THE REPUBLIC OF PLATO - Studyplace

CHAPTE.R IV [I. 352
And 'all who are just' surely includes the gods
Let us suppose so.
The unjust man, then, will be a god-forsaken creature; the goodwill
of heaven will be for the just.
Enjoy your triumph, said Thrasymachus. You need not fear my
contradicting you. I have no wish to give offence to the company.
[(3) The final question is, whether justice (now admitted to be
a virtue) or injustice brings happiness. The argument turns on the
doctrine (adopted as fundamental in Aristotle's Ethics) that man,
like any other living species, has a peculiar work or function or
activity, in the satisfactory exercise of which his well-being or happiness
will consist; and also a peculiar excellence or virtue, namely
a state of his soul from which that satisfactory activity will result.
Aristotle argues (Eth. Nic. i. 7) that, a thing's function being the
work or activity of which it alone is capable, man's function will
be an activity involving the use of reason, which man alone possesses.
Man's virtue is 'the state of character which makes him a
good man and makes him do his work well' (ibid. ii. 6). It is the
quality which enables him to 'live well,' for living is the soul's function;
and to live well is to be happy.
'Here again,' writes Nettleship on the following passage, 'the
argument is intensely abstract. We should be inclined to break in
on it and say that virtue means something very different in morality
from what it means in the case of seeing or hearing, and that by
happiness we mean a great many other things besides what seems
to be meant here by living well. All depends, in this argument, on
the strictness of the terms, upon assuming each of them to have a
definite and distinct meaning. The virtues of a man and of a horse
are very different, but what is the common element in them which
makes us call them virtue Can we call anything virtue which
does not involve the doing well of the function, never mind what,
of the agent that possesses the virtue Is there any other sense in
which we can call a thing good or bad, except that it does or does
not do well that which it was made to do Again, happiness in its
largest sense, welfare, well-being, or doing well, is a very complex
thing, and one cannot readily describe in detail all that goes to