THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY2 The Lives and Opinions

i6 THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY
nature and libertarian education, Bergsonian elan vital and Freudian
psychoanalysis everything is here. It is a feast for the elite, served by an
unstinting host. "Plato is philosophy, and philosophy Plato/ 9
says Emerson;
and awards to The Republic the words of Omar about the Koran:
"Burn the libraries, for their value is in this book." 10
Let us study The Republic.
IV. THE ETHICAL PROBLEM
The discussion takes place in the house of Cephalus, a wealthy aristocrat.
In the group are Glaucon and Adeimantus, brothers of Plato 5 and
Thrasymachus, a gruff and excitable Sophist. Socrates, who serves as the
mouthpiece of Plato in the dialogue, asks Gephalus:
"What do you consider to be the greatest blessing which you have
reaped from wealth?"
Gephalus answers that wealth is a blessing to him chiefly because it
enables him to be generous and honest and just. Socrates, after his sly
fashion, asks him just what he means by justice; and therewith lets loose
the dogs of philosophic war. For nothing is so difficult as definition, nor
anything so severe a test and exercise of mental clarity and skill. Socrates
finds it a simple matter to destroy one after another the definitions
offered him; until at last Thrasymachus, less patient than the rest, breaks
out "with a roar" :
"What folly has possessed you, Socrates? And why do you others all
drop down at one another's feet in this silly way? I say that if you want to
know what justice is, you should answer and not ask, and shouldn't pride
yourself on refuting others. . . . For there are many who can ask but
cannot answer" (336).
Socrates is not frightened; he continues to ask rather than answer; and
after a minute of parry and thrust he provokes the unwary Thrasymachus
to commit himself to a definition:
"Listen, then," says the angry Sophist, "I proclaim that might is right, and
justice is the interest of the stronger. . . . The different forms of government
make laws, democratic, aristocratic, or autocratic, with a view to their
respective interests; and these laws, so made by them to serve their interests,
they deliver to their subjects as 9
'justice, and punish as 'unjust' anyone
who transgresses them. ... I am speaking of injustice on a large scale;
and my meaning will be most clearly seen in autocracy, which by fraud and
force takes away the property of others, not retail but wholesale. Now when
a man has taken away the money of the citizens and made slaves of them,
then, instead swindler and thief he is called
^of happy and blessed by all
For injustice is censured because those who censure it are afraid of
suffering,
and not from any scruple they might have of doing injustice themselves"
(338-44).
^Representative Men, p. 41.