In this lecture we'll complete the examination of Socrates' conversation with Thrasymachus, and then consider in some detail, two additional criticisms of justice, the first one leveled by Glaucon, and the second by his brother Adeimantus.

We should note right off the bat, that Glaucon and Adeimantus differ in one crucial respect from Thrasymachus, as Socrates brings out immediately. The two brothers hope or believe that justice is a very great good, and they've heard Thrasymachus' arguments and others like his before. Yet they want to know that their profound hopes for justice are reasonable ones. Glaucon and Adeimantus want deeply to be just, and to know that justice is the good that they believe it to be. So their far-reaching attacks on justice are always propelled by the hope that Socrates will refute the very arguments they are using. Their attacks amount to a challenge to Socrates to defend justice as they wish it to be defended.

The remarks here will fall into three parts of unequal length. First we'll cast a glance at the conclusion of Socrates' conversation with Thrasymachus. Second we'll take up the highlights of Glaucon's speech, one that is really quite beautiful and powerful. Third and finally we'll look at Adeimantus' challenge to Socrates.

Now lets just note before returning to the Republic directly, that we today may have a bit of a hard time with this section of the dialogue, not so much because the text itself is so difficult, though it does have its challenges, but because of the nature of the specific problem or challenge that it urges us to consider. This challenge is to wonder whether justice really is a good thing?

Robert thinks this is taken for granted by just about everyone today, that we as individuals, and we as a society, we should always pursue the just, the moral course. Just think for example, of the prevalence of the language of rights in all of our important political discussions today. The language of civil rights, individual rights, human rights, the so-called hot-button issues today. The proper response to terrorism say, or access to health care, all of these take for granted that we ought to do the moral thing. We disagree of course, sometimes pretty vehemently, over what the moral, or the just thing, actually is. In other words, all or almost all of the political discourse we hear today, tries to identify the just course of action, and then to advocate it.

That's fine, yet from the point of view of Socrates and Plato there is another, and in a way prior question, that we must also address before we can move on to specific policy questions. That prior question is precisely the one we're now grappling with. Is it really sensible or good to follow the just course? Maybe we should understand ourselves and our community in terms of a standard other than justice or morality? Is there even something inherently flawed in justice as such? It's this prior, or really more radical question, that's so easy for us today to overlook or ignore. Yet Robert does think it's just this question that Plato, following Socrates, forces us to confront. So today we'll do our best to rise to that challenge.

Now so far we've seen three attempts to define justice. First, justice as telling the truth and giving back what you owe. This was the definition Socrates deduced from Cephalus's remarks. Second was justice as helping friends and harming enemies, the understanding of justice by Polemarchus. Third, there was justice as the advantage of the stronger, Thrasymachus' account of justice.

Now these first two definitions of justice take for granted that justice is good, and even "the" good which we need in order to live well, in order to be good human beings. The last definition, that of Thrasymachus, amounts to a harsh criticism of justice, even a rejection of justice.

Now as we said last time, Socrates manages temporarily at least, to reduce Thrasymachus to silence. When Thrasymachus does return to the conversation, he and Socrates take up three additional arguments. Now we won't recount in any detail the first argument, except to say that it depends on a logically bad premise, to the effect that something is what it resembles.

Yet here the fact that the Republic is, as we've noted, a narrated dialogue, comes into play, because the crucial thing, Robert thinks, in this first argument, is the effect that this logically questionable argument has on Thrasymachus. Just listen to Socrates' vivid description here:

"Thrasymachus did not agree to all of this so easily as I tell it now, but he dragged his feet and resisted, and he produced a wonderful quantity of sweat, for it was summer. And then I saw what I had not yet seen before -- Thrasymachus blushing."

Now what are we to make of this dramatic event, of the action as Robert calls it, within this little dialogue? Blushing usually indicates embarrassment or even shame. Robert makes this following tentative suggestion. Thrasymachus at least senses that Socrates' argument is a bad one, that he's being had. So he who is a professional teacher of rhetoric, or of the art of persuasive speech, Thrasymachus, sees a little too late maybe, that he, who is supposed to be a master manipulator of speech, is being masterfully manipulated in speech, by Socrates! So he blushes, embarrassed to be manhandled so easily in speech.

After all, what does Thrasymachus' definition of justice, which he says is the advantage of the stronger, really amount to, except the worship of superior strength? Here Socrates wrestles Thrasymachus to the ground with some tricky moves. The fact that Socrates' argument here is a bad one, must make his achievement all the more impressive in Thrasymachus' eyes. So Thrasymachus is not convinced of the truth of Socrates' position, but has to be impressed by Socrates' powers of speech. Thus Thrasymachus is tamed by Socrates, and he blushes. Robert sees this as a very good example of the kind of union of argument and action that together, formed the Platonic dialogues.

