66 PLATO
BOOKII
Now when I said these things, I imagined I’d be released from discussion, but as
it seems, it was just a prologue. For Glaucon is always most courageous in confronting
everything, and in particular he wouldn’t stand for Thrasymachus’s giving up, but said
“Socrates, do you want to seem to have persuaded us or truly persuade us that in every
way it’s better to be just than unjust?”
“If it would be up to me,” I said, “I’d choose truly.”
“Then you’re not doing what you want. For tell me, does it seem to you there’s a
certain kind of good that we’d take hold of not because we desire its consequences, but
to embrace it itself for its own sake, such as enjoyment and any of the pleasures that are
harmless and from which nothing comes into the succeeding time other than to enjoy
having them?”
“It seems to me,” I said, “that there is such a thing.”
“Then what about the kind that we love both itself for its own sake and for the
things that come from it, such as thinking and seeing and being healthy? For presum-
ably we embrace such things for both reasons.”
“Yes,” I said.
“And do you see a third form of good,” he said, “in which there’s gymnastic exer-
cise, and being given medical treatment when sick, and giving medical treatment, as
well as the rest of moneymaking activity? Because we’d say these are burdensome, but
for our benefit, and we wouldn’t take hold of them for their own sake, but we do for the
sake of wages and of all the other things that come from them.”
“There is also this third kind,” I said, “but what about it?”
“In which of these kinds,” he said, “do you put justice?”
“I imagine in the most beautiful kind,” I said, “which must be loved both for itself
and for the things that come from it by someone who’s going to be blessedly happy.”
“Well it doesn’t seem that way to most people,” he said, “but to belong to the bur-
densome kind that ought to be pursued for the sake of the wages and reputation that
come from opinion, but ought to be avoided itself on its own account as being some-
thing difficult.”
“I know it seems that way,” I said, “and a while ago it was condemned by
Thrasymachus as being that sort of thing, while injustice was praised, but, as it seems,
I’m a slow learner.”
“Come then,” he said, “and listen to me, if the same things still seem true to you,
because Thrasymachus appears to me to have been charmed by you like a snake, sooner
than he needed to be. But to my way of thinking, no demonstration has taken place yet
about either one, since I desire to hear what each of them is and what power it has itself
by itself when it’s present in the soul, and to say goodbye to the wages and the things
that come from them.
“So I’m going to do it this way, if that seems good to you too: I’ll revive
Thrasymachus’s argument, and I’ll say first what sort of thing people claim justice is
and where they say it comes from, and second that everyone who pursues it pursues it
unwillingly as something necessary but not good, and third that they do it fittingly since
the life of someone who’s unjust is much better than that of someone who’s just—as
theysay, since it doesn’t seem that way to me at all, Socrates, though I’m stumped as
my ears are talked deaf when I listen to Thrasymachus and tens of thousands of other
people, while I haven’t yet heard the argument on behalf of justice, that it’s better than357a
bcd358a
bcd