The first book of Plato's Republic

 

Book I of The Republic has four parts. Plato doesn't name them, but we may call them the Cephalus, the Polemarchus, the build-up of Thrasymachus, and the critique of Thrasymachus.

Let us take them one at a time. 

I. The Cephalus. Cephalus is an old and wealthy man, who owns the home in which the disputants have gathered. He and Socrates have a brief and courteous conversation, which establishes that there are consolations of old age. One of these is that the passions (the desire for sex, for example) die down and allow reason to govern one’s actions unchallenged. That is an important foreshadowing of later elements in the book.

Cephalus and Socrates briefly discuss the issue of what is justice. But the old man doesn’t want to get too deeply into the question and says goodbye.

II. The Polemarchus. Polemarchus is Cephalus’ son and heir, and Socrates says only half-jokingly that he may have inherited his father’s part in this discussion. Asked what it is to be just: Polemarchus says that it is to give to every man his due. To pay one’s debts, and more generally to treat others as they deserve. Socrates is sure that the issue has to be more complicated than this, and he presses a paradox. Suppose a friend of mine has lent me his sword. But my friend since has come down with an illness that has affected his mind. He demands his sword back, but I have reason to believe that he would use it to harm himself. Should I not in this case REFUSE to pay my debt? refuse to return to him the sword until I am satisfied he has come back to his sense?

Polemarchus agrees that we can sometimes justly refuse to pay debts. So we have to examine this justice question more deeply.

III. The Build-up of Thrasymachus

At this point Thrasymachus jumps in and the third part of the book begins. I’ll just call him “T” now to save typing.

T contends that justice is the will of the stronger. I live in a city and that city is run by the people who are strong enough to have estalished themselves as its rulers. If I can overthrow them and put myself in power — well and good, justice will be whatever I want. But if I can’t, then I must resign myself to obeying them, and justice is their will.

Socrates replies at first that, whoever the rulers are, they must be fallible. If they can make mistakes, then justice will have to be something they OUGHT TO will, something they would will if they knew what they were doing, not what they actually do will.

T will have none of this. A ruler cannot make mistakes. Might makes right and, so long as he has it, justice is what the ruler wants.

This leads us to the final section of the book:

IV. The critique of Thrasymachus

We notice that Polemarchus re-joins the argument somewhat, objecting to the bleakness of T’s vision. After all, though they were not able to expound it elaborately, Polemarchus and his father had presented a common-sense notion of justice involving debts and their proper repayment, and Thrasymachus’ argument runs roughshod over that. The rulers can cheat or steal from the populace — it is just for them to do so if they say that it is. So naturally Polemarchus objects.

Socrates’ own argument against Thrasymachus is complicated and I won’t reproduce it all here, but it turns on this: the ignorant often believe that they know an art better than the artist. An ignorant person will try home remedies, ignoring the physician. An ignorant person with no taste in music may believe that his own whistling is as musical and as beautiful as the work of the trained flutist. But that is wrong. Medicine, and more controversially perhaps music, have objectively better and worse manifestations. We should even at the beginning of a serious inquiry expect that justice, whatever exactly it is, will be like this. Some will be better at it than others, and some sort of training will be necessary to become good at it.

At this point we, the readers, may have noticed that we are talking of justice at two different levels. At one level there is the individual trying to live a just life, wondering what to do about his friend’s madness, for example. At the macro level, though, there is a city to be run. It can be run well or poorly. We are getting the idea that running it justly is of a piece with running it well, and that the people in a position to do this will be those with training to do it.

And so book one ends, with the table properly set for all the remaining books.