Introduction | Just Prospering? Plato and the Sophistic Debate about Justice | British Academy Scholarship Online (2024)

Merrick Anderson

Midway through Book I of Plato’s Republic, the character Socrates attempts to placate a rather animated Thrasymachus: ‘After making such a speech do you have it in mind to leave before teaching us sufficiently or learning whether things are as you say or otherwise? Or do you think it is some insignificant matter to try to determine the whole course of living by which each of us would lead a most profitable life?’ (344d6–e3).1 With this one question, Socrates introduces a number of the central themes of the dialogue. In the first place, and notwithstanding his own personal commitments, he appears to concede that it is an open question whether the best and most satisfying life that a human being can lead is a life of justice or injustice. He is encouraging all those listening to wonder—or, at the very least, he is recognising that they will wonder—whether they would do better for themselves if they helped others or harmed them. But Socrates is also emphasising the paramount importance of finding an answer to his question. Because everyone wishes to live the best life they can, Socrates believes that every intelligent individual should be very interested in learning about justice, injustice and the respective roles they play (if any) in the best possible human life. It becomes a practical imperative for everyone, as well as the central project of the dialogue that follows, to deliberate about the just and the unjust ways of life.

Despite what one sometimes reads in books on moral philosophy, the project of Plato’s Republic is not entirely original.2 Serious and sustained consideration about the value of justice was endemic to early Greek reflection about humanity and our place in the world. For almost as far back as we can observe, given our literary evidence, the writers and thinkers that we now call Greek wrestled with the question of whether morally upstanding behaviour improves the life of the moral agent, or whether it somehow makes that life worse. Some of these writers and thinkers were staunch advocates of the value of justice because they believed in gods who intervened in the world to reward just people and punish unjust people. Others were offended and confused by the example of their contemporaries who, though evidently unjust and immoral, at least appeared to be content and satisfied with their lives. And still others came to the dangerous conclusion—no doubt partly on the basis of their observations of how people behaved but also partly out of dissatisfaction with the early defenders of justice—that they would live a better life if they were selectively and intelligently unjust rather than scrupulously just. Yet though these figures disagreed about the utility of justice, they were all united in recognising the importance of investigating what it means to live a good human life and of questioning the place of justice and injustice in that life.

The investigations these writers and thinkers engaged in were not always as crisp, clean or systematic as what one finds in the texts of Plato and Aristotle, the two towering philosophical figures of Classical Greece. But they could at times be highly insightful, and they constitute the crucial background to Plato’s own moral philosophy, especially as it is developed in Republic. Indeed, in this book I shall try to show that this most famous of philosophical works must be understood as a contribution to a long tradition of thinking about the value of justice. Central to my argument will be an analysis of a debate about justice that raged among a group of 5th-century bce thinkers we now call ‘the sophists’, an unfortunate moniker because it incorrectly suggests that they were more interested in fallacious arguments than serious philosophical reflection.3 In truth the sophists were a disparate set of intellectuals and teachers who were at the forefront of the 5th-century enlightenment and who made significant contributions to early epistemology, theory of language, math, rhetoric, as well as ethics and politics.4 There is no hard and fast rule about how to define what it was to be a sophist, but their ranks include at least Protagoras, Gorgias, Prodicus, Hippias, Antiphon, Thrasymachus, Critias and some other authors who wrote important texts but whose names are now lost to us. In Part I of this book I examine the sophists’ contributions to ethics and politics by reconstructing what they had to say about justice, virtue and the best human life. In Part II, I argue that the sophistic debate about justice exerted a great deal of influence on Plato and that we cannot fully understand his Republic without attending to that earlier debate.

Why Prospering?

Before going any further it will be helpful to address two preliminary points that are liable to cause some confusion or consternation. The debate about justice as I shall go on to reconstruct it revolves around the relationship between justice (δίκη/δικαιοσύνη) and human prospering (εὐδαιμονία). Although, as we shall see later on, there was some room for disagreement about the precise meaning and analysis of these terms, they were nevertheless very familiar in the Classical period. Almost everyone would have known that δίκη/δικαιοσύνη was the social virtue par excellence. The virtue had a very wide scope and was of the utmost importance to the Greeks. It was one of the things without which cities or states simply could not exist. To be just (δίκαιος) was to follow the rules and regulations—most often, the laws—that structured society and, additionally, to treat others with the respect and fairness that they deserved. It was to act in ways that merited moral approval from one’s fellow citizens, or at least that avoided any moral reprobation or condemnation. To be unjust (ἄδικος) was to risk suffering the worst sanctions that a city or community might impose. εὐδαιμονία, on the other hand, was the best thing a human being could aim for in practice. To live a prosperous (εὐδαίμων) life was to lead a life that anyone should be satisfied and, indeed, thrilled to live. It was to live a successful life, whatever exactly that meant.

