Being Unjust Analysis

Have you ever ask yourself how much being unjust impacts your everyday life and decisions, and how your life would change when you are just? Plato wrote in this book’s expect about how Glaucon perceives the basic idea of justice and how we humans perceive justice as. People created own laws and are deciding whether or no to follow them. One of Glaucon’s argument is that we follow justice to get things or because of its consequences. He also argues that we should preserve justice as a way to gain things not to value it for its own sake. The first of Glaucon’s two claims is the descriptive claim which talks about and explains that humans instrumentally value justice instead of intrinsically valuing it.

The argument for descriptive

claim is that people follow laws because they get in return peace, reputation for being justice which is more important than actually being just. In the story of Gyges, Furthermore,Glaucon describes,
”And as he was sitting among the others, he happened to turn the setting of the ring towards himself to the inside of his hand. When he did this, he became invisible to those sitting near him,and they went on talking as if he had gone. He wondered at this, and, fingering the ring, he turned the setting outwards agin and became visible. So he experimented with the ring to test whether it had this power ( Plato, 359e-360a )
This shows that Gyges valued ring for the consequence of power it gave not for it own sake . Glaucon shows story of ring to related ring and justice and show that we valued the justice like a ring for the things it give us in return. This story also shows person obtain the ring in on unjust way and doing unjust things. Gyges obtained the ring from a corpse after an earthquake.(359e) without thinking that he is stealing a ring and that family of the demise might look for it.
After taking ring from the corpse and seeing its powers, he uses it to seduce and taking over a kingdom. Glaucon expresses, “He at once arranged to become one of the messengers sent to report to the king. And when he arrived there, he seduced the king’s wife , attacked the king with her help,killed him, and took over the kingdom”(Plato, 359e). The assumptions Glaucon make in his descriptive claim are humans try to out-do each other and we are competing with other other to come out on top. The assumption he makes about human nature is that our nature makes us greedy and drives us to get the things we want and we don not care who gets hurt. We should doubt this assumptions because person being unjust and getting stuffs we want does not mean person will be happy. A person cannot be happy if he or she gets gets caught doing injustice because the reputation of being just goes away. Person without reputation of being cannot value justice for either its consequence or its own sake. Glaucon says,”The best is to do injustice without paying the penalty, the worst is to suffer it without being able to take revenge”(Plato, 359a). Penalty can be criminal punishment, emotional or physical. Even if we get things we want from justice, we can be unhappy person because they can lose loved one in the process of coming out on the top in the competition. They could lose loved one in their journey to satisfy their greed and get what they want . A person can be unhappy because doing injustice does not and know if it they will get caught so gets scared and paranoid that will lose everything like Gyges could have kingdom taken away from him.
Even though we are unjust and we could lose everything, we still perceive justice as an instrumental value instead of an intrinsically value.

Glaucon defines perfectly unjust person, as a person that unjust but has reputation for being just. Person being unjust is matter of skill and be a good deceiver. The matter of being unjust is getting way with no matter who gets hurt in the process. It also means that person has resources and money to get away with it. In other words make your victims of injustice go away and you ever facing the terrible consequences of your wrong doings. On the other hand, Glaucon defines perfectly just person as having no reputation for being just. There one conflict with being just is you do not know if they are being just because of its consequences or its own sake. Glaucon’s normative claim is how should we value justice for consequences, not for its own sake and should see as a way for us to get stuff. Plato wrote, “Indeed every man believes that injustice is far more profitable to himself than justice” (Plato, 360d). The comparison in normative argument is not fair because just person is put into more extreme situation than unjust. Glaucon portrayed unjust person being punish and tortured for things he or she did not committed. They are punished because they have the reputation of being unjust even though they are actually just. The unjust in the just situation and vice versa are portrayed in very extreme situation. It is unfair comparison because the situations are too extreme situations; even if a person had unjust reputation, can still live a normal life and not tortured for crimes he or she falsely accused of. This comparison remedied have more normal day-to-day situations where it shows daily consequence of having unjust and just reputation. An example would be people do not trust you or do not want be your friend. If the comparison was remedied with daily situations, then this way, people

would be able to relate to the more real world examples. In expect there is a real life example, when we are showed trying to be just is a way for us to have a good afterlife. However, Glaucon argues,“ if we unjust, we get the profits our crimes and transgressions and afterwards persuade the gods by payer and escape without punishment”(Plato,366a). However, poets assume that we can buy gods’s forgiveness however, that might not necessary true because poets are known to create works of art not facts. We can conclude that no one knows or is sure if there is an afterlife or gods.
Glaucon describes how we view justice and that we like justice for its advantages. One of his big point he makes is that we value justice for it reputation
For example, a CEO of a company brides police officials, has mob tides and pay of clients. He has reputation for being just because he donates to parties and was never caught for his illegal acts. If We keep valuing justice for it reputation by the end we will know not what is right or wrong. This could lead us to have no conscience. We should starting value instrumental and instrically justice, so now what is right and wrong. In the end, we should as yourselves is being injustice worth losing intangible things such as love?