Book I, 342–349

342a “But tell me: is medicine itself defective? Or is there any craft that needs some excellence added to it—as eyes need sight and ears hearing, and for that reason need a craft to examine and provide what benefits them? Is there some defect within the craft itself, so that each craft needs another to examine what benefits it, and the examining craft needs another in turn, without end? 342b Or will it examine what benefits itself? Or does it need neither itself nor another craft to examine what benefits it against its own defect, since no craft has any defect or error, and it is not a craft's business to seek the benefit of anything but that of which it is the craft? In itself it is sound and whole, so long as each craft is precisely and entirely what it is. Examine it in that strict sense. Is this so or otherwise?”

“So it seems,” he said. 342c

“Then medicine,” I said, “examines what benefits the body, not medicine.”

“Yes.”

“Nor does horsemanship examine what benefits horsemanship, but what benefits horses. No other craft examines its own benefit either—it has no need—but the benefit of that of which it is the craft.”

“So it seems,” he said.

“And yet, Thrasymachus, the crafts rule and have authority over the things of which they are crafts.”

At this he conceded, though with great reluctance.

“No branch of knowledge, then, examines or commands what benefits the stronger, but what benefits the weaker, the thing ruled 342d by it.”

In the end he agreed to this too, though he tried to fight it. Once he had agreed, I said, “Then surely no doctor, insofar as he is a doctor, examines or commands what benefits the doctor, but what benefits the patient? For we have agreed that the doctor in the strict sense is a ruler of bodies, not a moneymaker. Haven't we?”

He assented.

“And that the ship's captain in the strict sense is a ruler of sailors, not a sailor?” 342e

“We have.”

“Then such a captain and ruler will examine and command not what benefits the captain, but what benefits the sailor, the one under his command.”

He reluctantly assented.

“Then, Thrasymachus,” I said, “no one else in any position of rule, insofar as he is a ruler, examines or commands what benefits himself, but what benefits the one he rules and for whom he practices his craft. He looks to that person and to what is beneficial and fitting for that person in everything he says and everything he does.”

343a When we reached this point in the argument, and it was plain to everyone that our account of justice had turned into its opposite, Thrasymachus, instead of answering, said, “Tell me, Socrates, do you have a nurse?”

“What? Shouldn't you answer rather than ask questions like that?” I said.

“Because she lets you go about with a runny nose without wiping it when you need it; she hasn't even taught you to tell sheep from shepherds.”

“Why do you say that?” I asked. 343b

“Because you imagine that shepherds and herdsmen look to the good of their sheep or cattle, and fatten and tend them with some end in view other than their masters' good and their own. And you imagine, too, that those who rule cities, the rulers in the true sense, feel toward their subjects any differently from a shepherd toward sheep, or think about anything day and night but the source 343c of their own profit. You are so far from understanding justice and what is just, injustice and what is unjust, that you fail to see that justice and the just are in truth another person's good—the advantage of the stronger, the ruler—and a loss to the one who obeys and serves him. Injustice is the reverse: it rules over those who are truly simple and just. The subjects do what benefits the stronger man and, by serving 343d him, make him happy, but themselves not in the least. You must look at it this way, most innocent Socrates: everywhere the just man gets less than the unjust man. First, in dealings between them, whenever such men enter into a partnership, you will never find the just man coming away from its dissolution with more than the unjust, but with less. Next, in dealings with the city: when there are taxes to pay, the just man pays more on the same resources and the unjust less; when there is money to receive, 343e the just gets nothing and the unjust makes a great gain. When each of them holds office, the just man, even if he suffers no other loss, at least finds his own affairs in worse shape through neglect, while he gains nothing from public funds because he is just. Beyond this, he earns the hatred of family and acquaintances when he refuses to serve them against justice. For the unjust man everything is the opposite. I mean

344a the man I mentioned just now, the one capable of taking a vast advantage. Consider him if you wish to judge how much more profitable it is for a man personally to be unjust than just. You will see it most readily if you turn to injustice in its most complete form, which makes the perpetrator happiest and those who suffer it, and refuse to commit it themselves, most wretched. This is tyranny: it takes the property of others, sacred and profane, private and public, not bit by bit, covertly or by force, but 344b all at once. When someone commits any one of these offenses and is caught, he is punished and subjected to the deepest disgrace. Those who commit these crimes one at a time are called temple robbers, enslavers, burglars, swindlers, and thieves. But when a man not only takes his fellow citizens' possessions but enslaves the citizens themselves, instead of receiving these shameful names he is called happy and blessed, 344c not only by his fellow citizens but by everyone else who hears of the full extent of his injustice. For those who condemn injustice condemn it not because they fear doing wrong, but because they fear suffering it. Injustice, Socrates, when practiced on a sufficient scale, is stronger, freer, and more masterful than justice. And as I said at the outset, justice turns out to be the advantage of the stronger, while injustice profits and benefits the unjust man himself.” 344d