Now the second and central of the three arguments here that Socrates offers to Thrasymachus, is probably the most famous one. Socrates begins from an example that Robert thinks appeals to Thrasymachus. Take the case of the unjust city, the unjust political community, right up Thrasymachus' alley. Won't an unjust city attempt to enslave other cities unjustly and keep them in that enslavement? That, Thrasymachus grants, is exactly what the best cities will do, and do it well.

Now this proves to be just the opening that Socrates needs. He asks if the members of the unjust city will practice justice or injustice among themselves? Won't in fact, the city with the unjust foreign policy, collapse if its internal relations are similarly unjust? In other words, even if you take a gang of robbers or thieves, justice is necessary to them and its good. This point Thrasymachus has to grant.

Now this so-called band of robbers argument is effective with Thrasymachus, because it compels him to admit that justice is good for any group, in order to have that group operate well. So far, so good. Yet doesn't this concession come at a high price for Socrates? After all, if justice is merely the sort of calculation needed for a gang of robbers to do its job well, if it's nothing other than a kind of collective selfishness, then in that case, doesn't justice cease to be the high and admirable thing that we, Glaucon, and Adeimantus hope it to be?

By the end of the third and final argument here, one that proceeds on the premise that justice is the virtue or excellence of the human soul, Robert thinks it fair to say that Thrasymachus remains completely unconvinced of the goodness of justice. Yet at the same time though, he has become completely tame, one could say. He simply lets Socrates have his way in the argument. This is an amazing transformation, given the sort of almost violence with which he enters the conversation. Socrates, we have to say, is no slouch when it comes to pushing people around in argument. He can "out-Thrasymachus" Thrasymachus, when he needs to do it.

Now at the very end of book one of the Republic, Socrates himself states that he is dissatisfied with the proceedings, for a pretty simple reason. They've been discussing for some time, whether or not justice is profitable and so on. The various qualities that justice may or may not have. Yet they haven't first identified what justice is. So Socrates asks how we can speak about the qualities of something, before we know what that something is? As we'll see, a good part of the Republic is spent hunting for a proper definition of justice.

Yet before that can happen though, we need to hear from the two brothers, Glaucon and Adeimantus. Book II of the Republic, opens with Galucon's taking up the challenge of Thrasymachus, and Robert thinks even in a way, deepening it or radicalizing that challenge. Where Thrasymachus, as we've seen, is content to just "cave in," while not actually agreeing with Socrates that justice is good, Glaucon, to his credit, wants to get to the bottom of the matter.

Glaucon's deepest wish, apparently, is that justice be the greatest good that he hopes for. Yet he doesn't want to be anybody's dupe. He wants to know, and not merely to believe, as he does believe, that justice is the greatest good for a human being.

Glaucon begins with a famous classification of goods, of the good things there are in the world. First he says there are some goods that are good in themselves, for their, say, harmless pleasures like dancing, for example. Second, there are goods we like both for their own sakes, and for the sake of the goods that they produce. Health might be an example here, which is pleasant in itself, and permits us to do other things. Then third he says, there are those which we choose only for the sake of what comes from them, their consequences. A visit to the dentist, say, or a root canal!

Now according to Glaucon, most people hold that justice falls into the third category. Justice itself is painful drudgery, and we choose it only for the good things it produces, never for it itself. Glaucon is dissatisfied with this understanding of justice. He wants justice to be choice-worthy for its own sake alone, and not for the sake of the goods that may come from it. So that is the core of his challenge to Socrates.

Now Glaucon sketches what he says is the view of most people, a view that he doesn't like or approve of. It depends first, on the fundamental distinction between the natural and conventional, as we discussed in lecture two. Doing injustice is by nature, good. Suffering injustice, is by nature, bad.

Yet he says that most people are more afraid of suffering injustice, than they are hopeful that they can get away with injustice. So people come together and create laws, customs, or compacts, however one wants to call them. These things are meant to guarantee that they'll neither do injustice, nor therefor suffer injustice themselves.

In other words, yes, most of us by nature would like to rob a bank if we could get away with it. Yet we're more afraid of being robbed ourselves, so we stick to the just path. Justice then on this account, is entirely conventional, the product of human making, natural. It's a kind of mean between the greatest good, which of course would be getting away with injustice, and the greatest evil, which would be suffering injustice and not being able to do a darn thing about it.

