REPUBLIC(BOOKI) 65
“Then no sort of knowledge considers or commands what’s advantageous for the
stronger, but what’s advantageous for what’s weaker and ruled by it.”
He finally agreed with this too, though he tried to make a fight about it, and when
he agreed I said, “So does anything else follow except that no doctor, to the extent he is
a doctor, considers or commands what’s advantageous for a doctor, but instead for
someone who’s sick? For it was agreed that the doctor is precisely a ruler of bodies but
not a moneymaker. Or was that not agreed?”
He said so.
“Then the helmsman too was agreed to be precisely a ruler of sailors but not a
sailor?”
“It was agreed.”
“Then this sort of helmsman and ruler at any rate will not consider and command
what’s advantageous for a helmsman, but what’s advantageous for the sailor who’s
ruled.”
He said so, grudgingly.
“Therefore, Thrasymachus,” I said, “neither will anyone else in any ruling posi-
tion, to the extent he is a ruler, consider or command what’s advantageous for himself,
but what’s advantageous for whatever is ruled, for which he himself is a skilled work-
man, and looking toward that, and to what’s advantageous and appropriate for that, he
both says and does everything that he says and does.”
“You know that people are said to be passionate for honor and money as a
reproach, and it is one?”
“I do,” he said.
“So,” I said, “that’s why good people aren’t willing to rule for the sake of
either money or honor. They don’t want to be called mercenary if they openly get
wages for the ruling office, or thieves if they secretly take money from the office
themselves. And they don’t rule for the sake of honor either, since they aren’t pas-
sionate for honor. So there needs to be a necessity attached to it for them, and a
penalty, if they’re going to be willing to rule; that’s liable to be where it comes from
that it’s considered shameful to go willingly to rule rather than to await necessity.
And the greatest sort of penalty is to be ruled by someone less worthy, if one is not
oneself willing to rule. It’s on account of fearing this that decent people appear to me
to rule, when they do rule, and then they go to rule not as though they were heading
for something good or as though they were going to have any enjoyment in it, but as
though to something necessary, since they have no one better than or similar to
themselves to entrust it to. Because, if a city of good men were to come into being,
they’d be liable to have a fight over not ruling just as people do now over ruling, and
it would become obvious there that the person who is a true ruler in his being is
not of such a nature as to consider what’s advantageous for himself rather than for
the one ruled. So everyone with any discernment would choose to be benefited by
someone else rather than to have the trouble of benefiting someone else. On this
point, then, I by no means go along with Thrasymachus that what’s just is what’s
advantageous for the stronger.
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