After pouring this great flood of words into our ears like a bath attendant, Thrasymachus intended to leave. But the others would not let him go; they made him stay and give an account of what he had said. I too urged him earnestly. “Extraordinary Thrasymachus,” I said, “you fling an argument like that at us and mean to leave before you have adequately taught us, or learned yourself, whether it is so or otherwise? 344e Do you think it a small matter you are trying to decide—the course of a whole life, the life each of us must lead to live to greatest advantage?”

“Do you think I believe it is otherwise?” said Thrasymachus.

“So it seems,” I said. “Either that, or you care nothing for us and have no concern whether we live better or worse lives in ignorance of what you claim to know. 345a Please, my good man, make an effort to show us as well. A favor to so many of us would not be a bad investment for you. Speaking for myself, I am not convinced. I do not believe that injustice is more profitable than justice, even if it is given free rein to do whatever it wants. Let a man be unjust, my friend, and able to act unjustly, whether by escaping notice or by fighting off opposition; even then he does not convince me that injustice is more profitable than justice. 345b Perhaps another of us feels this way, not just I. So convince us fully, my fortunate friend, that we are wrong to hold justice in higher esteem than injustice.”

“How am I to convince you?” he said. “If what I have just said has not persuaded you, what more can I do? Must I carry the argument and put it inside your soul?”

“No, by Zeus,” I said, “don't do that. First, stand by what you say; if you change your position, change it openly and do not deceive us. As it is, Thrasymachus, you can see—we must still examine what came before—that, having first defined the doctor in the true sense, 345c you did not think it necessary afterward to keep to that definition strictly for the shepherd in the true sense. You think that insofar as he is a shepherd he fattens his sheep with a view not to what is best for them, but, like a diner anticipating a feast, to the pleasure of eating them, or else, like a moneymaker rather than a shepherd, 345d to selling them. But the shepherd's craft surely has no concern except to provide the best for that over which it is set. Its own fitness to do its work is already sufficiently secured, as long as it lacks nothing that makes it the shepherd's craft. That is why I thought we had to agree just now that every form of rule, insofar as it is rule, considers what is best for nothing but what is ruled and cared for, 345e whether the rule is civic or private. But do you think that the rulers in cities, the true rulers, are willing to rule?”

“No, by Zeus,” he said. “I know they aren't.”

“And consider other forms of rule, Thrasymachus,” I said. “Don't you see that no one willingly takes on the rule, but people ask for pay, because the benefit of ruling will go not to themselves but

346a to their subjects? Tell me this much: don't we say that each craft is distinct from every other precisely because it has a distinct power? And, my friend, don't answer against your own judgment; then we may make some progress.”

“Yes, that is what distinguishes it,” he said.

“Then each also gives us a benefit peculiar to itself, not one shared by them all: medicine gives health, the captain's craft safety at sea, and so with the others?”

“Certainly.” 346b

“And the craft of earning wages gives wages? That is its power. Or do you call medicine and the captain's craft the same thing? If you wish to make strict distinctions, as you proposed, would you call the captain's craft medicine because a captain grows healthy while sailing, when a voyage agrees with him?”

“Certainly not,” he said.

“Nor, I think, would you call wage earning medicine if a person stays healthy while earning wages.”

“No.”

“Or medicine wage earning if a person receives pay while healing?” 346c

“No,” he said.

“Then we have agreed that each craft has its own distinctive benefit?”

“Let it be so,” he said.

“Whatever benefit, then, all craftsmen receive in common, they plainly receive by making use of something common to them all.”

“So it seems,” he said.

“And we say that craftsmen gain the benefit of wages through their use of the craft of earning wages.”

He reluctantly assented. 346d

“Then this benefit—the receipt of pay—does not come to each man from his own craft. To be precise, medicine produces health and wage earning produces wages; building produces a house, and the wage earning that accompanies it produces wages. All the other crafts likewise perform their own work and benefit that over which each is set. But if no pay is added, does the craftsman receive any benefit from his craft?”

