Justice and the Good
Michael Vossen

In book II of The Republic, Glaucon presents the arguments “that all who practice it [justice] do so unwillingly, as necessary, but not good”(1). The argument is made of three part, first, that Justice is not good, second, that all who are just are not just willingly and third, they are just because of necessity.

Before Glaucon presents these arguments, he defines justice to be “a compact among themselves [those who cannot escape injustice and chose to be unjust] neither to do injustice nor to suffer it”(2). By this definition, justice is like a rule created by the players of a game, such as monopoly, where the players agree not to cheat (i.e. steal money from another player when they are not looking, move extra spaces to avoid jail, etc). Furthermore, this is a rule created by those who are not perfect at cheating, players who are sometimes able to steal money successfully and other times are not. Glaucon’s definition of injustice as something that is naturally good to do and naturally bad to receive (3), is also clarified by this analogy. Injustice in monopoly, such as stealing money from another player, is good to do, as the player benefits from the extra money taken from his opponent, and is bad to receive, as the opponent looses money. Glaucon’s definitions of justice and injustice are important because his argument is based on these definitions, which may vary from his audience’s ideas of what justice is, which could cause confusion because of conflicting notions of justice/injustice.
Glaucon’s first argument, that justice is not good, is rather concise. His first conclusion is that justice is between the best and the worst, with the premises that the best is “doing injustice without paying the penalty” and the worst is “suffering injustice without being able to avenge oneself” (4). Recall that justice is neither doing injustice nor suffering it. If the best is “doing injustice without paying the penalty”, then a just man would not participate in the best, as he has agreed not to do injustice. However, neither would the just man participate in the worst, suffering injustice without being able to avenge oneself. The other men would be behaving justly due to the agreement, so none of them would commit the injustice. If some outsider to the agreement did an unjust deed to the just man, the just man is assured vengeance, as the men will group together to punish the outsider because he might potentially do injustice to them. This puts justice between the best and the worst, doing injustice and suffering injustice. If this conclusion is correct, then justice is not good. Recall that doing injustice is naturally good and suffering injustice is naturally bad. If justice is between the best, doing injustice, and the worst, suffering injustice, then justice is between the good and bad.

Glaucon’s argument is further supported through his definition of good, i.e. “... the desire for the better; this is what any nature naturally defines as good”(5), and his argument that the just man and the unjust man would both pursue the same thing, the better, given the chance (6). This shows that justice is not a good in itself, but a good in so far as it can lead to a higher good. This concept is similar to Aristotle’s hierarchy of happiness; one becomes a baker not because one wants to bake, but because one thinks that through baking happiness might be achieved. In Glaucon’s argument, it works this way; one becomes just not because one wants to be just, but because through justice, some good might be achieved. If the person could achieve that profit without justice, the person would not be just. Justice can not be good then, as if it were good, and then all men would pursue justice for justice’s sake, not for the sake of something else.

This leads into Glaucon’s second argument, that all who practice justice do so unwillingly, out of necessity. First, note that he is arguing that all who practice justice do so unwillingly, not most, or some. By asserting this, Glaucon must show that it is a characteristic of everyone who practices justice. To show that it is a characteristic of everyone who practices justice, Glaucon shows that it is in human nature to for people to pursue their desires, which are what they see as good. Glaucon implies that there are two kinds of people: those who can do injustice over another, and those who are not able to do injustice over another (7). Instead of writing this difference every time, I will refer to the man capable of doing injustice over another successfully as the strong man, and the man who is not capable of doing injustice over another as the weak man. Glaucon argues that the strong man would never agree to a system of justice, because “He’d be mad”(8). What Glaucon probably means by “He’d be mad”, is that an agreement not to be unjust would not be for the best of the strong man, and therefore not for his good. It is not clear whether or not Glaucon thinks a strong man will ever practice justice. It seems like he is saying that a strong man would never practice justice, but in lines 350d1-2, Glaucon says “...if a man were to get hold of such license [the ability to be strong] and were to never to do any injustice....” which suggests that some strong men might practice justice. Glaucon might be arguing that if a strong man follows a system of justice, he is doing so because some stronger force compels him to, and thus not following the system willingly, though he never specifically says anything like this. Hence, strong men who practice justice do so unwillingly.