Given what has been said so far, the reader might wonder why the Greeks seem to have been so concerned about the relationship between justice and prospering. This is especially likely to be the case if the reader has studied contemporary moral philosophy, for philosophers now approach morality somewhat differently than the Greeks of old. Two salient and sweeping differences should be mentioned here. Firstly, contemporary philosophers are more interested in figuring out what justice is and what, exactly, it demands of us than the Greeks of the Classical period were. Contemporary authors spend a great deal of time trying to determine what our specific obligations or duties are in specific situations; or, alternatively, what the right thing to do is in those situations. As we shall see, ancient authors were not uninterested in these questions. They did investigate the nature of justice and what it demanded of us. But they also took it for granted that most people would be able to identify what the just and unjust thing to do would be in most circ*mstances. As a result, they spent relatively little time investigating what the individual ought to do in specific situations. One question they were preoccupied with, however—and here we come to the second difference between contemporary and ancient approaches to moral philosophy—was whether it was prudent and profitable to be just. No ancient author seriously doubted that justice and just behaviour were good for others and society at large. But they also wanted to know whether it would benefit the just individual as well. This particular question does not animate philosophers today nearly as much. Most assume that following the demands of morality and being just often requires us to make sacrifices, or at the very least refrain from doing things that promote our selfish interests. But they mostly do not think that this fact gives us any less reason to be moral or do the right thing.

Not so for the ancient authors. As Arthur Adkins (1960, 67) once memorably claimed, ‘[t]‌he Greeks in general were too hard-headed to be just if it were not visibly advantageous to do so’. This is not quite right. We will see below that there was a genuine wish among many Greeks that justice be vindicated and proven to be ultimately advantageous, even when it sometimes appeared disadvantageous in practice. We will also work to uncover the tremendous philosophical ingenuity that went into showing that the virtuous life was as good as if not better than the vicious life. Nevertheless, there is a sizeable kernel of truth in Adkins’ remark. For it certainly was the case that if justice were shown to be positively harmful to the just agent, and if injustice were shown to be positively beneficial to the unjust agent, this would have dealt a devastating blow to morality in the eyes of many ancient authors. That is to say, for these authors this would have constituted a sufficient reason to reject the demands of justice. For many contemporary moral philosophers this only goes to show that there was something fundamentally wrong or misguided about the type of project in which the ancient Greeks were engaged. It shows that they were not really doing moral philosophy.5 Scholars of ancient philosophy have, in response to such charges, attempted to show that the Greeks really were doing moral philosophy, albeit moral philosophy done in a different and possibly even better way.6 I do not wish to wade into the controversial waters of what it means to do moral philosophy correctly here. My purpose is, rather, to lay out what the Greeks actually said and thought about the important topic of justice (something which in any case needs to be done before we can fairly endorse or reject their approach to morality). These remarks are simply meant to highlight that the ancient authors were doing something different than what academics typically do today as well as to forestall any misunderstandings that might arise from this fact.

There is, however, one upshot of the somewhat idiosyncratic way the Greeks thought about justice: it allows us to characterise and distinguish their views using somewhat unfamiliar but nevertheless instructive categories. Just as we now distinguish moral realists from anti-realists or naturalists from non-naturalists,7 I will suggest below that the thinkers discussed in this book can be helpfully divided into those who (somehow) held the view that it is, all things considered, profitable and prudent to lead a life of justice and those who held the view that it is profitable and prudent to be selectively unjust and lead a life of calculated injustice instead.8 I will label the former type of theorist a ‘Friend of Justice’, or simply a ‘Friend’ for short. The latter type of theorist I will call a ‘Moral Cynic’, or a ‘Cynic’ for short. (My use of the term Cynic should not be confused with the anti-conventionalist group of figures associated with Diogenes the Cynic.) We will put these categories to good use in a moment. But first I must briefly address the second preliminary point.

