Analysis of Socrate´s The Republic

The Republic Analysis

In The Republic, Glaucon is very keen on finding the true importance of what justice truly is. To do this he chooses to commend inequality in the virtuous way so that Socrates will disprove it and give him the true meaning of justice in its most sheer form. Glaucon addresses the situation by talking about the following three points: what people consider justice to be and what its roots are, all who exercise it, do so reluctantly, not because it is good, but essential, and that the life of the unjust man is preferable to that of the just man. Glaucon delivers exceptional proof for his dispute and by observing it from the viewpoint of a natural man, one who doesn’t have a spirit or conscience to disprove injustice, his dispute holds fact. However, I find it hard to believe that injustice is better than justice. His first point in commending injustice essentially declares that justice is shaped out of injustice.

He claims that the natural way of man is that each person wants to be superior and more prosperous in their life than anyone else and that they do not want anything negative to happen them. Since the repercussions outnumber the rewards an agreement is made to not benefit from the rewards nor experience the effects of injustice. The agreement is made between those who were prosperous and unprosperous because of the effects of injustice and the people that encounter both. Glaucon describes that justice is the favorable midway between the two serious forms of injustice. He ends his first argument by saying that individuals support justice because they have to, and not voluntarily.

Glaucon’s second part of his argument, he says that no one does the right thing by choice, we do the right...

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...ll not come back to haunt them.

Glaucon’s three examples prefer injustice, and he gives examples of the acceptance of injustice over justice. The only factual foundation that his argument holds, is that sometimes we let our wants and desires muffle our conscience. Sometimes we make bad decisions even though our conscience tells us it’s bad, but we ignore it because we desire our wants. Everyone will have their own views on this, but it really varies upon each person. Someone may be unjust and they can completely agree because they are reaping the benefits from being unjust versus when they were a just person, they just haven’t experienced the consequences of being unjust. I also believe that there are people who would be unjust if no consequences followed, but I think that there are more honorable people in our world simply because they choose to be.