“Apparently not,” he said. 346e

“Yet does he confer no benefit when he works for nothing?”

“I think he does.”

“Then, Thrasymachus, this much is now clear: no craft or position of rule provides what benefits itself. Rather, as we have long been saying, it provides and commands what benefits its subject, looking to the advantage of that weaker party, not to that of the stronger. For this reason, my dear Thrasymachus, I said just now that no one willingly undertakes to rule and set right the troubles of others,

347a but asks for pay. For someone who means to practice his craft properly never acts or commands for his own benefit when he commands in accordance with his craft, but for the benefit of his subject. Therefore, it seems, those who are to be willing to rule must receive a wage: either money or honor, or a penalty if they refuse.”

“What do you mean, Socrates?” Glaucon asked. “I recognize the first two wages, but I don't understand what penalty you mean, or how you can have called it a kind of wage.”

“Then you do not understand the wage of the best people,” I said, “the one for which 347b the most decent men rule, when they are willing to rule. Don't you know that loving honor and loving money are spoken of as disgraceful—and are disgraceful?”

“I do,” he said.

“This is why,” I said, “good men are unwilling to rule for money or honor. They do not wish to be called hirelings for openly demanding wages for office, or thieves for secretly taking them from office. Nor do they rule for honor: they are not lovers of honor. They must therefore be subject to compulsion and a penalty if they are to consent to rule. 347c This may be why it has come to seem shameful to seek office willingly rather than wait for necessity. The greatest penalty is to be ruled by someone worse if one refuses to rule oneself. It is through fear of this, I think, that decent men rule when they do. Then they approach ruling not as something good or as a source of enjoyment, but as a necessity, since they cannot entrust it to people better than themselves, or even their equals. 347d If there were a city of good men, I suspect that refusing to rule would be as fiercely contested there as ruling is now, and then it would become plain that the true ruler is by nature concerned not with his own advantage but with his subject's. So anyone with understanding would rather receive a benefit from another than have the trouble of benefiting another. Thus I cannot agree with Thrasymachus 347e in any way that justice is the advantage of the stronger. We can examine that again another time. What Thrasymachus says now seems to me much more serious: he claims that the life of the unjust man is better than the life of the just. Which do you choose, Glaucon?” I asked. “Which claim seems truer to you?”

“That the just man's life is more profitable.”

348a “Did you hear all the benefits Thrasymachus just recounted for the unjust man's life?” I asked.

“I heard,” he said, “but I'm not convinced.”

“Then shall we try to persuade him, if we can find a way, that what he says is not true?”

“Of course,” he said.

“If we stretch out an opposing speech,” I said, “setting argument against argument and listing all the benefits of being just, and he replies, and we reply again, we will have to count and measure the benefits 348b that each side names in each case, and we will need judges to decide between us. But if, as just now, we inquire while reaching agreement with one another, we will be both judges and advocates ourselves.”

“Exactly,” he said.

“Which way do you prefer?” I asked.

“That way,” he said.

“Come then, Thrasymachus,” I said, “answer us again from the beginning. Do you say that complete injustice is more profitable than complete justice?” 348c

“I certainly do,” he said, “and I have given my reasons.”

“Now tell me how you describe them in this respect. You call one of the two a virtue, I take it, and the other a vice?”

“Of course.”

“Justice a virtue and injustice a vice?”

“That would be likely, wouldn't it, my delightful friend,” he said, “when I say injustice pays and justice doesn't?”

“Then what do you say?”

“The opposite,” he said.

“Justice a vice?”

“No, but a most noble simplicity.” 348d

“Then you call injustice wickedness?”

“No, good judgment,” he said.

“And do you think unjust people intelligent and good, Thrasymachus?”

“Those who can commit injustice to the fullest extent,” he said, “who can bring cities and nations of people under their power. Perhaps you think I mean people who cut purses. Such things are profitable too, provided they go unnoticed. But they are not worth discussing; I mean what I spoke of just now.” 348e

“I know what you mean,” I said. “But what surprised me is that you place injustice with virtue and wisdom, and justice among their opposites.”

“That is exactly where I place them.”

“That makes your position harder to shake, my friend, and it is no longer easy to know what to say. If you maintained that injustice is profitable but still admitted, as some do, that it is a vice or something shameful, we could appeal to conventional beliefs. But plainly you will call it noble and strong and assign it all the other qualities

349a that we assigned to justice, now that you have dared to put it among virtue and wisdom.”

