{"id":213,"date":"2016-12-14T00:25:28","date_gmt":"2016-12-14T00:25:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/metric.cc\/?p=213"},"modified":"2016-12-14T00:25:28","modified_gmt":"2016-12-14T00:25:28","slug":"justice-is-wise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/metric.cc\/?p=213","title":{"rendered":"Justice is Wise"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In Plato\u2019s <em>Republic<\/em>, Thrasymachus asserts that justice is whatever is to the advantage of the stronger, and injustice is that which is in one\u2019s self-interest. He even goes so far as to say that injustice is virtuous, delivering more to the person who embraces it than justice. Socrates disputes this with three arguments, one of which tries to show that justice is wiser than injustice. First, Socrates asks whether a just person would attempt to \u201coutdo\u201d another just person. Thrasymachus concedes that while a just person may try to outdo an unjust person, he would not do so with a just person because then he would not be as \u201cpolite and innocent.\u201d An unjust person would try to outdo everyone. Socrates then makes a comparison to a musician tuning his instrument. Would he try to outdo another musician in achieving the correct pitch, and would he deserve a better result than another musician? \u00a0No, but he would deserve a better result than a non-musician. A similar comparison is made with a doctor, who upon seeing another doctor finding a correct prescription for an illness would not try to outdo that action. Then Socrates points out that a knowledgeable person will agree with other knowledgeable people, but an ignorant person will try to outdo both the knowledgeable and the ignorant. Since being knowledgeable is clever, and being clever is good, and being good is virtuous, then since a just person behaves the same way as a knowledgeable person in not trying to outdo others of his kind, it follows that a just person is wiser and more virtuous than an unjust person.<\/p>\n<p>I think Socrates generally makes a strong argument for justice to be wiser than injustice. He does this in two ways\u2014by comparing a just person to a knowledgeable person, and by pointing out the deliberation that a just person goes through to determine what is good. To assess the strength of Socrates\u2019 argument, it is necessary to first characterize Thrasymachus\u2019 view. He thinks that stronger people seize power and enforce policies that benefit themselves. Injustice is better, he thinks, because people who only look out for themselves can secure more external goods (wealth, property, position) for themselves. He is aligned more with the Homeric ideal of virtue, in which excellence is defined through strength and force. In his universe, the goal is to attain more material goods. Socrates brings in the concept of \u201coutdoing,\u201d and thereby begins to express a different goal and to define virtue differently. If all a person strives for is to outdo everyone else, Socrates argues, then that is to give into a sort of thoughtless, ignorant appetite. A just person has another faculty involved, which is involved with discerning how much is enough, or how much is deserved. Because this discerning quality within the just man involves applying knowledge and reason, it follows necessarily that there are more qualities of wisdom in justice than there are in injustice.<\/p>\n<p>When Socrates uses the metaphor of a musician, he establishes the concept of justice as being something that has limits and that is a goal in and of itself. He thinks that justice is like tuning an instrument to the right pitch. There is no \u201cmore in tune\u201d or \u201cless in tune,\u201d there is only \u201cin tune.\u201d Among a group of musicians, there is no advantage in twisting a tuning peg too much or not enough. For their combined musical efforts to have the highest virtue, it requires that all of the musicians are tuned the correct amount. When musicians play in a group, the goal isn\u2019t to play louder or more often than the other players, it is to play just enough to complement the ensemble. The success of the music comes from everyone taking up enough of the rhythmic and tonal environment to support a sound which is something more than the individual contributions of the musicians. This reminds me of evolutionary science and the strategies by which we have thrived as a species. The concept of \u201csurvival of the fittest\u201d has been seized and promoted as supporting the idea that \u201cmight makes right\u201d in the deceptively named \u201cSocial Darwinist\u201d view. Thrasymachus would approve. In fact, our greatest asset has been our ability to communicate with one another and to moderate our impulses to satisfy individual needs in favor of communal effort. A grizzly bear in a one-on-one contest would easily defeat a human being but cannot play a musical instrument very well and doesn\u2019t stand a chance against an organized human defense. Justice is wise because it recognizes the nuance that is required to live within a social order rather than giving in to the blunt tool of unjustly using superior strength to assert one\u2019s will on others.<\/p>\n<p>Matthew Ebert<br \/>\nPHIL 211 \u2013 1001<br \/>\nProfessor Achtenberg<br \/>\nDecember 6, 2016<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In Plato\u2019s Republic, Thrasymachus asserts that justice is whatever is to the advantage of the stronger, and injustice is that which is in one\u2019s<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/metric.cc\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/metric.cc\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/metric.cc\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/metric.cc\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/metric.cc\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=213"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/metric.cc\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":214,"href":"http:\/\/metric.cc\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213\/revisions\/214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/metric.cc\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/metric.cc\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/metric.cc\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}