What Is Justice? (Book I)

I went down yesterday to the Piraeus with Glaucon, the son of Ariston, to offer my prayers to the goddess, and also because I wanted to see how they would celebrate the festival, which was a new thing. I was delighted with the procession of the inhabitants; but that of the Thracians was equally, if not more, beautiful. When we had finished our prayers and seen the spectacle, we turned back toward the city. And at that moment Polemarchus, the son of Cephalus, caught sight of us from a distance, and sent his slave running to ask us to wait.

"Socrates," he said, when he came up with Adeimantus and some others, "you seem to be going back to the city. Do you see how many we are? Either prove yourselves stronger than all of us, or stay."

"Is there not another possibility," I said, "that we persuade you to let us go?"

"Can you persuade people who won't listen?" And so we stayed, and went with him to his house, where we found his father, Cephalus, a very old man, sitting crowned with a garland, for he had just been sacrificing.

He greeted me warmly. "You don't come down to see us often enough, Socrates. As the pleasures of the body fade, I find my delight in conversation grows."

I asked him what old age was like, for he was at the threshold of it. He said that most old men complain of their lost pleasures; but he remembered the poet Sophocles, who, when asked whether he could still enjoy a woman, answered: "Hush, man! Most gladly have I escaped from that, as if from a mad and savage master." Old age, Cephalus said, brings peace and freedom, if a man is orderly and content; if not, both youth and age are hard.

"But perhaps, Cephalus," I said, "people say you bear old age lightly because you are rich."

He agreed there was something in it. The greatest benefit of wealth, he said, is that it helps a good man to leave this life without having cheated anyone, or owed anything to gods or men. For when death approaches, a man begins to fear that the stories about punishment in Hades may be true.

"Well said," I replied. "But what is this thing, justice? Is it simply to speak the truth and to pay back what one has received? Suppose a friend had given me his weapons when he was sane, and asks for them back when he has gone mad. Should I return them?"

"No," he said. And at that point Cephalus excused himself to see to the sacrifices, and left the argument to his son, his heir.

Polemarchus took it up. Justice, he said, quoting the poet Simonides, is to give to each what is owed to him: to do good to friends and harm to enemies.

I asked him, by questions, what this meant in practice. In what activity is the just man most useful, in war or in peace? With money? Only when money is lying idle, it seemed; so justice was useful only for useless things. And if the just man is the best guard of money, is he not also the cleverest thief? Polemarchus admitted that he no longer knew what he meant. And then I asked him: is it ever just to harm anyone? To harm a horse makes it a worse horse; to harm a man makes him worse in human virtue, that is, more unjust. Can justice make men unjust? No more than heat can make things cold. So the definition must have come not from Simonides, but from some rich and powerful tyrant.

All this time Thrasymachus had been trying to break in, and now he could hold himself back no longer. He gathered himself up like a wild beast and sprang at us, as if to tear us to pieces.

"What nonsense is this, Socrates! Stop asking questions and refuting other people's answers, and tell us yourself what justice is."

When at last he was persuaded to give his own answer, he declared: "Listen, then. I say that justice is nothing else than the advantage of the stronger. In every city the ruling power makes the laws for its own advantage, democracy democratic laws, tyranny tyrannical laws, and then declares that whatever is to its advantage is just for its subjects, and punishes whoever breaks it."

I asked him whether rulers never make mistakes. If they sometimes make laws that are against their own interest, then obeying them is just and also not to their advantage. He answered that a ruler, insofar as he is a ruler, never errs, any more than a doctor, insofar as he is a doctor. I took him at his word. Every art, I said, seeks the advantage not of itself but of its object: medicine seeks the good of the body, not of medicine; the captain rules his sailors for their good. So the ruler, insofar as he is a ruler, seeks the advantage of the ruled.

Thrasymachus would not give way. "Do you have a nurse, Socrates? She lets you go about drivelling. You think shepherds fatten their sheep for the sheep's good! Injustice, if it is on a large enough scale, is stronger, freer and more masterful than justice. The tyrant who steals a whole city is called happy and blessed. People blame injustice not because they fear doing it, but because they fear suffering it."

So the real question was now before us: is the life of the unjust man better than the life of the just? We argued long. At last I asked him: does everything have a function, something it alone can do, or do best? The eye to see, the ear to hear, the knife to prune. And each has a virtue, by which it performs its function well. The soul's function is to live, to deliberate, to rule; and its virtue, we had agreed, is justice. So the just soul lives well, and the man who lives well is happy. The unjust man is wretched.

Thrasymachus, sweating, agreed at last, though not gladly; and he blushed, which I had never seen him do before.

But I was not satisfied. Like a glutton who snatches at every dish before he has properly tasted the last, I had gone from one question to another without ever finding out what justice is. And so, I said, the result of our discussion is that I know nothing. For if I do not know what justice is, I can hardly know whether it is a virtue, or whether the just man is happy or unhappy.

(End of Episode 1 — continued in Episode 2: The Ring of Gyges)