Now all that Glaucon has to do is show that the weak men who practice justice do so because they are not strong. To do this, Glaucon uses the story of Gyges to illustrate his premise of human nature. The story presents a situation where a man can act without punishment due to finding an invisibility ring. (9). Glaucon asserts that anyone with the ring would commit injustice (10). This is Glaucon’s characteristic of humans, that they would do injustice if they were capable of doing injustice successfully, i.e. they would be strong men if they could. He uses this characteristic to argue that the weak men who practice justice do so because they are weak, and, if they could become strong, they would then not practice justice (11). Thus, Glaucon has argued that all men who practice justice do so unwillingly

The “as necessary” clause follows the assertions made earlier and is implied. The weak are just because together they are more powerful than the strong, and it is necessary for them to be just, because on a one to one basis, the strong would commit injustice against them. The strong who are just are because the weak are stronger than them as a group, and it is necessary for them to be just if they do not want injustice committed against them. This is Glaucon’s argument for “all who practice it [justice] do so unwillingly, as necessary, but not good” (12).
Glaucon's argument is flawed in that his premises of the good being what is best for oneself, and being what one naturally desires, is flawed. Let us examine each of these in turn.
The good is not always what is best for oneself. If the good was what was best for oneself, then good is only associated with an individual. But an individual might identify themselves as a part of a group as much as they identify themselves as an individual. If they consider themselves as part of a group, then what is best for them, as an individual, and what is best for them as the group can differ. For example, a person might dedicate themselves to their country, a group of people. Suppose that the person was in the position where if they were to die, they would save the country, but if they lived, there country would be destroyed. What is best for the person is to live. What is best for the country is to not be destroyed. Thus, what is best for the person and what is best for the group come into conflict. Here a judgment must be made; is it better to do what is best for the group, or is it better to do what is best for the individual? Regardless of the answer, good cannot be the best. For if good was the best, then it could be divided. It would be good to die, and it would be good to preserve ones country. However, the good cannot be the bad, for bad is opposite to good. And if one were to live, then he/she would be doing what is good for the individual and what is bad for the country, and visa versa. Thus, it would be good/bad to die, and good/bad to live. If good is truly good, then it can only be good, and not good/bad. Thus, what is good cannot be what is best, for the good could be divided if it is what is best.

The good is not what someone naturally desires, because a person can desire something, and later not desire it. For instance, a person might desire a candy bar. Does this make the candy bar good? The person might take a bite of the candy bar, realize that it has nuts in it, or that it does not taste as good as it first seemed. A person might see waxed fruit, and thinking that it is real, bite it, then spit wax in disgust. Thus, these objects would appear to be good, and not really be good. However, it could be argued that these are not what you really desire, that you are being tricked. To this one might say that then people cannot know what the good is by desire, for if desire can trick someone into thinking something is good that is not really good, then one might not never know if they are being tricked or not. They can never be sure that what seems good now will be good later, and thus might spend their whole life pursuing what seems good at the time, never reaching it. Thus, the good cannot be defined to be what someone naturally desires.

“But”, Glaucon might says, “I said that good is doing injustice without getting caught. You seem to be arguing with some other good in mind, without much consideration of injustice. This does not directly counter my argument.” Glaucon would be correct in saying this. The previous arguments only pseudo-use Glaucon’s definition of good. To really make the arguments valid, it needs to be shown that doing injustice without getting caught is not really good, and to do this, one must have a conception of what is really good to work from. I do not have clear conception of what is really good, but I have some ideas as to what it would entail. To be really good seems to require permanence, and a degree of happiness, though happiness does not seem to totally be goodness. Injustice is not permanent. When one fulfills a desire, such as doing an unjust act, that desire is not really satisfied, it is only temporarily fulfilled. The desire after the fulfillment is usually stronger then the previous desire. For instance, say someone seeks pleasure. They might find an object or action that gives them pleasure, but with time and repetition, that pleasure is dulled, replaced with a stronger desire for pleasure. Continuing to pursue pleasure, one will get to the point where they can’t find anything that satisfies this pleasure. And desiring something without being able to have it is painful, especially over long periods of time. The person becomes ruled by this desire, and becomes miserable in not being able to fulfill it. A miserable life is not a happy life, and probably not a good life. Note that this is an inward misery, a misery inflicted by oneself, not an external torture. It seems like goodness, like this misery, comes from the inside, and not from anything truly external. However, I cannot prove to Glaucon that these ideas are right; I can only feel it inside of me. Glaucon would have to experience these things himself, and I cannot make him experience it, I can only try to help him recognize it.

Notes
1 BkII, 358c2-3
2 BkII, 359a
3 BkII, 358e3-4
4 BkII, 359a4-7
5 BkII, 359c4-5
6 BkII, 359c3-4
7 BkII, 359b1-2
8 BkII, 359b3
9 BkII, 359d-360b2
10 BkII, 360b3-c2
11 BkII, 360c2-c5
12 BkII, 358c2-3



Bibiliography
Plato. The Republic of Plato, second edition. Translated by Allan Bloom. Published by basic books. Copyright 1965, Allan Bloom.
Special Thanks to: Matt Cheruit, Kaitlin Lubetkin, and Colin Jones for editing/criticizing the paper.