Thrasymachus Vs Socrates

Arguments in Republic Book 1 336b to 375a

Part One of Thrasymachus Arguments

Book 1 - 336b - 342e

Thrasymachus - Justice is nothing other than the advantage of the Stronger [338c]

Justice, a thing more valuable than even a large quantity of gold

[336e] If we were searching for gold, we’d never willingly give way to each other, if by doing so we’d destroy our chance of finding it. So don’t think that in searching for justice, a thing more valuable than even a large quantity of gold, we’d mindlessly give way to one another or be less than completely serious about finding it

Thrasymachus 338c

“Listen, then. I say that justice is nothing other than the advantage of the stronger. Well, why don’t you praise me? But then you’d do anything to avoid having to do that.” (Cooper Translation)

Then listen, said he. Indeed I maintain that what is just is nothing else but the “advantage of the stronger”. Well, why don’t you praise me? You just don’t want to.(David Horan)

[338c] For I think that you will speak well.” “Hearken and hear then,” said he. “I affirm that the just is nothing else than¹ the advantage of the stronger. WeIl, why don't you applaud? Nay, you'll do anything but that. (James Adams)¹

ἄκουε δή, ἦ δ᾽ ὅς. φημὶ γὰρ ἐγὼ εἶναι τὸ δίκαιον οὐκ ἄλλο τι ἢ τὸ τοῦ κρείττονος συμφέρον. ἀλλὰ τί οὐκ ἐπαινεῖς; ἀλλ᾽ οὐκ ἐθελήσεις.

Important Greek words used

δίκαιον - observant of custom (I find it interesting that Perseus translates δίκαιος as

observant of custom, in LSJ there are several meanings, Just and Right)²

κρείττονος - stronger, mightier

συμφέρω - bring together, gather, collect (This is the Perseus translation, a deeper look in the LSJ it is translated as many things, profit, advantage and interest are words that come up as translations) ³

It seems to me Thrasymachus could be saying several things from this statement. Thrasymachus is saying Justice is just what the stronger say it is

1. Might is Right - Whatever the strong do is correct, one can think of natural selection

2. Noble Morality - Nietzsche writes about the Noble morality ⁴

3. Justice is a convention - Conventionalism, Justice is just what the strong say it is, it does exist but really it is not the same as deep metaphysics

   1. Self-Interest - This idea plays a big role in T’s position, people, what is the nature of altruism on this perspective and self-interested altruism. On T’s argument even a supposed Altruistic government

   2. Justice as Rhetoric - The concept of Justice as a form of Persuasion

   3. Justice as a needed or noble lie - It is interesting that the rulers still need the idea of Just, they still need a convention

   4. Shell and Content - Another aspect is keeping the shell, image of justice and changing its inner content, Nietzsche discusses thing in the Genealogy of Morality

   5. Just contains Recognition - Why do we need Justice, why keep it at all? As a Shell, well we need it because the ruler is more likely to get what he wants if he has the myth of justice, people are willing to do more in the name of Justice because they can feel virtuous which brings us back to self-interest, people can buy into Justice as a myth, they can’t buy into power as a myth because they won’t feel part of the group they won’t feel recognized, they will just feel dominated as if they have no voice. Justice makes them feel included.

   6. Justice contains virtue even if I, a form of selfishness

   7. “Justice” is a post-hoc rationalization, a reason or cover for what power really wants to do, it is all a game. This can lapse into Cynical Realism.

4. Forms of Governance in light of Just is the advantage of the stronger. The fundamental question a ruler must ask himself when he enters into office is, how to I tame, or ride this beat that is a nation or a organization, as Hegel said ‘History is a slaughter bench’ and that slaughter is deeply tied up with the ruler, so the ruler better have ways of managing or governing the energy of the population

   1. Anarcho-Tyranny - A system of government that fails to enforce or adjudicate protection to its citizens while simultaneously persecuting innocent conduct

   2. High-low vs. middle dynamic

   3. Biolennism - Governance and Identity

      1. Developed by Spandrell (alias, Bloody Shovel) it takes the basic Leninist model of building a Party to rule the state out of the dregs of society, and shifts this to the realm of biology, wrong-think biology in particular, building the party out of people who are permanent losers within the social order.⁵

