Justice -- Early works to 1800; Political science -- Early works to 1800; Utopias -- Early works to 1800
[Sidenote: _Republic II._ Socrates, Glaucon.]
*357A* With these words I was thinking that I had made an end of the
discussion; but the end, in truth, proved to be only a beginning. For
Glaucon, who is always the most pugnacious of men, was dissatisfied at
Thrasymachus' retirement; he wanted to have the battle out. So he said to
me: Socrates, do you wish really to persuade us, or only to seem to *357B*
have persuaded us, that to be just is always better than to be unjust?
I should wish really to persuade you, I replied, if I could.
[Sidenote: The threefold division of goods.]
Then you certainly have not succeeded. Let me ask you now:--How would you
arrange goods--are there not some which we welcome for their own sakes,
and independently of their consequences, as, for example, harmless
pleasures and enjoyments, which delight us at the time, although nothing
follows from them?
I agree in thinking that there is such a class, I replied.
*357C* Is there not also a second class of goods, such as knowledge,
sight, health, which are desirable not only in themselves, but also for
their results?
Certainly, I said.
And would you not recognize a third class, such as gymnastic, and the care
of the sick, and the physician's art; also the various ways of
money-making--these do us good but we regard them as disagreeable; and no
one would choose them *357D* for their own sakes, but only for the sake of
some reward or result which flows from them?
There is, I said, this third class also. But why do you ask?
Because I want to know in which of the three classes you would place
justice?
*358A* In the highest class, I replied,--among those goods which {37} he
who would be happy desires both for their own sake and for the sake of
their results.
Then the many are of another mind; they think that justice is to be
reckoned in the troublesome class, among goods which are to be pursued for
the sake of rewards and of reputation, but in themselves are disagreeable
and rather to be avoided.
I know, I said, that this is their manner of thinking, and that this was
the thesis which Thrasymachus was maintaining just now, when he censured
justice and praised injustice. But I am too stupid to be convinced by him.
[Sidenote: Three heads of the argument:--1. The nature of justice: 2.
Justice a necessity, but not a good: 3. The reasonableness of this
notion.]
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