But Why ‘Prospering’?

This second point strays into technical territory, and it may safely be skipped by those who are not concerned with the difficulties of translating philosophical Greek into intelligible English. But for those who are familiar with Greek and who have been exposed to English translations of ancient moral philosophy, you are likely to have noticed that I have been translating the noun ‘εὐδαιμονία’ with the word ‘prospering’ and the adjective ‘εὐδαίμων’ with ‘prosperous’. This is a deliberate choice on my part, but it is decidedly non-standard practice. The majority of recent translators render ‘εὐδαιμονία’ as ‘happiness’ and ‘εὐδαίμων’ as ‘happy’. I feel, therefore, that some discussion and justification of my choice to translate these terms as ‘prospering’ and ‘prosperous’ is warranted.

I begin by noting that, notwithstanding standard translation practices, it is well known that the English words ‘happiness’ and ‘happy’ do not accurately capture the nuances of the Greek words ‘εὐδαιμονία’ and ‘εὐδαίμων’, especially as they are used in 4th-century philosophical texts.9 Perhaps the greatest shortcoming of English vocabulary is that our words are often used—as εὐδαιμονία and εὐδαίμων were not—to describe a transitory feeling. One can be happy one moment but sad and unhappy the next. Likewise, it makes perfect sense to say that though someone is sad today, they will be happy tomorrow. None of this is true of εὐδαιμονία. One cannot fail to be εὐδαίμων at one moment only to become it a moment later when a favourite sports team scores a goal at the last minute to eke out a victory. The tradition is clear about this, and Aristotle makes the point explicitly in a famous passage of the Nicomachean Ethics. He explains that just as one swallow cannot make a spring, so one day cannot make for εὐδαιμονία; εὐδαιμονία is, rather, an accomplishment that characterises a complete life (1098a18–20). Here, then, is one clear way in which the English words ‘happiness’ and ‘happy’ fall short. They fail to capture the fact that εὐδαιμονία is something that characterises a whole life, or at least a large part of that life. Another related way in which these English words fail is that they are typically used to describe a subjective feeling which implies little about the objective quality of that life. When schoolchildren around the world clap while singing, ‘If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands/if you’re happy and you know it and you really want to show it/if you’re happy and you know it clap your hands’, they are not taking a stand about the objective value of their lives relative to others. They simply clap to indicate that they feel pleased. And the fact that they feel this way is thought to be sufficient to show that they are (at least at that moment) happy.10 Even those who resist this idea and insist that a person cannot find true happiness without actually accomplishing their life’s goals will typically concede that each individual may set their own goals. That is to say, even these people will admit that the standards by which I measure my own happiness are my own. I do not have to satisfy any external, objective standards to be happy. But once again, this is not quite true of εὐδαιμονία. So far as we can tell from Aristotle, Plato and the earlier authors, an individual must meet certain objective standards in addition to being subjectively pleased in order to be counted as εὐδαίμων.11 That is because εὐδαιμονία is the highest human good, and to achieve it one needs to succeed in one’s role as a human being, not merely in one’s role as an individual.

As I mentioned above, these problems are already well known. There is, however, a third reason to avoid using ‘happiness’ and ‘happy’ as translations of ‘εὐδαιμονία’ and ‘εὐδαίμων’, which I do not think has been widely appreciated in the past. That is: another Greek word is closer in sense and meaning to our word happiness. That word is εὐθυμίη. We will see in Chapter 3 that Democritus uses this word to refer to a subjective psychological condition characterised by a justifiably confident disposition and a robust, pleasant attitude about one’s place in the world. It is a joyful and cheerful condition. Moreover, Democritus also clearly believes that the amount of εὐθυμίη we experience can and will vary from moment to moment depending on what happens to us and how we react (DK68 B191). Whether he places strict and general standards about achieving εὐθυμίη is, admittedly, difficult to tell from his fragments. But it is by no means obvious that he does not. And he explicitly claims the best thing for a human being is to live life experiencing as much εὐθυμίη as possible and as little of its opposite as possible (B189). Given these facts and others to be discussed later, this term seems closer in meaning to our happiness than εὐδαιμονία.