      2. Forgetting Identity Another aspect related to this is Rawls’s veil of ignorance, he wants people in his theory of Justice to forget their identity in order to make a society in the thought experiment you are asked ….. “to consider which principles you would select for the basic structure of society, but you must select as if you had no knowledge ahead of time what position you would end up having in that society. This choice is made from behind a "veil of ignorance", which prevents you from knowing your ethnicity, social status, gender and, crucially in Rawls' formulation, your or anyone else's idea of how to lead a good life. Ideally, this would force participants to select principles impartially and rationally”⁶

      3. Governance of Ruling is the Governing of group Identity, Status and Advantage among groups. Each group ie the poor, the old, the young, the sick, the workers, the disabled, the rich, minorities, the middle all claim to want something in society, Bio Leninism is when the people with low status come together against the high status.

      4. Competition and Nature if you look at the monkey video below you can see fairness is a concept they understand too. It is not just Humans. It seems competition or this idea of getting what I deserve for the work I do is hard wired into us as Humans. This poses a question for Communism is it a fools errend?

      5. Struggle and Hierarchy - Competitions and comparison means that one person work hard to be above, better than another. STATUS.

   4. Castle’s vs Castle’s aka groups vs groups

      1. Nemesis: The Jouvenelian vs. the Liberal Model of Human Orders Examining history through the lens of Bertrand de Jouvenel’s high–low vs. middle mechanism, C.A. Bond lays bare the hyper-centralisation of power under liberalism and democracy. He reveals the poverty of liberal accounts of history as a bottom-up process of grassroots change, instead showing history to be driven by patronage and the selection effects of power. In this, we discover the unsettling fact that many ideas so fundamental to modernity—from the “individual” to political science to human rights and beyond—are not the product of reason or progress, but of the demands of structural conflict.

   5. Complex Systems

   6. Let ideology do the work for you

   7. Controlled opposition

   8. Manufactured consent

   9. Friendship as a conspiracy against something, The need for an enemy unifies

   10. The Cathedral

   11. economic superstructure

   12. Governance, Competence and Merit - The core issue is that changing political mores have established the systematic promotion of the unqualified and sidelining of the competent. This has continually weakened our society’s ability to manage modern systems. At its inception, it represented a break from the trend of the 1920s to the 1960s, when the direct meritocratic evaluation of competence became the norm across vast swaths of American society. 

   13. Governance by Crisis - Baudrillard

5. Cynical Realism - This is the idea that the powerful just get away with everything

   1. Power as a conspiracy - I have to think about what I mean by conspiracy here is. Maybe paranoia, which seems to be a logical result of Foucault’s work

6. Ethical Nihilism - There is no such thing as Real Justice

7. Tragic Realism - Mearsheimer argues that states will constantly seek to accumulate power, and that cooperation between states is hard. The "tragedy" of great power politics is that even security-seeking great powers will nonetheless be forced to engage in competition and conflict with one another⁷

8. Obvious Realism - Is it not obvious that this is what the Elites do, to justify their own rule? Non-ideological analysis of the facts of power.

   1. Rejection of being naïve about rulers and people’s interests.

   2. Power as a Conspiracy, I mean this differently to the Cynical use of conspiracy, but like a to commit murder, a conspiracy to have a message in the media. An example…

9. Perspectivism - What just is depends on the perspective of being either the Ruled or Ruler

   1. Carl Schmitt’s - Friend Enemy distinction

   2. Parallelism - South Africa and the USA

10. Unmoral is reserved for things (and sometimes people) incapable of understanding right and wrong.

11. Immoral describes people who can differentiate between right and wrong but intentionally do wrong anyway.

12. Nonmoral is used when morality is clearly not an issue, and amoral implies acknowledgment of what is right and what is wrong but an unconcern for morality when carrying out an act.⁸

13. Egoism - It is interesting how Plato portrays T in this section as wanting praise [338c] and being annoyed at Socrates’s way of arguing

14. Tradition - Is Thrasymachus against the tradition?

15. Legalism

Questions to reflect on throughout the dialogue

• What is the good

• What is happiness

• What is a rational person’s aim in left?

