate about justice and, indeed, in earlier Greek literature as well.28

There are, moreover, good reasons to doubt that the Dorian Rogue made its way into the earlier debate through a text that has now been lost to us. Note that the Rogue is compared to an expert craftsperson. So far as we can tell, expert craftspeople only became particularly significant in Greek moral thinking with Plato’s Socrates.29 This suggests that 5th-century authors were unlikely to have countenanced an expertise of injustice in their criticisms of morality. Readers should also note the striking way that Glaucon introduces the character at 361a6–b1. The unusual multiplication of verbal adjectives gives the impression that he is constructing the Dorian Rogue in real time for Socrates’ consideration—almost as if such a person had not been imagined before.

Yet perhaps the most telling reason for thinking that the Dorian Rogue must be new is that earlier texts appear to reject the possibility of anyone acquiring a reputation for virtue absent actual virtue. This is most obvious in the case of AI, which accepts what I earlier called the Bob Marley principle: ‘You can fool some people sometimes, but you can’t fool all the people all the time.’ The first three fragments of AI inform us about how suspicious people are and how hard it is to win a reputation for virtue. In order to recognise real virtue in others and give them the honour they deserve, we are told, people must be forced ὑπό τῆς ἀνάγκης αὐτῆς—and still, they bestow this honour reluctantly (P.96.11–15/B1 2.3)! The clear implication is that if one’s virtue is not genuine and not demonstrated regularly, it will be met with cynicism and annoyance rather than honour and glory. A similar idea is found in CH. That text offers a stark choice between the life of virtue, which will win Heracles reputation and glory, and the life of vice, which will win him base pleasures and infamy. If Heracles wants to be honoured by his city, he must actually help it. If he wishes for all of Greece to admire him, he must actually do good for all of Greece (Mem. 2.1.28/DK84 B2.28). There is no shortcut to the Refined External Goods of honour or repute. If one wants them, one must actually do the virtuous work that merits the desired honour and repute.

I take this all to be compelling evidence that the Dorian Rogue was not—and probably could not have been—deployed in any argument about the value of justice before Plato. It follows that this individual is genuinely new to Republic as well as to the debate about justice and its role in human prospering. We must now ask what philosophical purpose this character served.

This caps off Prodicus’ version of Immortal Repute. His suggestion is that by giving up vice and turning to virtue an individual may be able to win the greatest sort of prospering—one fuelled by eternal fame and glory. AI, of course, offers another version of this same argument. And one finds traces of arguments similar to this being made well into the 4th century as well.30

My claim is that Plato recognised a crucial problem with this argument and then had his brothers introduce the Dorian Rogue to expose it. Note that Immortal Repute relies on there being a tight link between actual justice and the Refined External Goods of honour, glory or indeed any other sort of positive reputation. That is one of the reasons the author of AI insists that one will win a reputation only from genuinely virtuous behaviour; it is also why Virtue indicates to Heracles that there is no shortcut to being admired by all of Greece. Yet if the Dorian Rogue can really exist, then this tight link is instantly severed. For the Rogue is unjust and commits injustice but is still clever enough to win a reputation for justice. Notably, Glaucon and Adeimantus do seem to think that such a person can really exist. Though they admit that the life of a Dorian Rogue will not be easy, they highlight practical steps one can take to make it work. We are told that a prospective Rogue must be rich in friends and money, and we are alerted to the existence of secret clubs and oratorical training that help to facilitate injustice (361b4–5 and 365c7–d6).31 This practical advice would be pointless if the life of the Dorian Rogue was not supposed to be a practical possibility.

Understood correctly, Adeimantus is here suggesting that it is by constructing a false pretence of virtue around oneself that the intelligent agent should try to win the Refined External Goods that come from a reputation for justice (ἀπό τῆς δόξης, 363a4). That is because, as Glaucon earlier argued, the intelligent individual will practise injustice to win money and power. If this individual would like a good reputation as well, then they must acquire it through deceit. The truly prudent individual thus becomes the individual who hunts for a good reputation through an alien adornment.

