Republic (Book I) by Plato
This post is part of my journey through the classic texts of Western civilization.
I am what all rulers love to boldly proclaim
in their great halls and courts of marble and fame.
Until one day, knocking on their doors death came
to put to the test, did you live up to my name?
I am what people cry out for when blood runs in the street.
I come for all in the end, for no man can cheat
death, despite the tyrant who tries in all his conceit.
I am justice. Love me or fear me; sooner or later, we meet!
What is justice?
Book I primarily deals with what justice is, and Plato of course goes about this with Socrates as the main character in the dialogue. Socrates gets the ball rolling by suggesting an initial definition of justice, namely that justice is "to pay back what one has received from anyone," but he quickly dismisses this definition, for should one return a weapon to a friend who has gone insane? Polemarchos, however, objects to this dismissal, though he refines the definition of justice and ends up distilling it into "do well to friends and to do ill to enemies" for this is what both are properly owed.
Friends and Enemies
At this point, a well-versed man is immediately reminded of the friend-enemy dinstinction as described by Carl Schmitt in The Concept of the Political. For Schmitt, the fundamental political distinction can be reduced to the distinction between friend and enemy. Myself not actually having read Schmitt's work, I will not comment on it, but my initial thought on this sort of (proto) friend-enemy distinction as articulated by Polemarchos is what/who exactly a friend or an enemy is. Thankfully for us, Socrates thinks the same way, as he leads the discussion exactly in this direction.
We should be friends with those who are good; we should be enemies with those who are not. But are friends to be those who are actually good or those who are merely thought of as good? Likewise, are enemies to be those who are actually evil or those who are merely thought of as evil? These are the questions Socrates raises.
Socrates seems to presuppose that we ought only to be friends with those who are good, but is this really the case? Suppose your father is an evil man. Ought you not to still be his friend? Certainly, we should not be friends with an evil man in the same way/sense that we are friends with a good man, but at the very least, a man's relationship with his evil father need not be a purely antagonistic one; there is still room for a certain kind of friendship. Socrates' thinking is too shallow here, for surely we can make further distinctions on different levels of friendship itself. The student of Plato himself, Aristotle, distinguished between three kinds of friendship: friendships of usefulness/utility, friendships of pleasure, and good/perfect friendships.
Polemarchos remarks that a friend is one who is both thought of as good and is actually good (and vice-versa for an enemy). One who seems good but is actually not good only seems a friend but is actually not a friend. And it is good "to injure bad men and enemies." Here Socrates also deserves criticism when he remarks that regardless of if one is a friend or an enemy, it is wrong and unjust to harm that man: "it is not the work of a just man to injure... whether to injure friend or anyone else..." His reasoning is that in the same way that injuring a horse or a dog does not better/improve it but instead worsens it, injuring a man worsens him and makes him more unjust. And as heat does not make cold, a just man should not seek to make a man more unjust.
Immediately, I see two things wrong this. First, injuring/harming a man does not necessarily worsen a man and make him more unjust. In fact, it can oftentimes better a man and make him more just. Consider how a father disciplines his child. Does not the father out of necessity and love temporarily injure the child in order to improve him and make him more just and virtuous? The same is true for adults and not just children. Secondly, if it is an injustice to injure/harm any man, would not a just man be permitted to attempt to stop the injustice if it be in his power? And would not stopping that injustice often require him to injure/harm the unjust man?
Thrasymachos
We are then introduced to Socrates' main challenger in this first book, Thrasymachos. Thrasymachos gives his own definition of justice: "the advantage of the stronger." Socrates points out that the "stronger" or those in positions of power (rulers) are not infallible and can often do things or make decisions that are actually not to their advantage. He additionally compares rulers to other artists/technicians/craftsmen in how they conduct their respective arts. Take a doctor for example, who practices the art of medicine. Does not the doctor practice the art of medicine for the advantage and well-being of his subjects, namely his patients? In the same way, the good and just ruler seeks the advantage and well-being of his subjects, namely his citizens.
One other assertion that Thrasymachos makes is that injustice is more profitable and advantageous than justice. Though they dialogue for a fair amount of time, this is the full extent to which I am interested in the discourse on justice between Socrates and Thrasymachos. We are far from reaching a satisfactory exploration of justice, however, and Plato will continue that in the next book.
One final thing that stirred my thoughts came right at the end of the book, when Socrates says that "the work of a thing is what the thing alone could do, or better than anything else could." This sounds very much like teleological language, and perhaps could serve as a starting point for a discussion on what the telos of something is.