  • Greed?

• Is Self-interest just the reality of life?

• Is Self-interest good?

  • Is Apple’s 3 Trillion worth too much power, is this the decline of the nation-state and the rise of the corporate state? Who is in charge?

  • A system built on Self-interest might promotes conflict on each side

    • An example of this is the profit corporate media make of clickbait Hate Inc by Matt Taibbi

• Why do we want power?

  • Freedom

  • To do good

• What is Freedom? The ability to do what we want to do, a form of radical individualism, or is it a communitarian what do we want to do?

• What is Power? The ability to get someone to do what you want them to do Coercion, Ability, Competence, Domination. There seem to be two sides of power, power as competence, ability but then another of domination. I think competence is over looked, competence can also be domination.

• What is Justice? Fairness or Self-interest? Getting just deserts,

• Governance - Weaving

Another related aspect to this is can Thrasymachus derive the is from the Ought which we see in Hume. Can we say the fact that someone is Stronger means they are more just?

The Obvious Realism position reminds me of a book on Elite Theory and Power I am reading called ‘The Populist Delusion’ by Neema Parvini which attacks the Myths of Liberal Democracy.

Parvini starts his book with..

This is a book about the realities of power and how it functions, stripped of all ideological baggage. It has at its core a thesis, which absolutely contradicts the democratic or populist delusion, that the people are or ever could be sovereign. An organized minority always rules over the majority.

He goes on to state

In addition to democratic delusions, there are also four liberal delusions that will be subject to significant attack by the thinkers who we will be considering. Let us call these the ‘Four Myths of Liberalism’:

1. Myth of the stateless society: that state and society were or could ever be separate.

2. Myth of the neutral state: that state and politics were or could ever be separate.

3. Myth of the free market: that state and economy were or could ever be separate.

4. Myth of the separation of powers: that competing power centres can realistically endure without converging.

The person who is in charge is Sovereign is he who makes the exception - but who is this in democracy?

Is it the Academica or the Banks, the Billionaires or the Politicians

In a democracy there is not a clear line who is charge.

The Nature of Socrates’ disagreement with Thrasymachus

One thing to keep in mind in this passage is how is Socrates disagreeing with Thrasymachus that justice is nothing other than the advantage of the stronger.

Will Socrates be disagreeing that it is not the case at all or disagreeing in what we mean by Just, Interest and Stronger

What is Just? Interest? and Fairness?

What is fairness? Why is it so important?

Two interesting videos

Socrates asks Thrasymachus to clarify what here means by the interest of the stronger

Don’t you know that some cities are ruled by a tyranny, some by a democracy, and some by an aristocracy?

Of course.

And in each city this element is stronger, namely, the ruler?

Certainly.

[338E] And each makes laws to its own advantage. Democracy makes democratic laws, tyranny makes tyrannical laws, and so on with the others. And [338e] they declare what they have made—what is to their own advantage—to be just for their subjects, and they punish anyone who goes against this as lawless and unjust. This, then, is what I say justice is, the same in all cities, the advantage of the established rule. Since the established rule is [339] surely stronger, anyone who reasons correctly will conclude that the just is the same everywhere, namely, the advantage of the stronger [cooper translation

Don’t you know, said he, that some cities are governed as tyrannies, some as democracies, others as aristocracies?

Of course.

And whatever rules in each city exercises power?

Entirely so.

338E And each ruling group institutes the laws, to its own advantage; democratic laws in the case of a democracy, tyrannical laws in the case of a tyranny, and so on. Having instituted them, they then proclaim that this, what’s advantageous to themselves, is just for those over whom they rule, and so they punish those who go against this, as law-breakers, who are acting unjustly. So this, best of men, is what I say is just; it’s the same in all cities; 339A the advantage of the established ruling group. This, presumably, holds power and it follows, if one reasons correctly, that what’s just is the same everywhere; the advantage of the stronger. [David Horan translation]

Here we have two translations, David Horan and Cooper and the translation of Power/Ruler

And whatever rules in each city exercises power? [Horan]

And in each city this element is stronger, namely, the ruler? [Cooper]

The Question of power and governance in relation to searching for what is Just

It is interesting that Professor Horan translates Power and not Ruler as Cooper does.

