[26] The explanation of Justice given by Plato in the Republic deserves to be described much in the same words as Sokrates employs (Repub. i. p. 332 C) in characterising the definition of Justice furnished by (or ascribed to) the poet Simonides:—
ᾐνίξατο, ὡς ἔοικεν, ὁ Σιμωνίδης ποιητικῶς τὸ δίκαιον ὃ εἴη.
The Kleitophon represents a point of view which many objectors must have insisted on against Sokrates and Plato.
We may thus see sufficient reason why Plato, after having drawn up the Kleitophon as preparatory basis for a dialogue, became unwilling to work it out, and left it as an unfinished sketch. He had, probably without intending it, made out too strong a case against Sokrates and against himself. If he continued it, he would have been obliged to put some sufficient reason into the mouth of Sokrates, why Kleitophon should abandon his intention of frequenting some other teacher: and this was a hard task. He would have been obliged to lay before Kleitophon, a pupil thoroughly inoculated with his own negative œstrus, affirmative solutions proof against such subtle cross-examination: and this, we may fairly assume, was not merely a hard task, but impossible. Hence it is that we possess the Kleitophon only as a fragment.
The Kleitophon was originally intended as a first book of the Republic, but was found too hard to answer. Reasons why the existing first book was substituted.
Yet I think it a very ingenious and instructive fragment: setting forth powerfully, in respect to the negative philosophy of Sokrates and Plato, a point of view which must have been held by many intelligent contemporaries. Among all the objections urged against Sokrates and Plato, probably none was more frequent than this protest against the continued negative procedure. This same point of view — that Sokrates puzzled every one, but taught no one any thing — is reproduced by Thrasymachus against Sokrates in the first book of the Republic:[27] in which first book there are various other marks of analogy with the Kleitophon.[28] It might seem as if Plato had in the first instance projected a dialogue in which Sokrates was to discuss the subject of justice, and had drawn up the Kleitophon as the sketch of a sort of forcing process to be applied to Sokrates: then, finding that he placed Sokrates under too severe pressure, had abandoned the project, and taken up the same subject anew, in the manner which we now read in the Republic. The task which he assigns to Sokrates, in this last-mentioned dialogue, is far easier. Instead of the appeal made to Sokrates by Kleitophon, with truly Sokratic point — we have an assault made upon him by Thrasymachus, alike angry, impudent and feeble; which just elicits the peculiar aptitude of Sokrates for humbling the boastful affirmer. Again in the second book, Glaukon and Adeimantus are introduced as stating the difficulties which they feel in respect to the theory of Justice: but in a manner totally different from Kleitophon, and without any reference to previous Sokratic requirements. Each of them delivers an eloquent and forcible pleading, in the manner of an Aristotelian or Ciceronian dialogue: and to this Sokrates makes his reply. In that reply, Sokrates explains what he means by Justice: and though his exposition is given in the form of short questions, each followed by an answer of acquiescence, yet no real or serious objections are made to him throughout the whole. The case must have been very different if Plato had continued the dialogue Kleitophon; so as to make Sokrates explain the theory of Justice, in the face of all the objections raised by a Sokratic cross-examiner.[29]
[27] Plat. Repub. pp. 336 D, 337 A, 338 A.
[28] For example, That it is not the province of the just man to hurt any one, either friend or foe, Repub. p. 335 D.
Thrasymachus derides any such definitions of τὸ δίκαιον as the following — τὸ δέον — τὸ ὠφέλιμον — τὸ λυσιτελοῦν — τὸ ξυμφέρον — τὸ κερδάλεον, Repub. i. p. 336, C-D.
These are exactly the unsatisfactory definitions which Kleitophon describes himself (p. 409 C) as having received from the partisans of Sokrates.