The first part of the passage highlights several of the good things that the Dorian Rogue will win because they acquire a reputation for justice. They can attain offices of influence and have social access to other respectable members of their society. These are examples of the Refined External Goods, even if they are not quite as exalted as immortal praise. Glaucon next enumerates a list of additional good things the Dorian Rogue receives on account of their unjust behaviour. Here he highlights the money they can cheat their business partners and enemies out of. That is to say, this second set of examples are examples of the Crude External Goods. Notably, it is only after explaining how the completely unjust individual wins both Refined and Crude External Goods (and after briefly mentioning the goods they get from the gods as well, 362c1–6) that Glaucon feels entitled to conclude that the unjust life must be vastly better than the just life. The example of the Dorian Rogue is the capstone to Glaucon’s third and final immoralist argument in Book II.

Through co-opting the considerations adduced by Immortal Repute, then, the Dorian Rogue turns out to be the perfect Cynical response to the Problem of the Plurality of Goods. They prove that the unjust life does not need to forsake the Refined External Goods, which texts such as AI and CH assume make such a great contribution to human prospering. By carefully cultivating an appearance of justice, the unjust Rogue can achieve good repute, secure a high social standing in their society and win the fruits thereof. Moreover, they can do so all while ruthlessly practising injustice, taking advantage of others and securing the sorts of goods highlighted in OT and SF!

We can now see the real genius behind the beginning of Book II. With the introduction of the Dorian Rogue Plato diagnoses a major theoretical flaw in the work of the past Friends of Justice: they incorrectly assumed the rewards for justice and virtue can only be won through genuine virtue. And he segues that diagnosis into a demonstration of how an intelligent Cynic might co-opt the broad considerations once used by the Friends in order to advance their own cause. The result is the most powerful defence of injustice to come down to us from ancient Greece. This is because it shows how the unjust agent might win all the desired External Goods—both Crude and Refined. And who could fail to desire this? It is tempting to call this challenge a ‘super-sophistic’ defence of injustice insofar as it incorporates the strongest considerations raised by the 5th-century sophistic critics and defenders of morality. But whatever one decides to call it, it should be clear that the Dorian Rogue posed a major challenge to conventional morality. Just as it was earlier difficult to see how Hesiod could have denied that in a godless world the 5th-century Cynics’ picture of an unjust life was a good one, now it becomes very difficult to see how the sophistic moralists could have denied that the life of the Dorian Rogue was extremely attractive and prosperous.

Reflections on the 5th-Century Debate

If the considerations raised above are correct, then the challenge posed to Socrates in the first half of Book II was thoroughly influenced by the 5th-century sophistic debate about justice. Not only do the brothers clearly refer to a background debate that shapes their claims about the relative value of justice and injustice, but the arguments Glaucon makes during his contribution to the challenge also bear striking resemblances (and possibly even direct allusions) to the texts and ideas discussed earlier in this book. Even the genuinely new character of the Dorian Rogue seems to have been introduced as an ingenious response to a particular theoretical failing of the past Friends of Justice. Given that Glaucon and Adeimantus’ challenge to Socrates is the launching pad for the remainder of the dialogue, we thus have good reason to suspect that the dialogue’s central investigation is itself shaped by this earlier debate. I argue for this conclusion at length in the following chapter. But before turning to that argument, we should return to the question of Plato’s attitude towards the 5th-century debate about justice in the light of our discussion of Books I and II.

