The Role of Desire and Value in Glaucon’s Comparison of a Just and Unjust Life.

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Book two of Plato’s Republic begins with Glaucon's argument for favouring an unjust life over a just life. Glaucon compares a perfectly just life to a perfectly unjust life to show that the perfectly unjust life is the happier life. I will define Glaucon’s views on the nature of justice and human motivation, and then summarize his metaphorical story of Gyges’ ring, to show how he combines these premises to come to the conclusion that the unjust life is happier.

I will assert that in order to complete the argument that an unjust life is happier, Glaucon must make the implicit assumption that if and only if we desire something, will that thing be valuable. With respect to my implicit assumption, I will argue that the most questionable step in Glaucon's argument is imposing that a perfectly unjust life is more valuable than a perfectly just life, because it is full of desires. Finally, I will consider a possible objection from Glaucon, and then provide a response to solidify the argument that one can value something without necessarily desiring it.

Glaucon begins his argument, for favouring an unjust life over a just life, by describing the nature of justice. He believes that being unjust is intuitively more favourable than being just (358e – 359). However, one that has both suffered from injustice and benefited from treating others unjustly concludes that suffering from injustice is far worse than the goodness gained from treating others unjustly (359a). Thus, it is better to act justly to prevent being treated unjustly, than to act unjustly and leave one’s self open to being treated unjustly. Glaucon proposes that those who cannot act unjustly establish agreements with each other (359b). Both parties agree to refrain from act...

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...have value. Something that is desirable is an object that is of informed desire. This means that a person bases their desire on accurate and full knowledge of happiness, value, and the good. Thus, we cannot know whether perfect injustice really gives value to things, if they are motivated by desires that are ill informed. Desires are necessary for making something valuable, but not sufficient for value, because one also needs informed knowledge to have consistent values for things.

What makes things valuable is that you desire them if fully informed, not that you must be fully informed to desire valuable things. If “couch potato” does not know whether he desires knowledge, until after he sees it is valuable (good) for him, then he cannot be fully informed about knowledge or other sufficient conditions for knowledge having value.

Works Cited

Plato, The Republic

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