“You have guessed quite correctly,” he said.

“Still, I must not shrink from following the argument wherever our inquiry leads, as long as I take you to be saying what you truly think. For I believe, Thrasymachus, that you are not joking now at all, but speaking your genuine view of the truth.”

“What difference does it make to you,” he said, “whether that is my view or not? Why don't you test the argument?” 349b

“None at all,” I said. “But try to answer this in addition: do you think a just man would wish to get the better of another just man?”

“Not at all,” he said. “If he did, he would not be the well-mannered innocent he is.”

“What about getting the better of a just action?”

“Not of a just action either,” he said.

“But would he claim the right to get the better of an unjust man, and consider it just, or would he not?”

“He would think it just and claim the right,” he said, “but he would not be able to do it.”

“That isn't what I'm asking,” I said. “I'm asking whether the just man 349c neither claims nor wants to get the better of another just man, but does want to get the better of an unjust man.”

“Yes, that is how it is,” he said.

“What about the unjust man? Does he claim the right to get the better of the just man and of just conduct?”

“How could he not,” he said, “when he claims the right to get the better of everyone?”

“Then the unjust man will try to get the better of another unjust man and unjust conduct too, competing to take the most of all.”

“That is so.”

“Let us put it this way,” I said. “The just man does not seek to outdo his like, but his unlike; the unjust man seeks to outdo both his like 349d and his unlike.”

“Excellent,” he said. “You have put it well.”

“And the unjust man is intelligent and good, while the just man is neither?”

“That too is well put,” he said.

“Then does the unjust man also resemble the intelligent and good, while the just man does not?”

“Of course a man who has those qualities must resemble people who have them, while the other does not,” he said.

“Good. So each is the sort of person those he resembles are?”

“What else could he be?” he said.

“Very well, Thrasymachus. You call one person musical and another 349e unmusical?”

“I do.”

“Which is intelligent and which unintelligent?”

“The musical man is intelligent, of course, and the unmusical unintelligent.”

“And in the respects in which he is intelligent he is good, while the unintelligent man is bad?”

“Yes.”

“And is it the same with someone skilled in medicine?”

“Yes.”

“Now do you think, my good man, that a musical man tuning a lyre wishes or claims the right to go further than another musical man in tightening and loosening its strings?”

“I do not.”

“But further than an unmusical man?”

“Necessarily,” he said.

342a “But what about medicine itself? Is it defective? Does any skill need some further excellence, as eyes need sight and ears need hearing, so that they need a skill to find and provide what benefits them? Is there some defect in the skill itself? Does every skill need another skill to work out what benefits it, and does that skill need another like it, without end? 342b Or will the skill work out its own benefit? Or does it need neither itself nor another skill to find a remedy for its own defect? No skill has a defect or makes a mistake, and a skill should not seek the benefit of anything except the thing it serves. The skill itself remains sound and intact when it is correct, as long as it remains exactly and entirely what it is. Look at it in those strict terms. Is that how it is, or not?”

“That seems right,” he said. 342c

“So medicine doesn't look after the benefit of medicine, but of the body,” I said.

“Yes,” he said.

“And horsemanship looks after horses, not horsemanship. No skill looks after itself, since it has no need to. It looks after the thing it serves.”

“So it seems,” he said.

“But Thrasymachus, skills do rule and control the things they serve.”

He conceded this, though with great difficulty.

“So no kind of knowledge looks after or orders what benefits the stronger. It looks after what benefits the weaker, 342d the thing under its control.”

He finally agreed to this too, though he tried to fight it. When he had agreed, I said, “Then a doctor, insofar as he is a doctor, doesn't look after or prescribe what benefits the doctor, but what benefits the patient, does he? We agreed that a doctor, strictly speaking, is in charge of bodies, not a money-maker. Didn't we?”

He agreed.

“And the ship's captain, strictly speaking, is in charge of sailors and isn't a sailor?” 342e

“We agreed to that.”

“Then a captain and ruler of this kind looks after and orders what benefits the sailor under his command, not the captain.”

He agreed reluctantly.

“So, Thrasymachus,” I said, “no one in any position of command, insofar as he commands, looks after or orders what benefits himself. He looks after what benefits the person he rules and the person for whom he works. He keeps that person in view. Everything he says and does is directed toward what benefits and suits that person.”

