Carl G. Anderson The Challenge of Thrasymachus 12 November 2001

•The Accounts of Justice (dikaiosynê ) in Book One

B. Polemarchus

1. Simonides "stated that it is just to give to each what is owed to him [331e]."
2. Justice "gives benefits to friends and does harm to enemies [332d]."

C. Thrasymachus

1. Justice is the advantage of the stronger [338c].
2. Justice is obeying the rulers [339b] in so far as they are rulers in the precise sense [341a].
3. Justice is another's good while injustice is one's own good [343b-344c].

D. Socrates: justice is human virtue [aretê] [335c].

Ideology [?!?]: communal assumptions and habits of thought, perception, and desire that influence human actions; a world-view that provides a set of approved identities and purposes for the members of a society.

False consciousness: the tendency to perceive the world (including the social world) as fitting one's ideology even when this ideology obscures the "real" facts. Through false consciousness personal or historical contingencies can appear to be "natural facts" or facts of human nature.

"The state of false consciousness may be the inevitable result of a way of living, and characterizes the generic and chronic kind of servitude that cannot even perceive its own situation. It may therefore coexist with a kind of illusory contentment." — Simon Blackburn

Plato "shows that the property with which he would identify justice if he had been brought up under optimal conditions is essentially tied to the property with which he would then identify happiness. Second, he does even this indirectly by constructing a complex blueprint of the type of polis which (allegedly) provides that type of upbringing to its inhabitants [Reeve, p. 38]."

•Bibliography