One thing that should now be obvious is that if Republic was meant to be relevant at the time it was written, Plato must have thought that the question of whether the intelligent individual should live a just or unjust life remained an open one. Apparently, there was no settled and widely accepted answer to the question of which life was best for the intelligent individual. Within the dialogue itself Socrates is deeply committed to the idea that justice is more profitable and prudent than injustice. But Thrasymachus seems equally convinced that the opposite is the case. Of course, these are fictionalised characters in a dramatic work of philosophy. But the ‘countless others’ that Glaucon claims side with Thrasymachus and his argument in favour of injustice do not appear to be fictionalised characters. They presumably represent real people who existed in Classical Greece and who accepted that injustice was more valuable than justice. Even allowing for some exaggeration on Plato’s part, these ‘countless’ people cannot have been negligible in number. So our dialogue attests to the fact that Cynical ideas were still very much relevant at the time of its composition. And though one must be careful about how much we infer about Greece from the contents of any one text, there are some compelling indications that Plato was particularly worried about the theoretical force of the Cynics’ arguments. This at least is what bothers Glaucon and Adeimantus. Both claim to hold justice close to their hearts. They are personally committed to the just way of life being superior to the unjust way of life. But they are also presented as being impressed by Cynical arguments and unable to respond to them. In spite of themselves, their minds are unable to theoretically defend and justify the beliefs they hold so dear. What they beg of Socrates is a persuasive argument on behalf of justice so that they can rebut the theoretical attacks on their commitments and continue to hold their beliefs firm.34

We must not, however, infer from the brothers’ personal commitments that Plato thought the Cynics’ arguments had no negative real-world consequences. For though Glaucon and Adeimantus are somehow able to resist the siren song of injustice, others were not so lucky. This becomes perfectly clear from a part of the brothers’ challenge that I call Adeimantus’ Diagnosis. In this passage Adeimantus offers some impromptu remarks about the state of moral education in Greece. He begins by reminding Socrates of his inability to respond to the Cynics’ arguments: ‘On the basis of what argument (κατὰ τίνα … λόγον), then, would we choose justice before the greatest injustice?’ (366b4–5). But as the passage goes on Adeimantus draws some disturbing conclusions about the current lack of persuasive arguments effectively responding to the immoralists. For example, we learn that as things stand the first person ‘to come into power (εἰς δύναμιν ἐλθὼν) is the first to do injustice to the extent that they are able to’ (366d3–4). This appears to be a remark about the attitude that actual elite Greeks in fact held towards injustice. They were so convinced by the arguments in defence of injustice that if they had the power to practise injustice without incurring any significant repercussions, they would. Adeimantus suggests that the strength of the Cynics’ position actually convinced many real-life people to value injustice more than justice.35

According to Adeimantus, the fact that young elites are ready to go in for injustice is explained by past moralists and their philosophically unsatisfying attempts to show that justice is valuable.

It is curious that Plato has such a young interlocutor make such a pointed diagnosis of the poor state of moral education and the dire consequences to which that education gives rise. This is certainly not something we would expect of the intellectually humble Adeimantus, whose later interventions in the dialogue are mostly limited to asking questions and expressing confusion.36 Why Plato has him make such sweeping claims about moral education at this point in the challenge is not entirely clear. But it is not much of a stretch to suppose that the philosopher’s own views are bleeding into Adeimantus’ remarks. It is Plato, after all, who has so acutely diagnosed the failures of the past moralists and who realises the disastrous real-life consequences of this failure.

If only the youths of Greece had been raised on philosophically satisfying accounts of justice’s value! Not only would they then not be so concerned about suffering injustice at the hands of others, they would also guard themselves to make sure they never acted unjustly towards anyone else.

The Greek of this passage makes it clear that this is a hypothetical conditional.37 The passage is, therefore, not literally claiming that a new philosophically satisfying defence of justice would help things. Yet once again, it is very hard not to hear the authorial voice and hopes of Plato ringing through these comments. The subtext of Book II strongly suggests that Plato himself recognised that the debate about justice remained unsettled but favoured the Cynics. It further suggests that he believed the strength of their arguments and the corresponding weakness of the past Friends’ responses is partly responsible for the fact that so many young elite Greeks were tempted towards the life of injustice. But, finally, it reveals the hope that a more persuasive and rigorous defence of justice and its value might be able to change this state of affairs. This is, of course, the project that Plato sets for himself in Republic. In response to Glaucon and Adeimantus’ powerful critique of justice, he will have Socrates offer a second defence of justice that does not rely on the sorts of considerations that earlier Friends of Justice relied on, and that may finally respond to the Cynics in an adequate way. By offering a novel defence of justice’s value that focuses on the value that justice itself has for the just agent, Plato hopes to settle the debate once and for all. He offers a new and true return to the Traditional View of Justice.

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