First Printing December, 1925
Second Printing March, 1926
Printed in the United States of America
CONTENTS
| CHAPTER | PAGE | |
|---|---|---|
| I. | [MORALITY AS THE INTEREST OF THE STRONGER] | 1 |
| II. | [HERD MORALITY AND THE NEW TYRANNY OF THOUGHT] | 13 |
| III. | [THE NEW LIBERTY OF ACTION] | 37 |
| IV. | [THE COMING CLASH] | 57 |
THRASYMACHUS
CHAPTER I
Morality as the Interest of the Stronger
Thrasymachus appears in the first book of Plato’s Republic, in which the speakers discuss the nature of Justice. Several tentative definitions of Justice are given, which Socrates has no difficulty in showing to be inadequate by the peculiarly irritating methods of dialectic for which the Athenians so excusably poisoned him. Thrasymachus then breaks in. He is a blustering, overbearing personage, who makes long speeches instead of answering Socrates’ questions, and, when driven into a corner, charges the latter rather irrelevantly with having a bad cold and omitting to use his handkerchief.
Required to sustain an unpopular thesis, he is not unnaturally represented as an offensive person. The trick is an old one and argues well for Plato’s sense of dramatic fitness. It should not, however, blind us to the plausibility of Thrasymachus’ position. Justice, he says, is the interest of the stronger. Asked how he maintains this view, he points out that the stronger control the government and make the laws. These laws are not unnaturally made in their own interest; in other words, matters are so contrived that, by the mere process of obeying the laws, citizens are led to further the interests of those who govern them. Morality, which is the name we give to law-abiding conduct, is, therefore, a device on the part of the rulers to ensure subservience and contentment on the part of their subjects. Since subservient subjects are a joy and a credit to intelligent rulers, we may say that justice, and indeed morality in general, is the interest of the stronger.
The view that morality is unnatural to human beings and is imposed by law in the teeth of primitive instincts which are fundamentally non-moral, recurs at pretty regular intervals throughout the recorded history of what passes for human thought. It rests upon what is called the social contract theory of society, and leads to the conclusion that human nature is fundamentally wicked.