These three reasons explain why I reject ‘happiness’ and ‘happy’ as translations of ‘εὐδαιμονία’ and ‘εὐδαίμων’. But why have I chosen prospering and prosperous when other alternatives—such as flourishing and well-being—have been suggested in the past?12 Three considerations suggest to me that prospering and prosperous are the most apt translations available. The first is that these terms do a fine job of conveying the sense that εὐδαιμονία is something that characterises a whole life. We do not normally say such and such a person flitters in and out of prospering from one moment to the next. To prosper is to achieve something significant, and it is an achievement that takes time. Similarly—and secondly—when we say that someone prospers or is prospering we typically imply that they are succeeding by using their natural gifts and talents for some useful or higher purpose. The term, therefore, can convey the idea that there are standards outside of our mere preferences that must be met in order to achieve εὐδαιμονία. These first two considerations apply to flourishing and perhaps also well-being. But the third and principal consideration for choosing prospering is unique to that term. In English this word carries a strong connotation of material wealth or riches. This is important because, as the present study will highlight, when Plato wrote about εὐδαιμονία and the εὐδαίμων person, he was employing terms that had long histories. These words featured prominently in early Greek debates about justice, and in studying those debates we learn that they carried with them certain connotations. One of the most prominent connotations was that of wealth or an abundance of external goods. Many early Greeks believed that wealth was a fundamental part of the successful and good life. Indeed, in one striking passage from Herodotus ‘the εὐδαίμονες’ are contrasted with poor people, highlighting the very clear perceived link between εὐδαιμονία and wealth (1.133.1). Of course, Plato and the later philosophical tradition came to resist the idea that wealth was especially important to living a εὐδαίμων life. But in trying to show that the best human life was not necessarily the one blessed with external goods, Plato and this tradition had to struggle against the pre-theoretical convictions of their contemporaries. They were, as we might say, fighting an uphill battle. By choosing to translate ‘εὐδαιμονία’ and ‘εὐδαίμων’ with ‘prospering’ and ‘prosperous’ we capture the pre-philosophical connotations of the Greek words and remind ourselves that there was a war being fought not just around justice and injustice, but also around what it meant to live the best life.13

The Plan Going Forward

This book falls into two distinct but related parts. Part I evaluates the extant texts of the 5th-century sophists concerned with justice and virtue. I endeavour to restrict myself as much as possible to 5th-century, pre-Platonic sources in reconstructing these authors’ views. This practice is—perhaps surprisingly—not typical for books on the sophists, which often help themselves to Plato’s later testimony. However, because I ultimately aim to show that the sophists influenced Plato’s philosophy, it would be tendentious in the extreme for me to draw on his philosophical works in reconstructing their thinking. And, in any case, we have enough material to paint a very interesting picture of Greek moral and political philosophy in the closing decades of the 5th century without Plato. The picture that I hope to paint is one of an especially lively debate that occurred among the sophistic authors. On the one side, we have the Moral Cynics, who challenged the traditional ideas about morality and came to believe that injustice was better for the individual concerned to prosper than justice. On the other, we have the Friends of Justice, who attempted to respond to the Cynics and used new arguments to defend the traditional view that justice is better for us than injustice. In spirit, if not in details, this puts me in the tradition of Jacqueline de Romilly, whose The Great Sophists in Periclean Athens divides the sophists up into goodies and baddies.14

Part I is intended to be an interesting contribution to existing scholarship in its own right. By carefully analysing the texts of the sophists, I aim to show that they developed arguments and ideas about justice and prospering that were significant to the history of moral and political philosophy. I also hope to show that there was a genuine debate among these authors by highlighting the ways in which their texts appear to be responding to one another. However, Part I also lays the groundwork for Part II, which transitions to Plato. The second half of the book argues that Plato was very much aware of the sophistic debate about justice and, more than that, he consciously engaged with it. In particular, I argue that Plato clearly diagnosed an important shortcoming of the 5th-century Friends of Justice and that he structured the central argument of his Republic in the light of his diagnosis of how their arguments failed. It will be necessary to have the findings of Part I at hand to argue for this. Ultimately, I hope to convince the reader that Plato was himself a Friend of Justice and that his Republic represents the most significant contribution to the debate about justice from the ancient period. We shall see that part of the philosophical genius of this work lies in the innovative strategy Plato develops for defending justice’s value. But to truly appreciate the power and innovation of the dialogue’s argument, we must first understand his Republic as a contribution to a long philosophical tradition of addressing justice and its value.

