| Notes on Plato's |
| Notes on Plato's |
1. Justice is repayment of a debt. An idea off the top of the mind, but tapping into to some feeling for justice which shows that all persons possess a supersensible awareness of such a reality as justice.
A. Except if the person to whom you’re paying the debt is not in his right mind
B. This is an exception to the rule or definition.
2. A friend ought always to do good to a friend and never evil.
A. To return a debt in such a way as to hurt the person is to injure him.
B. Not to repay would be justice--the opposite of the original definition.
3. Many people believe that we owe evil to an enemy.
4. Justice is the giving to each person what is appropriate to him.
5. Many people believe that justice is the art which gives good to friends and evil to enemies.
6. Many people believe that when there is no need for giving a person a good (e.g. expertise, medicine) then justice is of no use.
7. A just man does not possess certain skills.
8. Justice is useful when a thing such as money is useless (allowed to lie without use).
9. A person able to do some thing is also able not to do that thing or to prevent that thing being done.
10. By friends or enemies we mean those who really are such and not merely appear to be.
11. Persons often err about good and evil; many who are not good appear to be so, and conversely.
12. He is a friend who is, as well as seems, good; he who only seems a friend is not.
13. The good are our friends and the bad our enemies.
14. Men who are injured are made unjust.
15. The just by justice cannot make men unjust; the good by doing good cannot make a man bad.
By doing something you do not cause a person to become the opposite of that thing.
16. The just is the good and the good cannot harm anyone.
17. To injure a friend is not the act of a just man but of an unjust man.
18. We cannot say that a just man should do evil to his enemies, for a just man should injure no one.
19. The definition of justice as doing good to your friends and harm to your enemies has broken down.
20. Thrasymachus believes that justice is the interest of the stronger.
21. There are democratic, aristocratic, and tyrannical forms of government.
22. The laws which a government makes are for its own interest.
23. Justice is the interest of a government, which is the stronger, because it has power.
24. It is just for subjects to obey their rulers.
25. Rulers of states are not infallible; they sometimes err.
26. Rulers sometimes make laws incorrectly, laws not to their interest.
27. Many believe that subjects are to obey rulers at all times and that even when rulers make laws which are not to their interests, the subjects should obey even these flawed laws. The subjects, then, are doing injury to the stronger (when the stronger make laws they don’t know are to their own injury).
28. Justice can be the injury quite as much as the interest of the stronger.
29. Many believe that justice is what the stronger think to be to their interest.
30. Thrasymachus: No, the stronger is not one who makes mistakes.
31. A person with a skill (e.g. medicine) does not have that skill when he makes a mistake; the skill fails him.
32. Thrasymachus: The ruler, in so far as he is a ruler, is unerring and always commands that which is for his own interest.
33. Dialectic (Thrasymachus)
A. Socrates takes possession of others; people shouldn’t let him do this.
B. Participants give in to each other; they shouldn’t do this; they should ask questions and answer other persons' questions.
C. You should not seek honor to yourself by refuting another.
D. You should have your own answers.
E. Justice is not duty or profit or advantage or gain or interest. Thrasymachus says he must have clearness and accuracy.
F. Socrates: We are seeking something much more precious than gold and what appears giving into one another is genuine seeking for justice.
G. Thrasymachus: What Socrates asks he refuses to answer and uses irony or other shuffles to avoid answering.
H. Socrates: Even if someone forbids another to give a specific answer, he ought to answer whatever he takes to be the correct idea.
I. Thrasymachus: Socrates refuses to answer but takes and pulls to pieces the answers of others.
J. Socrates: How can one such as I who claims to know nothing answer, even if he has some faint notion of his own? It’s better for someone like yourself who professes to know something to give an answer or make a statement.
K. Thrasymachus to Socrates: You argue like an informer.
L. Socrates to Thrasymachus: Do you suppose I intend to injure you through dialectic?
Thrasymachus: I don’t suppose it, I know. But you will be found out and you won’t prevail by sheer force of argument.
M. Socrates knows that no matter how hostile a person (e.g. Thrasymachus) may be, he possesses some supersensible understanding of realties which can be revealed through dialectic. Example: Thrasymachus knowing what an art like medicine really is. Socrates also experiences persons such as Thrasymachus not wanting to admit that they know the reality of something and referring to current practice (e.g. of unjust rule) as if it were the true essence of a reality (e.g. just ruling).
34. Socrates to Thrasymachus: Do you speak of a ruler in the popular or strict sense?
Thrasymachus: In the strict sense.
35. S: Is a physician a healer of the sick or the maker of money? T: Healer of the sick.
36. Every art has an interest for which it has to consider and provide.
37. The interest of any art is the perfection of the art.
38. An art meets the needs of others.
39. Does every art require another supplementary art to provide for its interests, or does an art look out for its own interests?
40. Do arts have defects sometimes which they need to correct, either by exercising their arts or by some outside agency? Do they merely consider their own subject matter.
41. An art considers the interest not of itself, but of the external interest which it serves or meets the needs of. Medicine does not consider the interest of medicine but of the interest of the body.
