Adeimantus calls upon Sokrates to recommend and enforce Justice on its own grounds, and to explain how Justice in itself benefits the mind of the just man.
“Here therefore is a deficiency in the argument on behalf of justice, which I call upon you,[41] Sokrates, who have employed all your life in these meditations, to supply. You have declared justice to be good indeed for its consequences, but still more of a good from its own intrinsic nature. Explain how it is good, and how injustice is evil, in its own intrinsic nature: what effect each produces on the mind, so as to deserve such an appellation. Omit all notice of consequences accruing to the just or unjust man, from the opinion, favourable or otherwise, entertained towards him by others. You must even go farther: you must suppose that both of them are misconceived, and that the just man is disgraced and punished as if he were unjust — the unjust man honoured and rewarded as if he were just. This is the only way of testing the real intrinsic value of justice and injustice, considered in their effects upon the mind. If you expatiate on the consequences — if you regard justice as in itself indifferent, but valuable on account of the profitable reputation which it procures, and injustice as in itself profitable, but dangerous to the unjust man from the hostile sentiment and damage which it brings upon him — the real drift of your exhortation will be, to make us aspire to be unjust in reality, but to aim at maintaining a reputation of justice along with it. In that line of argument you will concede substantially the opinion of Thrasymachus — That justice is another man’s good, the advantage of the more powerful: and injustice the good or profit of the agent, but detrimental to the weaker.”[42]
[41] Plat. Rep. ii. p. 367 E. διότι πάντα τὸν βίον οὐδὲν ἄλλο σκοπῶν διελήλυθας ἢ τοῦτο (you, Sokrates).
[42] Plat. Republic, ii. p. 367 C-D.
Relation of Glaukon and Adeimantus to Thrasymachus.
With the invocation here addressed to Sokrates, Adeimantus concludes his discourse. Like Glaukon, he disclaims participation in the sentiments which the speech embodies. Both of them, professing to be dissatisfied with the previous refutation of Thrasymachus by Sokrates, call for a deeper exposition of the subject. Both of them then enunciate a doctrine, resembling partially, though not entirely, that of Thrasymachus — but without his offensive manner, and with superior force of argument. They propose it as a difficult problem, which none but Sokrates can adequately solve. He accepts the challenge, though with apparent diffidence: and we now enter upon his solution, which occupies the remaining eight books and a half of the Republic. All these last books are in fact expository, though in the broken form of dialogue. The other speakers advance scarce any opinions for Sokrates to confute, but simply intervene with expressions of assent, or doubt, or demand for farther information.
Statement of the question as it stands after the speeches of Glaukon and Adeimantus. What Sokrates undertakes to prove.
I here repeat the precise state of the question, which is very apt to be lost amidst the mæanderings of a Platonic dialogue.
First, What is Justice? Sokrates had declared at the close of the first book, that he did not know what Justice was; and that therefore he could not possibly decide, whether it was a virtue or not:— nor whether the possessor of it was happy or not.
Secondly, To which of the three classes of good things does Justice belong? To the second class — i. e. things good per se, and good also in their consequences? Or to the third class — i. e. things not good per se, but good only in their consequences? Sokrates replies (in the beginning of the second book) that it belongs to the second class.