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Plato's Critique of Injustice in the Gorgias and the Republic

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Plato's Critique of Injustice in the Gorgias and the Republic Plato's critique of injustice in the Gorgias and the Republic Author: Jonathan Frederick Culp Persistent link: http://hdl.handle.net/2345/972 This work is posted on eScholarship@BC, Boston College University Libraries. Boston College Electronic Thesis or Dissertation, 2008 Copyright is held by the author, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise noted. Boston College The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Department of Political Science PLATO’S CRITIQUE OF INJUSTICE IN THE GORGIAS AND THE REPUBLIC a dissertation by JONATHAN FREDERICK CULP submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy August 2008 © Copyright by JONATHAN FREDERICK CULP 2008 Plato’s Critique of Injustice in the Gorgias and the Republic Jonathan Frederick Culp Advisor: Professor Christopher Bruell No rational decision can be made concerning how to live without confronting the problem of justice—both what it is and whether it is good to be just. In this essay I examine Plato’s articulation of these problems in the Gorgias and the Republic. Through detailed analyses of Socrates’ exchanges with several interlocutors, I establish, first, that despite some real and apparent differences, all the interlocutors share the same fundamental conception of justice, which could be called justice as fairness or reciprocal equality (to ison). The core of justice lies in refraining from pleonexia (seeking to benefit oneself at the expense of another). Second, according to this view, the practice of justice is not intrinsically profitable; it is valuable only as a means to the acquisition or enjoyment of other, material goods. This conception thus implies that committing successful injustice is often more profitable than being just. Third, the critics of justice recognize and openly acknowledge this fact; hence, their position is more coherent than common opinion. Fourth, the core of the Socratic defense of justice lies in the claims that the practice of pleonexia is incompatible with the possession of a well-ordered soul and that the possession of a well-ordered soul is necessary for happiness. Thus, despite appearances to the contrary, Socrates does not argue that justice, as it is commonly conceived, is intrinsically profitable. He is able to refute the critics of justice because the latter lack a coherent understanding of the human good. Finally, Socrates’ defense of justice nonetheless remains incomplete because he deliberately refrains from giving a sufficient account of the nature of the soul and its good. Table of Contents Table of Contents i Introduction 1 Chapter One 6 Chapter Two 45 Chapter Three 135 Chapter Four 177 Chapter Five 239 Bibliography 288 i Introduction: The Problem of Justice The following essay examines Plato’s presentation of the arguments in favor of living an unjust or immoral life and the Socratic response to these arguments, as these are found in the Gorgias and the Republic. The problem of justice is clearly important. It is normally taken for granted that being just or moral, however understood, forms a necessary part of any genuinely good human life, however understood. In other words, it is taken as a mark of good human beings that their pursuit of their own personal good is in some way restrained, tempered, enlightened, or re-channeled by a concern, or at the very least a respect, for the rights and interests of others. Yet this can be questioned. Why should a rational, capable person accept any limits on his pursuit of the good other than those dictated by calculation and necessity? Is it rational to choose to have less of what is good than one can get? And why should one person’s good contain any essential, non-instrumental reference to the good of someone else? In sum, why is it good to be good? According to the arguments presented by Socrates’ interlocutors, it is not. As can be seen, the question, “Why be just?” or, “Why be moral?” is an essential part of the broader question, “How should I live?” or “What is the best way of life?” In pursuing the latter questions one must necessarily put the goodness of justice in question because any radical questioning cannot merely assume that justice or morality forms an intrinsic part of a good human life—nor, for that matter, can it merely assume that it knows what justice is. The Gorgias and the Republic have the virtue of vividly calling 1 one’s attention to these facts and presenting the problem of justice explicitly and from several perspectives animated by various concerns. The ultimate purpose of an investigation such as this can only be to understand as well as possible the Socratic-Platonic answer to the problem of justice. In order to understand the answer, however, one must understand the problem that it is the answer to. Thus, one must pay close attention to the nature and the basis of the case for the unjust life as Plato presents it. I will argue that the critics of justice (and the defenders, with the exception of Socrates) all share the same fundamental conception of justice, which I will usually refer to as justice as fairness.1 (The Greek word is to ison.) The fundamental charge leveled by the critics (Callicles and Thrasymachus) is that once one understands the nature, origin, and purpose of this conception of justice, one sees that there is no good reason to refrain from doing injustice in cases where one has the capacity to escape punishment.2 Hence, their critiques of justice are also critiques of law (or convention, nomos), since in human life the demands of justice are always embodied in the first place in the laws of the community in which one lives. They ground their condemnation of justice in a conception of the human good, carried over from ordinary opinion, which places happiness primarily in the enjoyment of bodily and material goods, as well as in the power to secure these goods. The more of these goods one has, the happier one is; to acquire these goods, one must take them from others (or, in the case of 1 I do not mean to imply that this conception of justice has anything in common with conception of “justice as fairness” described by John Rawls in his A Theory of Justice. “Fairness” is, in my opinion, simply the best catch-all English translation of the Greek word “to ison” (which can also be translated “equality”). Cf. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, book 5. 2 As we shall see, Callicles’ and Thrasymachus’ accounts differ in significant ways, but they share this core. 2 power, one necessarily enjoys them at the expense of another). Hence, true well-being requires injustice. Socrates’ responses must be understood in light of these particular challenges. Socrates certainly defends justice against the attacks against it leveled by Polus, Callicles, and Thrasymachus, but one must pay careful attention to the manner in which he defends justice and the particular (and deliberate) limitations of that defense. As we shall see, Socrates clearly indicates that the ordinary conception of justice cannot be defended on its own terms. In fact, the defenses of justice in the Gorgias and the Republic are simultaneously critiques of the conception of happiness or the human good presupposed by the ordinary conception of justice. If the human good is what it is ordinarily taken to be, then the critics of justice are correct. That is the implication of Socrates’ arguments. In both dialogues, however, Socrates takes great pains to create the impression that he is vindicating ordinary justice. The Republic allows us to account for why he does so. Socrates’ own arguments are intended to indicate, however, that justice can be truly defended only when it is shown that injustice (in the ordinary sense of pleonexia, or benefiting oneself at the expense of others) is incompatible with the pursuit of the true human good. All of the critics of justice (as well as some of the defenders) believe that pleonexia is more profitable than fairness. When Socrates defends justice, he does so by attacking this belief, which is the root of the problem. To do so, Socrates must present an alternative account of the human good. At the core of Socrates’ conception of the good lies the notion of “the good order of the soul.” Socrates’ basic argument is that possessing a well-ordered soul is necessary for happiness, but is incompatible with the 3 practice of pleonexia. To indicate this, in both dialogues Socrates goes so far as to call this good order “justice” (that is, the opposite of pleonexia). I will show that Socrates’ argument in the Gorgias that justice is the good order of the soul is so abstract, formal, and elliptical that it is utterly unconvincing. The Republic provides a more adequate argument, because it introduces a more detailed account of the internal order of the soul (the famous tripartite soul), and because it introduces the topic of the philosophic life. In the light of the good available to the philosopher, and the order of soul necessary to pursue that good, Socrates is able to prove that injustice is never more profitable than justice because the practice of injustice is incompatible with the philosopher’s life. Socrates then uses the elements of his defense of this kind of justice (justice as the good order of the soul) to deliver a limited defense of justice in the ordinary sense (and the law that instantiates it). I have structured this essay around Socrates’ interlocutors. The first two chapters discuss the critique and defense of justice in the Gorgias. Chapter one treats Socrates’ exchanges with Gorgias (449a-461b) and Polus (461b-481b).
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