343a We had reached this point in the argument, and everyone could see that the account of justice had turned into its opposite. Instead of answering, Thrasymachus said, “Tell me, Socrates, do you have a nurse?”

“What's this?” I said. “Shouldn't you answer instead of asking questions like that?”

“She lets you run around with a cold without wiping your nose when you need it,” he said. “You don't even know a sheep from a shepherd.”

“What makes you say that?” I asked. 343b

“You think shepherds and cattle herders care for their sheep and cattle, feeding them up and tending them, with any aim other than the good of their owners and themselves. And you think the rulers in cities, those who really rule, regard their subjects any differently from the way a shepherd regards sheep. You think they spend night and day thinking about anything 343c except how to benefit themselves. You are so far off the mark about justice and injustice that you don't know this: justice and what is just are actually good for someone else. They benefit the stronger party, the ruler, and harm the one who obeys and serves him. Injustice does the reverse. It rules over people who are truly simple and just. The subjects do what benefits their stronger ruler and make him happy by serving 343d him, but do nothing of the sort for themselves. You need to consider it this way, my very naive Socrates: a just man gets less than an unjust man everywhere. First, in dealings between individuals, when a just man and an unjust man go into business together, you will never find the just man coming away with more when they dissolve their partnership. He comes away with less. Then consider their dealings with the city. When there are taxes to pay, the just man pays more from an equal amount of property, and the unjust man pays less. When there is money to be received, 343e the just man gets nothing, and the unjust man makes a great deal. And when each holds public office, the just man at the very least sees his own affairs suffer from neglect, while his justice prevents him from profiting at all from public funds. Besides that, his relatives and acquaintances resent him when he refuses to do them favors that go against justice. For the unjust man, all the results are the opposite. I'm talking about

344a the man I mentioned just now, the one able to take advantage on a grand scale. Look at him if you want to judge just how much more profitable it is for an individual to be unjust than just. You will see it most easily if you turn to the fullest form of injustice. It makes the wrongdoer supremely happy, and those he wrongs, who refuse to do wrong themselves, utterly miserable. This is tyranny. It takes other people's property in one sweep, not bit by bit, whether secretly or by force, and whether sacred or secular, private or public. 344b When someone commits any one of these offenses and gets caught, he is punished and disgraced. Those who commit such wrongs one at a time are called temple robbers, kidnappers, burglars, swindlers, and thieves. But when someone not only takes the citizens' property but also enslaves the citizens themselves, instead of receiving those shameful names he is called happy and blessed, 344c not just by his citizens but by others who hear that he has carried out injustice on a complete scale. People who condemn injustice do so because they fear suffering it, not because they fear doing it. That is why injustice, when practiced fully, is stronger, freer, and more powerful than justice, Socrates. As I said at the start, what is just benefits the stronger, while what is unjust pays off and benefits the person who does it.” 344d

After saying this, Thrasymachus meant to leave, as though he were a bath attendant who had poured a great flood of words over our ears. But the others wouldn't let him go. They made him stay and account for what he had said. I begged him myself. “Thrasymachus,” I said, “you have thrown out such a claim, and now you mean to leave before you have properly taught us, or learned for yourself, whether it is 344e true or not? Do you think it is a small matter to decide how each of us should live our whole lives to our greatest advantage?”

“Do I think otherwise?” said Thrasymachus.

“You seem either not to care about us or not to mind whether we live better or worse because we don't know what you say you know. Please, my friend, make an effort to show us. 345a Doing a favor for so many of us won't be a bad investment for you. For my part, I tell you that I'm not convinced. I don't think injustice is more profitable than justice, even if someone lets it do as it pleases and doesn't stop it. Suppose a man is unjust and can get away with his wrongdoing either by concealing it or by fighting back. Even so, you haven't convinced me that injustice pays better than justice. 345b Perhaps someone else here feels the same way. So convince us properly that we are wrong to value justice more highly than injustice.”

“How am I supposed to convince you?” he said. “If what I've said already hasn't convinced you, what more can I do? Put my argument directly into your soul?”

