It’s time to get the rest of Book 1 of the Republic out of the way.
How cute! Thrasymachus wants to play. Will he play nice? Is he stronger than everyone else for claiming to know the right answer? After all, he says that “justice is nothing other than the advantage of the stronger.” [338c] Does Thrasymachus have that advantage when it comes to giving the answer of what justice really is? Thrasymachus is talking about government. He plays on what is said to be just. In some places what would be just would not be just elsewhere. Different interests are involved in ever shifting power structures. Abstracting from the idea that in all governments the stronger hold the upper hand and make the laws and say what is just, he arrives at the conclusion that justice is the advantage of the stronger. This perhaps being the case I would say that the stronger always boils down to who has the control of the means of physical domination. According to Thrasymachus’ view then, the most unjust act would be to point the bigger, more powerful gun at the stronger, but then is this not to reverse the inequality as to who is stronger in the first place? Justice seems to exhibit a manic-depressive character here. Kind of like, the man with the gun makes his own laws, but the law of the larger community trumps his individual taking of the law into his own hands. The larger fish eats the smaller fish who is, in turn, eaten by a larger fish: the Federal system! Socrates then brings up the subject of the intentionality and fallibility of the stronger, the rulers.
While I don’t want to continue with a painstaking analysis of Book 1 [after all, it's mainly a series of questions, answers, agreements, and disagreements], I would like to comment upon an issue raised and where the dialogue ultimately ends up.
Community and Being Unjust: What is it to be in community with another? Breaking the word down superficially we get comm- (some kind of togetherness) and unity (the quality of being one). To have this quality of being one with others entails the sharing of common attentions, purposes and goals. The acheivement of the goals requires a group (or even an individual acting with him or her own self) effort, since too much division and disorder leads to stalemate. Justice is some kind of order like this. Even pirates and terrorist organizations need a measure of justice to get along, i.e., if justice is really a type of ordering well.
To be just is to be happy? This is where we end up. How should this question be tackled?