In this passage, Thrasymachus is arguing that governments will institute laws that is beneficial to them. This is his justification for the idea that Justice is nothing other than the advantage of the Stronger [338c]

The ruler, who wields power is not going to institute laws or govern in a way that is not beneficial to him

My immediate thought after this is what about survival in democracy, there are incentives to take the easy solutions and do what the public or corporations want you to do as that is what will help you survive.

When they institute the laws they then go on to say it is justice, this is the post-hoc rationalization?

There also seems to be a Schmittian aspect here that the Democracy will be friendly to democracy and enemies to non-democracies.

Power as a craft, an ability, a Dunamis, Techne

In this Statesman, the dialogue talks alot about Ability of the King, Dunamis.

For the dunamis of statecraft can be identified only by separating it off from the dunamis proper to each of the three precious and kindred forms of expertise. But this is not done by a set of coordinate but opposed qualities, as in division. Rather, it is achieved through an hierarchical differentiation between first-order and second-order forms of expertise, through which the latter – statecraft – is shown to rule over the first-order forms of expertise as a master over his subordinates, in having the power to epitactically command, or order, them as to when they must (and must not) exercise their own expertise. Thus, we find a dunamis identified in turn for each of the three precious and kindred forms of expertise, as well as for statecraft itself:

• • rhetoric: tēs dunamenēs peithein, 304c7-8;12

• • generalship: dunameōs, 304e3;

• • statecraft: hē tou politikou dunamis, 304d8-9, and in 305e5 in S2;13

• • judgeship: the Visitor asks Young Socrates about the proper ‘power’ (dunatai, picking up dunamin in the line above, 305b2)14 of judges, and the youth responds that ‘the ergon of this dunamis [dunameōs] extends, roughly speaking, to what you have said’ (305c4-5).15

This list makes evident that dunamis is a central element in the pattern of our overall Passage and ultimately in the final identification of statecraft. ⁹

The Rulers self Interest

From this, we can see that the Ruler who is the stronger is making rules for his own Advantage. They declare what is Just to be to their own advantage.

Just the rulers or the whole Society?

This makes me think of liberal democracy in its current form, Democracy for us doesn’t just seem to be from a certain type of elites but a genuine paradigm, democracy is genuinely believed to be a good not just by the elites but by the masses too. When T talks about “Democracy makes democratic laws” is he talking just about the elites or the whole system? One can think here of a state where the subjects believe in democracy and one where only the elites believe in it.

Can the Rulers make errors? Argument (338c–343a)

Socrates …are the rulers in all cities infallible, or are they liable to error? [339c]

1. P1 In a political system, the rulers are stronger than the ruled. (1.339a)

2. P2 Justice is (obedience to) whatever the rulers command. (1.339c)

3. P3 Rulers sometimes err and do not command what is to their advantage. (1.339d)

4. C So, justice is not (always) the advantage of the stronger. (1.339d)¹⁰

Socrates goes on to question what we mean by the interest of the stronger

But it is clear that we must investigate to see whether or not it’s true. I agree that the just is some kind of advantage. But you add that it’s of the stronger. I don’t know about that. We’ll have to look into it. [339b]

Go ahead and look.

We will. Tell me, don’t you also say that it is just to obey the rulers? I do.

Socrates focuses on this statement what is just [is] to obey the rulers. He will show how it is not always correct, or just to obey the rulers because they some times don’t know what they are doing and as a result, they can make errors. This issue of lack of knowledge will be raised again in the future.

T agrees with Socrates that Rulers are infallible

Are the rulers in all cities infallible, or are they liable to error? No doubt they are liable to error.

And whatever laws they make must be obeyed by their subjects, and this is justice? Of course. [339d] Then, according to your account, it is just to do not only what is to the advantage of the stronger, but also the opposite, what is not to their advantage.