Reading Plato’s Republic in the light of the 5th-century background will also shed new light on this most seminal of philosophical works and lead us to question existing scholarly interpretations. Perhaps most importantly, the final two chapters of this book will argue that a dominant interpretation of the famous division of goods and the argument that follows, according to which Socrates is to praise justice as both intrinsically and instrumentally valuable, is not quite right. Attention to the historical background allows us to appreciate that the real contrast Plato intends to draw is between the value justice possesses all on its own, independently of the goods that the just individual receives on account of being recognised as just, and the value it possesses in virtue of the good things that come to be through being recognised as just. Unlike what many commentators think, then, we shall find that Plato’s Republic is not the first text to draw the familiar contrast between intrinsic and instrumental value. The relevant contrast is, rather, an ethically salient manifestation of the fundamental Platonic distinction between something’s being—that is to say, its true reality—and its mere appearance. Our dialogue aims to show that we should not be primarily concerned with the benefits that we get from appearing to be just to others. It wants to prove that possessing the actual thing—justice itself—contributes to the prosperous and successful human life, even if this is never recognised and responded to by any other agent.

Chapter 1 begins with a close reading of didactic poetry to lay some important historical groundwork. I analyse the relevant sections of Hesiod’s Works and Days in order to articulate the five theses of what I call the ‘Traditional View of Justice’, according to which being just is profitable and prudent because the gods reward just behaviour and punish unjust behaviour. I then briefly survey two historical developments that resulted in some tension for the Traditional View and set the stage for the 5th-century sophistic challenge to justice—namely, the growing influence of Hesiod’s work on Greek culture and a growing religious scepticism among the intellectual elite.

Chapter 2 turns to the sophists and a 5th-century challenge to the Traditional View of Justice. The focus is on two sophistic texts, the ‘Sisyphus Fragment’ of unknown authorship and fragment B44 from Antiphon’s On Truth. The authors of these texts—the Moral Cynics—denied Hesiod’s belief that the gods could be counted on to support justice and, as a result, almost systematically objected to the five theses of the Traditional View. I show how their secular and naturalistic assumptions led them to reject the value of justice and instead conclude that an individual concerned to prosper would do better to be selectively unjust. With the interventionist gods out of the picture, these sophists realised that other people were the only agents around to punish violations of injustice. They therefore encouraged a calculated and secret sort of injustice that could win for the individual money, power and pleasure, which are naturally good for human beings, without any subsequent punishment. The chapter ends with a brief discussion of two non-sophistic texts that attest to the broad impact the Moral Cynics’ challenge had on Greek thought.

Chapter 3 turns to the second half of this sophistic debate. I offer a selective analysis of the ‘Anonymous Iamblichi’, Prodicus’ ‘Choice of Heracles’, and the ethical and political fragments of Democritus, which aims to do three things. Firstly, it shows that the authors of these texts—the Friends of Justice—were consciously responding to Cynical ideas and thus understood themselves to be contributing to a debate about the value of justice. This plausibly explains why, as I next show, they do not rely on the existence of interventionist gods. In contrast to the earliest defenders of justice, these Friends accept the secular assumptions of the Cynics and still argue that justice is more profitable than injustice. Their innovative arguments fall into two broad strategies. The first denies that the goods of money, power and pleasure purportedly won through unjust behaviour make significant contributions to our prospering. Instead, a different set of goods is posited as important for our prospering. The second strategy attempts to show that the proper functioning of society, upon which everyone, including the unjust individual, depends, requires that all citizens be just. These arguments represent a significant development in Greek philosophy, for in them prospering becomes an explicit object of critical analysis for the first time. Finally, because the 5th-century Friends object to the Cynics and argue that justice is more profitable than injustice, I show that they should be seen as advancing a modernised version of the Traditional View of Justice.

