Having been introduced to the question(s) of justice (δικαιοσύνη), and provided summary arguments by Socrates, Glaucon remains unconvinced. He makes an extreme argument in favour of injustice which he hopes Socrates will denounce and in its place exalt justice.
Glaucon asserts that justice originates ‘as a compromise...for lack of power to do wrong’, and that ‘men do right only under compulsion’. He protests that men behave justly only because of the reputation and respectability it brings. If a man could go about ‘with the powers of a god’, never being caught for wrongdoing, he would always choose to do wrong; moreover, granted complete unaccountable licence, a man would be thought a fool if he chose to do otherwise.
Taking the argument to a logical extreme, Glaucon says that ‘the highest pitch of injustice is to seem [δοκειν] just when you are not’. The completely unjust man who seems just and has the reputation of being just is invested with all the benefits of society; whereas the truly just man must strip himself of all offices not knowing whether his justness or his reputation brings him these rewards. There is a reversal in the positions of the truly just man and the completely unjust man: it is the unjust man who merits public office and the favour of heaven, and so the unjust life is better than the just life.
Adiemantus seconds Glaucon and pitches even higher saying that heaven itself allots a hard life to the good man and gives prosperity to the wicked. Moreover, he says, the unjust man can absolve wrongdoing by means of sacrifice. Thus, while there is nothing to be gained but trouble from absolute right-doing, with absolute wrongdoing ‘our desires our fulfilled in this life and in the next’.
Socrates is challenged to explain how ‘justice is intrinsically superior to injustice whether gods or men see it or not’.
Socrates posits that the community (πολις) is analogous to the individual (ανδρος) and proposes to examine the community for understanding what justice is. Arguing that a community naturally comes into existence for no individual is self-sufficing, Socrates asserts that it is best if each individual masters one skill and exchanges its products with others, benefiting the community as a whole. Beginning with a farmer, a builder, a tailor, and a cobbler, the minimal basic city grows to include shepherds, cowherds, craftsmen, agents of foreign exchange and so on.
Glaucon objects to this ‘community of pigs’ which is without ordinary comforts (such as the sofa), and the polis transforms into a luxurious one with appropriate attendants. But now the enlarged community must have access to greater resources, and will have to expand physically. Moreover, Socrates points out, it will attract the attention of other communities which are jealous of its luxury. This is the point where Guardians become important. Keeping in mind the early premise of mastering one skill only, guardians must be trained solely to be guardians. The task of guardianship cannot be performed well, if at all, by other citizens. Additionally, the guardian’s work being most important, (s)he requires the greatest skill and practice in, and a natural ability for, guardianship: the guardian must be swift, strong, spirited and philosophic (loving true understanding), and the guardian’s education must accordingly cultivate mind & body.
As education begins with stories (μύθος), Socrates argues for the censorship, in this proposed community, of all poetry appertaining to religion and to heroes or other admirable, therefore imitable, figures. The Gods must be represented as the cause of only good, as doing only good, and being only good; heroes must never be shown crying or complaining; and there should no misstatements about human life such as ‘wrongdoers are happy’. In other words, poetry must (re)present human life in only the best way.
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