“No, by Zeus,” I said, “don't do that. But first, stand by what you say. Or if you change your position, change it openly and don't mislead us. Look, Thrasymachus, 345c let's return to the earlier point. At first you defined the doctor in the strict sense. Later you didn't think you had to hold the shepherd in the strict sense to the same standard. You think that insofar as he is a shepherd, he feeds up the sheep not for their own good but for a feast, like someone preparing to eat them, or 345d to sell them, like a money-maker rather than a shepherd. But the shepherd's skill cares only for what it is assigned to care for, providing what is best for it. The skill already has everything it needs to be as good as it can be, so long as it lacks nothing that makes it a shepherd's skill. So I thought we had to agree that every kind of rule, insofar as it is rule, looks after the best interests only of what it rules and cares for, whether in public or private life. 345e But do you think the rulers in cities, the ones who truly rule, are willing to rule?”

“No, by Zeus,” he said. “I know they aren't.”

“What about other positions of authority, Thrasymachus? Haven't you noticed that nobody willingly takes on the responsibility of ruling without asking for pay? They expect the benefit of their rule to go not to themselves but

346a to those they rule. Answer me this: don't we say that one skill differs from another because it has a different capacity? And please, my friend, answer what you really think, so we can make progress.”

“Yes,” he said, “that's what makes it different.”

“Then each skill gives us its own distinct benefit, not a benefit shared by all. Medicine gives health, navigation gives safety at sea, and so on.”

“Certainly.” 346b

“And the skill of earning wages gives wages? That is its particular capacity. Or do you call medicine and navigation the same skill? If you want to make careful distinctions, as you proposed, you wouldn't call navigation medicine just because a captain grows healthy from the sea voyage that suits him, would you?”

“Certainly not,” he said.

“And you wouldn't call the skill of earning wages medicine because a wage earner stays healthy?”

“No.”

“Would you call medicine wage earning if a doctor gets paid for treating someone?” 346c

“No,” he said.

“So we've agreed that the benefit of each skill is distinct?”

“Let it be so,” he said.

“Then if all skilled workers receive the same kind of benefit, clearly they receive it by making use of some further skill shared by them all.”

“So it seems,” he said.

“And we say that when skilled workers benefit by receiving wages, they get that benefit by using the skill of earning wages.”

He agreed reluctantly. 346d

“So this benefit, receiving pay, doesn't come from each person's own skill. To be exact, medicine produces health, and wage earning produces pay. Building produces a house, and the wage earning that accompanies it produces pay. Every other skill similarly does its own work and benefits the thing it was assigned to serve. If no pay comes along with a skill, does the worker receive a benefit from that skill?”

“Apparently not,” he said. 346e

“But doesn't he still provide a benefit when he works for free?”

“I think so.”

“Then, Thrasymachus, this much is clear now: no skill or position of authority provides its own benefit. Rather, as we've said all along, it provides and orders what benefits the thing it rules. It considers the interests of the weaker, not of the stronger. That's why I said earlier, my friend Thrasymachus, that no one willingly rules and takes on the job of putting other people's troubles right without asking for pay.

347a Someone who is going to do his job properly never acts or gives orders through his skill for his own benefit. He acts for the benefit of the one he rules. It seems that for this reason people who are to be willing to rule need a reward: money, honor, or a penalty if they refuse to rule.”

“What do you mean, Socrates?” said Glaucon. “I know the first two rewards, but I don't understand the penalty you're talking about, or why you've called it a kind of reward.”

“Then you don't understand the reward that moves the best people 347b to rule when they are willing to do it,” I said. “Don't you know that being ambitious or greedy is considered disgraceful, and rightly so?”

“Yes,” he said.

“That is why good people don't want to rule for money or honor. They don't want to be called hired hands for openly charging a fee to rule, or thieves for secretly taking money from office. Nor do they want honor, because they aren't ambitious. 347c There must therefore be some compulsion or penalty to make them willing to rule. That may be why it is considered shameful to seek office voluntarily rather than wait until one is compelled to take it. The greatest penalty is to be ruled by someone worse than yourself if you won't rule yourself. I think it is fear of this that makes decent people rule when they do. They take office not because they see it as something good or expect to enjoy it, but 347d because they have to. They can't hand the job over to anyone better than themselves, or even anyone as good. If there were a city of good men, they might compete to avoid ruling, just as people now compete to rule. Then it would be clear that a true ruler by nature doesn't look after his own interests, but those of his subjects. Anyone who understood this would rather receive a benefit from someone else than go to the trouble of benefiting others. So I do not agree 347e with Thrasymachus that justice is what benefits the stronger. We can examine that again later. But his new claim seems much more important to me: he says the unjust person's life is better than the just person's. Which do you choose, Glaucon? Which claim sounds truer to you?”

“I think the just person's life is more profitable.”

