Republic

For if your position were that injustice is profitable yet you conceded it to be vicious and disgraceful as some other disputants do, there would be a chance for an argument on conventional principles. But, as it is, you obviously are going to affirm that it is honorable and strong and you will attach to it all the other qualities that we were assigning to the just, since you don’t shrink from putting it in the category of virtue and wisdom. You are a most veritable prophet, he replied. Well, said I, I mustn’t flinch from following out the logic of the inquiry, so long as I conceive you to be saying what you think. For now, Thrasymachus, I absolutely believe that you are not mocking us but telling us your real opinions about the truth. What difference does it make to you, he said, whether I believe it or not? Why don’t you test the argument? No difference, said I, but here is something I want you to tell me in addition to what you have said. Do you think the just man would want to overreach or exceed another just man? By no means, he said; otherwise he would not be the delightful simpleton that he is. And would he exceed or overreach or go beyond the just action? Not that either, he replied. But how would he treat the unjust man—would he deem it proper and just to outdo, overreach, or go beyond him or would he not? He would, he said, but he wouldn’t be able to. That is not my question, I said, but whether it is not the fact that the just man does not claim and wish to outdo the just man but only the unjust? That is the case, he replied. How about the unjust then? Does he claim to overreach and outdo the just man and the just action? Of course, he said, since he claims to overreach and get the better of everything. Then the unjust man will overreach and outdo also both the unjust man and the unjust action, and all his endeavor will be to get the most in everything for himself. That is so. Let us put it in this way, I said; the just man does not seek to take advantage of his like but of his unlike, but the unjust man of both. Admirably put, he said. But the unjust man is intelligent and good and the just man neither. That, too, is right, he said. Is it not also true, I said, that the unjust man is like the intelligent and good and the just man is not? Of course, he said, being such he will be like to such and the other not. Excellent. Then each is such as that to which he is like. What else do you suppose? he said. Very well, Thrasymachus, but do you recognize that one man is a musician and another unmusical? I do. Which is the intelligent and which the unintelligent? The musician, I presume, is the intelligent and the unmusical the unintelligent. And is he not good in the things in which he is intelligent and bad in the things in which he is unintelligent? Yes. And the same of the physician? The same. Do you think then, my friend, that any musician in the tuning of a lyre would want to overreach another musician in the tightening and relaxing of the strings or would claim and think fit to exceed or outdo him? I do not. But would the the unmusical man? Of necessity, he said.