THE REPUBLIC OF PLATO - Studyplace

PART II (BOOKS II-IV, 445 B)
JUSTICE IN THE STATE AND IN THE INDIVIDUAL
CHAPTER V (n. 357 A-367 E)
THE PROBLEM STATED
The question, what Justice or Right ultimately means, being still
unanswered, the conversation so far amounts to a preliminary survey
of the ground to be covered in the rest of the Republic. Plato
does not pretend that an immoralist like T hrasymachus could be
silenced by summary arguments which seem formal and unconvincing
until the whole view of life that lies behind them has been
disclosed.
The case which Socrates has to meet is reopened by Glaucon and
Adeimantus, young men with a generous belief that justice has a
valid meaning, but puzzled by the doctrine, current in intellectual
circles, that it is a mere matter of social convention, imposed from
without, and is practised as an unwelcome necessity. They demand
a proof that justice is not merely useful as bringing external rewards,
but intrinsically good as an inward state of the soul, even
though the just man be persecuted rather than rewarded. In dealing
with inquirers like these, who really wish to discover the truth,
Socrates drops his role of ironical critic and becomes constructive.
Glaucon opens with one of the earliest statements of the Social
Contract theory. The essence of this is that all the customary rules
of religion and moral conduct imposed on the individual by social
sanctions have their origin in human intelligence and will and always
rest on tacit consent. They are neither laws of nature nor
divine enactments, but conventions which man who made them can
alter, as laws are changed or repealed by legi.rlative bodies. It is
assumed that, if all these artificial restraints were removed, the
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