348a “Did you hear all the benefits Thrasymachus just listed for the unjust person?” I said.

“I heard them,” he said, “but I'm not convinced.”

“Shall we try to convince him, if we can find a way, that what he says isn't true?”

“Of course,” he said.

“Suppose we trade speeches, one against another. We could list all the benefits of being just, then let him reply and answer in turn. We would need to count 348b and weigh the benefits each side names in each case, and then we would need judges to settle it. But if we examine the matter as we did before, agreeing with each other as we go, we'll be both the speakers and the judges.”

“Certainly,” he said.

“Which method do you prefer?” I asked.

“The second,” he said.

“Come then, Thrasymachus,” I said, “answer us from the beginning. Do you say that complete injustice is more profitable than complete justice?” 348c

“I certainly do,” he said. “And I've told you why.”

“Then tell me this: you presumably call one of them a virtue and the other a vice?”

“Of course.”

“Justice a virtue, then, and injustice a vice?”

“That would make sense, wouldn't it, my dear fellow,” he said, “when I say injustice pays and justice doesn't?”

“Then what do you call them?”

“The reverse,” he said.

“Do you call justice a vice?”

“No. I call it a very noble kind of foolishness.” 348d

“Then you call injustice wickedness?”

“No,” he said. “Good judgment.”

“Do you also think unjust people are intelligent and good, Thrasymachus?”

“Those who can carry out injustice fully,” he said, “and can bring cities and entire peoples under their power. Perhaps you think I'm talking about people who cut purses. That sort of thing does pay too, if you escape detection, but it isn't worth discussing. I mean what I was talking about just now.” 348e

“I know what you mean,” I said. “What surprised me was that you place injustice on the side of virtue and wisdom, and justice on the opposite side.”

“Yes, that's exactly where I place them.”

“That's a firmer position, my friend. It's no longer easy to find an answer. If you said injustice was profitable but agreed, like others, that it was a vice or something shameful, we could appeal to commonly held views. But now you will plainly say it is admirable and strong. You'll give it all the other qualities

349a we used to give justice, since you've dared to call it virtue and wisdom.”

“You've guessed exactly right,” he said.

“Still,” I said, “I mustn't shrink from following the argument and examining it, so long as I take you to mean what you say. Thrasymachus, it seems to me you're no longer joking. You're saying what you believe is true.”

“What difference does it make to you whether I believe it?” he said. “Why don't you challenge the argument?” 349b

“No difference,” I said. “But try to answer one more question. Do you think a just person would want to get more than another just person?”

“Not at all,” he said. “If he did, he wouldn't be the polite, naive person he is now.”

“What about getting more in a just action?”

“Not even in a just action,” he said.

“Would he think it right to get more than an unjust person? Would he want to?”

“He would think it right and want it,” he said, “but he wouldn't manage it.”

“That isn't what I'm asking,” I said. “I'm asking whether 349c a just person doesn't claim or want more than another just person, but does want more than an unjust one.”

“Yes, that's how it is,” he said.

“What about the unjust person? Does he think he should get more than a just person and more than a just action?”

“Of course,” he said. “He thinks he deserves more than everyone.”

“So the unjust person will also try to get more than another unjust person and more than an unjust action? Will he compete to get the most of all?”

“That's right.”

“Let's put it this way,” I said. “The just person doesn't seek more than someone like himself, but does seek more than someone unlike himself. The unjust person seeks more than both 349d someone like himself and someone unlike himself.”

“That's well put,” he said.

“And the unjust person is intelligent and good, while the just person is neither?” I asked.

“That's right too,” he said.

“Then the unjust person resembles the intelligent and good person, while the just person doesn't?”

“How could someone with those qualities fail to resemble such people?” he said. “And how could the other person resemble them?”

“Good. So each is the same kind of person as the people he resembles?”

“Of course,” he said.

“All right, Thrasymachus. Do you call one person musical and another unmusical?” 349e

“Yes.”

“Which is knowledgeable and which isn't?”

“Surely the musical person is knowledgeable and the unmusical one isn't.”

“And to the extent each is knowledgeable, he's good; to the extent he isn't, he's bad?”

“Yes.”

“Is it the same with someone trained in medicine?”

“Yes.”

“Then do you think a trained musician, while tuning a lyre by tightening and loosening its strings, would want to go beyond another trained musician, or claim to do more?”

“I don't.”

“But he would go beyond someone with no musical training?”

“He would have to,” he said.