Now to prove that we all act justly unwillingly, and would really prefer injustice if only we could get away with it, Glaucon retells a famous tale. There was, once upon a time, an ancestor of a famous usurper, named Gyges of Lydia. This ancestor of Gyges came across one day, a magical ring, which when turned made its wearer invisible.

What did this fellow do when he found his ring and his new found power? He committed adultery with the king's wife, killed the king, and of course, took over the rule himself. Now why does Glaucon tell this strange story? Give to both, the just person and the unjust person, such a ring. Glaucon says that the just man would act in exactly the same way as the unjust. He would flee justice, because it's something hard, and because only the threat of penalties, punishments, keeps him on the straight and narrow. Penalties that, of course, having such a ring would do away with.

Yet, we might well reply, such a just man would become miserably unhappy as a result of his successful injustice. Maybe justice itself makes us happy, and injustice itself makes us miserable? Not so, says Glaucon! He performs a kind of thought experiment to prove his point.

He takes the case of a completely unjust man, and then the completely just one. Yet we have to make sure that each person chooses his way of life for its own sake alone, and not because of any external rewards or penalties. So here's what we'll do. We'll give the perfectly unjust man, the reputation of perfect justice, and the perfectly just man, the reputation for perfect injustice. In short, we'll have Al Capone with the reputation of Mother Theresa, and Mother Theresa with the reputation of Al Capone. Glaucon's description here deserves to be quoted:

"The just man will be whipped; he’ll be racked; he’ll be bound; he’ll have both his eyes burned out; and at the end, when he has undergone every sort of evil, he’ll be crucified and know that one shouldn’t wish to be, but to seem to be, just.”

Of course, the perfectly unjust man with the reputation for perfect justice, will enjoy every advantage that society has to offer. In fact he'll be able to make sacrifices and votive offerings to the gods, so the very gods will favor him. So if we look at justice itself and injustice itself, stripped of their rewards and punishments, nobody, Glaucon fears, would ever freely choose justice.

Before Socrates can respond to this, Glaucon's brother, Adeimantus, takes over the conversation. He picks up especially on the theologically related question with which Glaucon's speech ends. In fact, we note just in passing, that Adeimantus' speech in the Republic here, contains the first recorded instance of the word theologia (theology) in western literature.

Now Adeimantus' speech relies less on the distinction between nature and convention, than in Glaucon's speech, and relies more on the authoritative accounts of the gods that were given to the Greeks by the great poets, Homer and Hesiod, who were, as Adeimantus himself here notes, the chief sources of their knowledge of the gods. He quotes both of these poets to the effect that if you're just, the gods will reward you, even including your children and their children. Similarly the poets are full of lines about the horrible punishments awaiting the unjust.

Now we might well ask at this juncture, why Adeimantus objects to this? After all, we can find comparable statements in our own religious traditions. Well Adeimantus objects to these vivid accounts of the rewards and punishments of justice and injustice respectively, because they amount to saying that there's no good reason to be just by itself. Without the rewards or threat of punishment, only a fool will be just.

Yet there's more, in what Adeimantus calls the most wonderful of all these speeches, he notes that as a matter of fact, the gods do not simply reward the just and punish the unjust. Sometimes the wicked get away scot-free. Here's what he says:

"They say that the gods, after all, allot misfortune and a bad life to many good men too, and an opposite fate to opposite men."

Here then Adreimantus alludes to what we might call, the problem of Job. The righteous sometimes suffer terribly, while the wicked sometimes prosper. Now it's true that this argument is in some tension with the preceding one. That is, Adeimantus objects both to the rewards said to be given to the just, and to the fact that such rewards are sometimes not given. Yet both of these arguments point in one direction. Namely that a life of injustice is superior to the life of justice.

Adeimantus does note that successful injustice on a grand scale, may be hard work. Yet as he says, nothing great is easy. He notes too that there are teachers of persuasive speech, such as men like Thrasymachus, who is in the room, and as we'll see, Gorgias. Men like this, promise to teach you how to persuade anybody of anything, especially juries, of your perfect justice, which of course is just a mask for your injustice.

Now we might well say, on hearing Adeimantus' speech, that maybe it is true that injustice can supply us with great goods if we get away with it. Yet it's finally impossible to escape all penalties. What about god or the gods? Don't they see it? Adeimantus is too thoughtful not to have considered this possibility. Yet when he examines the accounts of the gods, in Homer for example, he sees something very disturbing. The poets tells of ways through sacrifice, prayer, votive offerings and so on, how to turn the gods' attention to our favor, even if you've committed an injustice! Here he quotes from Homer himself in the Odyssey:

"The very gods can be moved by prayer too with sacrifices and gentle vows and the odor of burnt and drink offerings, human beings turn them aside with their prayers, When someone has transgressed and made a mistake."

