Justice And Injustice In Plato's Republic
Socrates begins section 351 with the goal of proving that Thrasymachus’ claim of injustice being a more potent and stronger thing than justice is unfounded. Socrates will use four premises to support and arrive at the conclusion that justice is more potent and stronger than injustice. While the terms “justice” and “injustice” are used loosely throughout Republic, the closest thing to definitions given for justice and injustice are Socrates’ statements “justice is wisdom and virtue,” and “injustice is ignorance,” in 351a.
Socrates begins his argument by using the example of a city performing acts of injustice by enslaving other cities, and thereby oppressing them, showing its superiority and power. Socrates asks Thrasymachus to consider whether
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This premise is perhaps the easiest to find fault in, as there is always much debate over the true definitions and meanings of different words, especially when considering abstract concepts like justice and injustice. Many critics would argue that justice covers a much more broad spectrum than “wisdom and virtue,” and the same for injustice being defined as “ignorance” in 351a. Another major criticism of Socrates’ first premise can actually be found in 351c when Thrasymachus states that through using Socrates’ definition of justice, then his theory is correct, but that his theory would not hold if Thrasymachus’s definitions for justice and injustice were used. This is a very important statement, because it now becomes obvious that Socrates’s entire argument is founded a great deal upon his specific definitions of justice and injustice, and may not be able to be carried out if other definitions are used in their place. The second premise in Socrates’ argument states that injustice breeds factions and hatred, while justice breeds oneness of mind and love, which is a solid, logical next step under the assumption that the first premise is true. One criticism of this premise could be in the statement “justice breeds oneness of mind,” because it can be
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