Thrasymachus Vs Plato

Justice can be defined as the legal or philosophical theory by which fairness is administered. In today’s world, it is filled with different ethnic and cultural groups that share as many things in common as much as they do as in differences. Due to this, many different cultures believe in different concepts of justice. In the book “The Republic”, Plato introduced an early theory on the perception of justice through the character Socrates. Throughout the book, the character Thrasymachus poses some challenging claims to Socrates that explains that humans only care about justice when it is beneficial to them which sums up to the conclusion that injustice is more beneficial than justice, he also argues that the justice is mainly in the interest

of the “stronger”, which is merely the name given for what the powerful or ruler has inflicted on the people.

In this essay, I will be explaining the two different opposing answers given to Thrasymachus by Plato and Epicurus.

In his dialogue, Plato uses Socrates to help reject the views and claims of Thrasymachus by arguing that the justice is based on the just person and the just city state. Plato believed that justice has a relationship between the individual and the city. Which helped to provide him with his own definition of justice, which is the having and doing of what one’s own; or in his words “A just man is a man in the right place, doing his best and giving the specific equivalent of what he has received.” To Plato, this statement can be applied in both an individual and universal level. I believed that his conception of justice is generated based by his conviction that everything in nature is part of a hierarchy, which in order to be healthy it will have to work together in harmony which requires that each must

fulfil their roles. This leads Plato to believe that an individual’s soul is also hierarchical and have three parts: Rational, Spirited and the Appetite. The rational can be explained as the must to guide and control where the body leads, the spirited as the active emotions such as anger, or courage that can push an individual to accomplish a difficult task and lastly the appetite, which are our desires and its motives for us to continue living. According to Epicurus, he rejected the views of Thrasymachus by explaining his views on his beliefs based on hedonism which is the pursuit of devotion to pleasure. Epicurus believes that all values can be based off of what can be considered pleasurable and pain. He conceives justice as a consisting of an agreement for mutual advantage. Epicurus believes that the only way to be happy is to do things that endorse pleasure, he also believes that a law is only unjust when it causes pain and is not beneficial to those it affects.
Though both expresses a great deal of interests, I will have to side with Plato.

His claims and views are more convincing due to the explanation of the soul. I believe that the soul does have three parts that helps to keep us together that helps serves a basis for explaining the virtues. Plato suggest that people can only find happiness if they are just, and in which I agree because if they are just, it is a form of suggestion of guidance, and is more or less taking an individual decision and determining what he or she may judge to be a just behavior. However, it also leads us to an argument that shows that not all things that are just are good. It makes us to question ourselves to think how can being “just” leads to happiness? Though I do agree with Plato on a certain extent, I also do disagree with him, solely with the fact of his outlook on justice. Though his idea of justice is similar to our owns, they are essentially different because of his worldview is opposing to ours. He believes that the moral beliefs would be based on the community instead of the individual. In other words, a person would be moral if their action matches what the law expects of them and not by what they speak or say. Plato does not actually answer some of the question with any specific details which makes some of the arguments somewhat vague. Which leads to having each argument going back and forth from one conclusion to another. Another problem is that groups of people do not share the same

virtues or views. Each person will behave how they choose to even though outside aspects may influence certain behavior and it is also who they “are” that will determine how they will react to them.