Republic

This, then, my good sir, is what I understand as the identical principle of justice that obtains in all states —the advantage of the established government. This I presume you will admit holds power and is strong, so that, if one reasons rightly, it works out that the just is the same thing everywhere, the advantage of the stronger. Now, said I, I have learned your meaning, but whether it is true or not I have to try to learn. The advantageous, then, is also your reply, Thrasymachus, to the question, what is the just—though you forbade me to give that answer. But you add thereto that of the stronger. A trifling addition perhaps you think it, he said. It is not yet clear whether it is a big one either; but that we must inquire whether what you say is true, is clear. For since I too admit that the just is something that is of advantage—but you are for making an addition and affirm it to be the advantage of the stronger, while I don’t profess to know, we must pursue the inquiry. Inquire away, he said. I will do so, said I. Tell me, then; you affirm also, do you not, that obedience to rulers is just? I do. May I ask whether the rulers in the various states are infallible or capable sometimes of error? Surely, he said, they are liable to err. Then in their attempts at legislation they enact some laws rightly and some not rightly, do they not? So I suppose. And by rightly we are to understand for their advantage, and by wrongly to their disadvantage? Do you mean that or not? That. But whatever they enact must be performed by their subjects and is justice? Of course. Then on your theory it is just not only to do what is the advantage of the stronger but also the opposite, what is not to his advantage. What’s that you’re saying? he replied. What you yourself are saying, I think. Let us consider it more closely. Have we not agreed that the rulers in giving orders to the ruled sometimes mistake their own advantage, and that whatever the rulers enjoin is just for the subjects to perform? Was not that admitted? I think it was, he replied. Then you will have to think, I said, that to do what is disadvantageous to the rulers and the stronger has been admitted by you to be just in the case when the rulers unwittingly enjoin what is bad for themselves, while you affirm that it is just for the others to do what they enjoined. In that way does not this conclusion inevitably follow, my most sapient Thrasymachus, that it is just to do the very opposite of what you say? For it is in that case surely the disadvantage of the stronger or superior that the inferior are commanded to perform.