Conclusion of Error argument

[339e] Then you must also think that you have agreed that it is just to do what is disadvantageous to the rulers and those who are stronger, whenever they unintentionally order what is bad for themselves

Polemarchus and Clitophon enter the discussion

Polemarchus agrees with Socrates,

It is interesting that Clitophon bring in the distinction between what is believed to be to his advantage and really is, however Plato through Thrasymachus does not take this route.

[340b] But, Clitophon responded, he said that the advantage of the stronger is what the stronger believes to be his advantage. This is what the weaker must do, and this is what he maintained the just to be. That isn’t what he said, Polemarchus replied.

What Socrates is saying here is that the ruler’s can have an error of judgment.

So if a ruler says let us go to war but in his error of judgment goes to war against an allay. Which is against his self interest, the people he is ruling should not obey him if they want to obey what is in the rulers self interest.

Another example of this Error in action is Schumpeter's theory of Capitalism

Self-interest can be self-undermining

Another aspect of this that Socrates is raising is that self-interest does not equal knowledge and strength, and that system and people can undermine themselves. It reminds me of Schumpeter's theory of Capitalism, that capitalism actually does not make itself stronger but its own success leads to a form of corporatism which makes it harder for the entrepreneur to succeed. You would think that the success of capitalism would increase the number of capitalists.

Schumpeter's theory is that the success of capitalism will lead to a form of corporatism[dubious – discuss] and a fostering of values hostile to capitalism, especially among intellectuals. The intellectual and social climate needed to allow entrepreneurship to thrive will not exist in advanced capitalism; it will be replaced by socialism in some form. There will not be a revolution, but merely a trend for social democratic parties to be elected to parliaments as part of the democratic process. He argued that capitalism's collapse from within will come about as majorities vote for the creation of a welfare state and place restrictions upon entrepreneurship that will burden and eventually destroy the capitalist structure. Schumpeter emphasizes throughout this book that he is analyzing trends, not engaging in political advocacy (more precisely, he was engaging in political advocacy for the contrary).¹¹

Thrasymachus response - Expert is still an expert, it’s his knowledge that fails him.

[340c] Tell me, Thrasymachus, is this what c you wanted to say the just is, namely, what the stronger believes to be to his advantage, whether it is in fact to his advantage or not? Is that what we are to say you mean?

Not at all. Do you think I’d call someone who is in error stronger at the very moment he errs?

T raises the issue of naming and calling experts, experts. Experts don’t fail, their knowledge does.

[340d] Socrates. When d someone makes an error in the treatment of patients, do you call him a doctor in regard to that very error? Or when someone makes an error in accounting, do you call him an accountant in regard to that very error in calculation? I think that we express ourselves in words that, taken literally, do say that a doctor is in error, or an accountant, or a grammarian

[340e] It’s when his knowledge fails him that he makes an error, and in regard to that error he is no craftsman. No craftsman, expert, or ruler makes an error at the moment when he is ruling, even though everyone will say that a physician or a ruler makes errors

What is the function of a craft argument? (341c–348b)

The craft’s relation to its object of attention

[341c] Tell me: Is a doctor in the precise sense, whom you mentioned before, a money-maker or someone who treats the sick? Tell me about the one who is really a doctor

1. P1 All crafts seek to benefit the objects over which they rule, not their practitioners.

2. P2 All objects over which a craft rules are weaker than the craft, which is stronger.

3. C1 So, all crafts seek to benefit the weaker, not the stronger.

Sufficient

[341e] This: If you asked me whether our bodies are sufficient in themselves, or whether they need something else, I’d answer: “They certainly have needs. And because of this, because our bodies are deficient rather than self-sufficient, the craft of medicine has now been discovered. The craft of medicine was developed to provide what is advantageous for a body.” Do you think that I’m right in saying this or not?

The nature of Medicine … Does it seek it’s own advantage or not?

does each seek out what is to its own advantage by itself? Or does it need neither itself nor another craft to seek out what is advantageous to it, because of its own deficiencies? Is it that there is no deficiency or error in any craft? That it isn’t appropriate for any craft to seek what is to the advantage of anything except that of which it is the craft? And that, since it is itself correct, it is without either fault or impurity, as long as it is wholly and precisely the craft that it is?