So let's summarize. This is how Adeimantus challenges Socrates. Our fellow human beings, city's laws, the great poets, they all praise justice to be sure. Yet they do so strictly with a view to the external goods provided by the practice of justice, things like honors, political rule, money, fine marriages, etc. Nobody praises justice by itself, for itself, as he says.

In addition, the tales told about the gods are a little disturbing. On the one hand, it seems that the gods don't in fact always reward the just. Why then be just yourself? The gods can be bribed by the unjust. Why then be just yourself? We might remember here the overwhelming concern of the very elderly man Cephalus, to make sacrifices to the gods before he dies. Don't his actions confirm Adeimantus' account?

Here then is Adeimantuis' final challenge to Socrates, which we'll just quote:

"...as to what each itself does with its own power..."

(that is, justice and injustice)

"...when it is in the soul of a man who possesses it, and is not noticed by gods and men, no one has ever, in poetry or prose, adequately developed the argument that the one is the greatest of evils a soul can have in it, and justice the greatest good."

(He says to Socrates)

"Show what each in itself does to the bad man who has it that makes the one bad and the other good. ... Of what profit is justice in itself to the man who possesses it, and what harm does injustice do? Leave wages and reputations to others to praise..."

Now although the two brothers approach the question somewhat differently, both agree that the case against justice is strong, distressingly so. It's their admirable hope that by setting out the strongest case against justice, Socrates will precisely by refuting it, make the strongest case in favor of justice.

Yet their challenge to Socrates is complicated. They're disgusted by the arguments which praise the many good things that come from justice, rather than praising justice itself. Now we could imagine an argument in favor of justice, Robert thinks, that would praise it precisely for the sacrifice required to live a just life, for the extent to which it requires that we give up good things, in order to be just.

In fact, as we'll see when we turn to Aristotle later, he describes justice as being concerned with the good of another, and not one's own good. That's the very reason why just human beings are so impressive to him.

Yet this isn't the path that Glaucon and Adeimantus go down. They demand of justice, and by extension of Socrates, that justice be the one thing needed to be truly happy. As Glaucon has it, "the man on the rack, tortured in various horrible ways, he will lead a good life, even a happy life, provided he has justice in his soul, and it alone."

Glaucon and Adeimantus too then, want to hear justice praised, yet not as a means to some great goods, but as the single greatest good that there is. The only thing that we need, in order to be happy.

Now that there is something extreme in their demands, is clear if we look a little more closely to Socrates' reactions to it, in book two. For example, after Glaucon has finished his speech, Socrates says:

"What he, Glaucon, has already said is enough to being me to my knees and make it impossible to help out justice."

Socrates indicates quite clearly that he cannot meet the challenge to justice as Glaucon has laid it out. That is, to make justice the sole good a human being needs in order to live well. After Adeimantus' speech, Socrates says that he is:

"...at a loss as to what I should do. On the one hand, I can't help out. For in my opinion I'm not capable of it."

Now if, as Robert suggests, there is something extreme, maybe even a little confused in the demand that Glaucon and Adeimantus make of Socrates, it's only to be expected that he won't be able to meet it entirely. Yet as he also says here, though he can't help out, he can't not help out either. When justice is under attack, he's going to do his very best to meet the challenge.

What Socrates now proposes, will determine the course of the rest of the Republic. Robert thinks it makes possible one of the most fascinating, daring, even dazzling adventures of the mind, if we can put it that way. Socrates says that in the matter of justice, they aren't clever or sharp sighted. So to see justice, as what it is, it may be best to see justice writ large first, in a city, before we try to see it in the individual.

So they will look for justice first, in the political community, where it will be larger and presumably easier to spot. Yet that's not all, as Socrates suggests that they look for justice not in any existing city, such as their own Athens, but in a city as it's coming into being. For some reason, Socrates suggests that they become founders of "a city in speech" as he calls it. This way they can watch the genesis of justice, along with that of the city or community.

Now this procedure, which obviously isn't demanded by their task to discover justice, is still attractive for a couple of reasons. First it permits Glaucon and Adeimantus to experience, vicariously at least, something of the greatest political act, founding a community. Second, although their community won't be an actual one, it will be the best or best possible one. It's presumably only in the best city that justice will be most in evidence.

So, after the three rousing critiques of justice, given by Thracymachus, then Glaucon, and finally his brother Adeimantus, Socrates proposes first to discover what justice really is, both in the city and individual, and then once they really know what justice is, and define it accurately, then they'll be in a position to discover its true worth, its true goodness.

So next time we're going to follow Socrates, Glaucon, and Adeimantus, in their adventure of political founding.