42. Arts do not care for themselves but only for the interests they serve.
43. Are arts the superiors or rulers of their own subjects: those they serve?
44. Arts consider the interest not of the stronger (the art) but the weaker: the subject served.
45. No physician considers his own good in what he prescribes but the good of his patient. The true physician is a ruler having the body as a subject and is not a mere money maker.
46. No ruler, who is a genuine ruler, caters to or serves his own interest but the interests of those whom he serves as is suitable to his art.
47. Thrasymachus: A ruler serves the interest of his subjects only to ultimately serve his own personal interest.
48. Thrasymachus: Rulers study their own advantage day and night.
49. Thrasymachus: Justice is the interest of the ruler and the loss of the subjects.
50. Thrasymachus: The unjust is ruler over the truly simple and just.
51. Thrasymachus: The ruler’s subjects do what is for the ruler’s interest, which are very far from being their own.
52. Thrasymachus: The just is always a loser in comparison with the unjust.
53. Thrasymachus: Injustice, when on a sufficient scale, has more strength and freedom and mastery than justice.
54. Socrates: Are you going to run away before you have fairly taught or learned whether your ideas are true or not? Socrates is pointing out that just because a person believes certain ideas--and can even support them with actual events--he does not (cannot) know if they are true (in a higher sense) or not. Truth or reality is not correspondence of propositions with the occurrence of events (facts). We are attempting to determine the way of man’s life--how life may be lived by each to greatest advantage. We’re searching for the reality of justice, not merely the distorted use of the word to refer to actually unjust acts. Reality cannot be determined from events (facts), 1 no matter how immediate, logical, and unquestionable they might seem.
55. If what you say is true, you should help us benefit from your truth. We derive benefit from truth, from understanding reality. Don’t keep your knowledge to yourself (keep the dialectic going).
56. Socrates: You did not extend your understanding of a true physician to your definition/description of a shepherd or political ruler.
57. Some take lesser offices to serve and not to promote their own interest. There is factual expression of true rulership as well as false.
58. Arts have different functions.
59. An activity within an art--e.g. the activity or art of receiving money in medicine--is not necessarily the essence of the art.
60. All arts have something in common.
61. A true artist or true ruler serves not his own interest but the interest of those he serves.
62. A true ruler’s (or artist’s) interest is served by being paid but a true ruler does not consider this as primary.
63. Ambition and avarice are held to be a disgrace.
64. A true ruler is paid merely so he can serve. Personal reward is, in a true ruler, a minor consideration.
65. To the best men, the inducements to rule are not ambition, honor, or greed, but out of the fear of punishment. The worst punishment is that he who refuses to rule is liable to be ruled by one who is worse than himself.
66. Thrasymachus: Injustice is virtue and wisdom. This turns out not to be a view which can be held, because there is a reality to virtue and justice which will not allow it to be linked with injustice and evil deeds. Socrates says that as long as Thrasymachus is speaking honestly in the dialectical process he is committed to continuing the dialogue with him. If Thrasymachus had been found to be lying, then dialectic becomes impossible.
67. Socrates then asks Thrasymachus a question about the just man and he answers by referring to "the just man" in the old terms of the person who is a delightful simpleton. Socrates is proving that Thrasymachus is using the term "just man" in two contradictory meanings: the man who is good and the man who is evil (the ruler who serves only his own interests).
68. A true artist or true ruler wants to perform his art in its correct form, without going beyond its right principles. The ignorant man (a false artist) would want to go beyond the right principles of his art, because he wouldn’t know what the right principles are. Thrasymachus’ unjust ruler would also want to go beyond the right principles of an art because he is ignorant. Injustice is ignorance.
69. So Thrasymachus’ unjust ruler turns out to be ignorant and not virtuous and the just man, in the true sense, turns out to be virtuous and knowledgeable.
70. Injustice causes factions, hatreds and internecine conflicts, making unjust groups incapable of effective action in common, because they are enemies of themselves. Justice brings oneness of mind and love.
71. Injustice in the individual causes divisions within the elements of the self, making him incapable of effective action and an enemy to himself.
72. If the unjust ever bring about effective action in common, it must be that they have practiced some kind of just behavior. Utterly unjust rascals are completely incapable of effective action.
73. Every object and organism has a certain function for which it is best suited and has it own special excellence or virtue. Everything will do its own work well by its own virtue and badly by its own defect.
74. An evil soul must necessarily be an evil ruler and superintendent, and the good soul a good ruler.
75. The excellence or virtue of the soul is justice and its defect injustice.
76. The just soul and the just man then will live well and the unjust ill. He who lives well is blessed and happy, and he who does not the contrary. Then the just is happy and the unjust miserable.
77. Socrates ends Book I of the Republic by indicating that he does not know the full reality of virtue and justice, since the dialectical process thus far has only been able to preclude certain ideas (virtue is injustice) and discover parts of the reality of virtue (goodness, truth, freedom from ignorance).
__________
1
Fact:2) Performance, doing
3) The quality of being actual: a question of fact hinges on evidence
4) Something that has actual existence
5) An actual occurrence
6) A piece of information presented as having objective reality
(Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition)