[342c] Now, surely, Thrasymachus, the crafts rule over and are stronger than the things of which they are the crafts?

Very reluctantly, [Thrasymachus] conceded this as well.

Here we see T agrees with Socrates that, Medicine does not seek its own benefit but that of its object, medicine’s purpose is to look after the patient

This is said explicitly here

He tried to fight this conclusion, but he conceded it in the end. And after he had, I said: Surely, then, no doctor, insofar as he is a doctor, seeks or orders what is advantageous to himself, but what is advantageous to his patient? We agreed that a doctor in the precise sense is a ruler of bodies, not a money-maker. Wasn’t that agreed? Yes

Socrates seals it with this statement.

No kind of knowledge seeks or orders what is advantageous to itself, then, but what is advantageous to the weaker, which is subject to it. [342d]

So what happens to a government when you have Anarcho Tyranny, we have to question is governments object the people, the rulers,

Isiah Berlin’s Positive and Negative Freedom, we can’t tell people what is good and bad for them? We can and should

The Big Question

What is the distinction between Justice and Power, Governance and Fairness?

What is power?

What is Justice?

What is fairness?

What is governance?

1. https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0168%3Abook%3D1%3Asection%3D338c

2. https://lsj.gr/wiki/%CE%B4%CE%AF%CE%BA%CE%B1%CE%B9%CE%BF%CF%82

3. https://lsj.gr/wiki/%CF%83%CF%85%CE%BC%CF%86%CE%AD%CF%81%CF%89

4. 257. EVERY elevation of the type "man," has hitherto been the work of an aristocratic society and so it will always be--a society believing in a long scale of gradations of rank and differences of worth among human beings, and requiring slavery in some form or other. Without the PATHOS OF DISTANCE, such as grows out of the incarnated difference of classes, out of the constant out-looking and down-looking of the ruling caste on subordinates and instruments, and out of their equally constant practice of obeying and commanding, of keeping down and keeping at a distance--that other more mysterious pathos could never have arisen, the longing for an ever new widening of distance within the soul itself, the formation of ever higher, rarer, further, more extended, more comprehensive states, in short, just the elevation of the type "man," the continued "self-surmounting of man," to use a moral formula in a supermoral sense. To be sure, one must not resign oneself to any humanitarian illusions about the history of the origin of an aristocratic society (that is to say, of the preliminary condition for the elevation of the type "man"): the truth is hard. Let us acknowledge unprejudicedly how every higher civilization hitherto has ORIGINATED! Men with a still natural nature, barbarians in every terrible sense of the word, men of prey, still in possession of unbroken strength of will and desire for power, threw themselves upon weaker, more moral, more peaceful races (perhaps trading or cattle-rearing communities), or upon old mellow civilizations in which the final vital force was flickering out in brilliant fireworks of wit and depravity. At the commencement, the noble caste was always the barbarian caste: their superiority did not consist first of all in their physical, but in their psychical power--they were more COMPLETE men (which at every point also implies the same as "more complete beasts").

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/nietzsche/1886/beyond-good-evil/ch09.htm

5. https://archive.ph/DXtvW Bloody Shovel Archive https://www.quora.com/What-is-Bioleninism

6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_position

7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tragedy_of_Great_Power_Politics

8. Definitions come from https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/using-unmoral-immoral-nonmoral-amoral#:~:text=Immoral%20describes%20people%20who%20can,when%20carrying%20out%20an%20act.

9. p200 Plato’s Statesman A Philosophical Discussion - Edited by Panos Dimas, Melissa Lane, and Susan Sauvé Meyer THE PLATO DIALOGUE PROJECT 2021

10. Sean McAleer on p28 puts the argument in a very succinct way in his Plato’s ‘Republic’: An Introduction

11. Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy by Joseph Schumpeter, quote by Wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism,_Socialism_and_Democracy#:~:text=Schumpeter's%20theory%20is%20that%20the,to%20capitalism%2C%20especially%20among%20intellectuals.