Part II transitions to the 4th century and Plato. Chapter 4 begins by summing up the results of the 5th-century debate and highlighting its philosophical significance. Despite offering very impressive responses to the Cynics, the Friends failed to prove that justice is more profitable and prudent than injustice. Yet the antagonistic character of the debate resulted in significant theoretical advances in our understanding of human prospering, which are briefly surveyed. I next argue that Plato was keenly aware of this debate. Not only was he interested in the sophists and what they had to say about moral philosophy in general, but also two dialogues in particular include arguments very much like those made by the Moral Cynics and Friends of Justice. Gorgias features a pair of interlocutors who believe that injustice is more profitable and prudent than justice, one of whom also advocates an extreme sort of hedonism reminiscent of certain Cynics. Protagoras includes a sophist who offers a defence of justice so close to the one found earlier in the ‘Anonymous Iamblichi’ that they must be two iterations of the same argument. Demonstrating Plato’s awareness of the 5th-century debate sets the stage for the argument in the rest of the book.

Chapter 5 offers a close reading of the first two books of Republic to argue that they draw from the debate about justice discussed in Part I. Socrates’ interlocutors in these books contend that one should not be just and claim that it better serves one’s self-interest to be unjust instead. I analyse the principal arguments used by these interlocutors and show that most of them have substantive and methodological similarities to those made by the Moral Cynics. One argument used by Socrates’ opponents is, however, genuinely new and not anticipated by any text from the 5th century. I nevertheless show that this argument was informed by the debate as well. Plato uses this argument to identify and highlight a weakness in past defences made by the Friends of Justice. Whereas they had assumed that only genuine justice and virtue can win the agent a reputation for justice and virtue, Plato has his interlocutors argue that an intelligent, unjust agent can win the good reputation earlier highlighted as the great reward of justice by past moralists. I end the chapter by arguing that Plato’s identification of this fatal weakness in past defences of justice pointed the way towards a better and more satisfying defence of justice. This new defence promised to respond to the Moral Cynics and finally vindicate the central claims of the Traditional View of Justice.

Chapter 6 argues that the central argument of Republic is designed to demonstrate the value of justice in a way that avoids the problems faced by the 5th-century Friends of Justice. My focus is on Glaucon’s division of goods as well as the subsequent challenge that gives rise to and structures the central argument of the dialogue. Scholars often claim that Glaucon’s distinction between the value something possesses ‘because of itself’ (δι᾽ αὑτό) and the value it possesses ‘because of the things that arise from it’ (διὰ τὰ γιγνόμενα ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ) is (at least roughly) equivalent to the contemporary distinction between something’s intrinsic and instrumental value. This is incorrect. I argue that the distinction between the value something possesses ‘because of itself’ and the value it possesses ‘because of the things that arise from it’ in fact distinguishes between one type of value that depends on something’s intrinsic features as well as the inevitable effects it produces by its nature and another type of value, which is realised only when that thing is recognised and responded to by other agents. The significance of this distinction becomes clear against the historical background discussed earlier in the book. When Plato has Socrates demonstrate that justice is valuable ‘because of itself’ in the remainder of Republic, he is not having Socrates show that justice is intrinsically valuable. Instead, he is having Socrates argue that justice will contribute to the prospering of the just individual even if it is never recognised. That is to say, he is having Socrates argue that justice will contribute to the prospering of the just individual for reasons other than those problematically adduced by the 5th-century moralists. Plato consciously advances upon the project of the sophists and offers a new and better defence of the Traditional View of Justice.

After demonstrating that the central argument of Republic is structured in such a way as to avoid the problems faced by past Friends, Chapter 7 argues that two specific interventions Socrates makes later in the dialogue are informed by earlier sophistic defences of justice. I first evaluate Socrates’ response to Glaucon and his speculative historical narrative about justice’s origins. By offering a similarly speculative account of the development of justice—and, in particular, by stepping back further in time to a point before humans gathered together—Socrates was adopting a sophistic style of discourse and employing a particular philosophical strategy developed by one earlier Friend of Justice. Next I turn to the choice of lives that Socrates uses in Book IX to establish that justice is more profitable than injustice. By tracing this argument back through Glaucon to the earlier sophists, I suggest that Plato here was adopting an argumentative method prominent among the earlier defenders of justice. This gives us further reason to conclude that Plato understood himself to be a Friend in the tradition of those who defended the Traditional View of Justice.

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