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Socrates: Summary of Ethics & Justice

1) Is it just to harm someone (335b-e)
Socrates asks at 335b, whether it is the role of the just man to harm anyone. And what does it
mean to harm someone? For Socrates to harm someone is understood to mean to make
someone a worse human being.
Socrates wants to maintain and establish the necessary preconditions for virtue. One of them is
that justice does not consist in harming anyone. He does this through a series of questions and
subquestions. So lets take a look at these:
The first question deals with an argument from analogy. So what Socrates is trying to do is not
get at the issue directly, but putting together the elements necessary for a philosophical
understanding of what justice is or requires. Does harming someone make him more just or
more unjust? If we do harm to horses, then does that make them better horses or worse horses?
It would seem that it makes them worse horses. Hence harming them deprives them of the
excellence of what it is to be a horse. The Greek word for virtue, arte, can also mean
excellence. So harming a horse deprives it of virtue.
A similar analogy is given with dogs. So it would stand to reason that harming a person would
make that person worse, would deprive them of being excellent or virtuous. Just as horses and
dogs and any other domestic animal becomes worse in horse virtue, dog virtue, etc. when they
are harmed, so also people become worse in human virtue when they are harmed (335b)
Now, for Socrates, Justice is a human virtue, it is a form of human excellence. (335c)
Thus when men and women are harmed they become more unjust (335c)
A second question then arises: can just people, people who are just, make others unjust by
exercising justice with respect to them? Can good people make others bad through virtue?
To answer this new question, Socrates offers another analogy: musicians, for example, make
people musical, horse trainers make people better stewards of horses, and justice makes people
just. (335c) Or, if you prefer, Socrates offers another analogy similar to that one: the opposite of
heat (cold) makes things cold, the opposite of dryness (wetness) makes things wet, so too the
opposite of goodness brings harm to people.
From these analogies (and thus not demonstrating them in a fool-proof argumentcan that ever
really happen in regard to ethics?), Socrates concludes that the function of the just person (a
good person) is to make people just and good, and betterit is not to harm them, to do bad to
them, or to make them worse.(334d). Therefore, it is never just to harm anyone.(335e)

Now, let us return to the next question:

2) Is justice really the advantage of the stronger? (338c-347d)
This is, as you recall, Thrasymachuss definition of justicejustice is nothing other than the
advantage of the stronger (335b), or in other words, justice is the advantage of the established
rule or rulers. Socrates says that justice is a kind of advantage but not of the stronger (339b)
Sometimes rulers make mistakes. And when they do, they can be mistaken as to what is really to
their advantage. They may for example prescribe things which are in fact to their own
disadvantage (339c-e). In these cases, in effect, they compel people to do the opposite of the
advantage of the stronger.
Thrasymachus is an angry sort of guy. So he gets a little upset with Socrates.
At any rate, he then says that a ruler, insofar as he is a rulerhence in a precise sensenever
actually makes any mistakes. He always demands what is best for himself, and these things his
subjects must adhere to. (341a) What could Thrasymachus actually mean by that?
Well, one answer might be that if someone is truly a ruleran ideal sort of rulerthen he is
infallible, he never makes mistakes. Someone who is a ruler and does make mistakes is no ruler
indeed.
Now, Socrates picks up on the IDEA of the rulerthe ideal ruler. And now we get another series
of analogies:
An ideal doctor, for example, seeks healing. That is, the ideal doctor seeks the advantage of the
patient. A captain of a ship, an ideal captain of a ship, seeks the advantage of the ship and its
sailors. In fact, any art or craft or profession, in the IDEAL sense, seeks not the advantage if
itself but rather the advantage of that of which it is the craft. So, under this reading, the ruler in
the ideal sense, would seek not his own advantage but the advantage of the ruled, his subjects.
So Socrates then concludes that no ideal ruler seeks his own advantage but rather the advantage
of those of whom he himself is the craftsman. (342e)
Now, Thrasymachus is not impressed and moves the argument from the IDEAL ruler to what
rulers are like in actual practice, as matters of fact. For example, shepherds and cowhands seek
not the advantage of their herd, but their own advantage. And a person of power, similarly, seeks
his own advantage not the advantage of those over whom he has power. Thus Thrasymachus
concludes that injustice, on a large enough scale, is stronger, freer, and more powerful than
justice. (334c) Similarly, justice is harmful to those who obey it. (343c) And a just man always
loses to the unjust man (343d).

Socrates replies. The art of ruling, as a matter of fact, does not contain any benefit. If there is
any benefit whatsoever to ruling, it does not come from within the art of ruling. Rather it is
added to it. And now another series of analogies: just as medicine is to health, navigation is to
sailing safely, and wage earning is to wages, the benefit of any craft results from an additional
craft. Thus, Socrates concludes: there is no craft or rule that provides for its own advantage.
However, all crafts or rule provides for the advantage of those for whom the craft is practiced
i.e., the weaker, not the stronger. An indication of this is that no one really willingly chooses to
rule.