Prospecting for Happiness in the Just Life
By Ajeng Shabrina
October 7, 2022
Glaucon and Adeimantus are noble individuals who are seeking the meaning of justice and injustice from their dialogue with Socrates. They seem to want to be seen as just people without feeling foolish for neglecting the rewards that can be gained by doing injustice.
Glaucon begins the dialogue by mentioning three different kinds of justice. The first is intrinsic justice, where people get pleasure in doing good. The second is both intrinsic and instrumental, where people get pleasure in doing good as well as rewards from doing good. And the third is the instrumental, where people only get the rewards from doing good, but need to do the drudgery to get those rewards.
Glaucon then asks a question. In which class is justice? Socrates answers that justice belongs in the second class. When man does justice, he will both like it and get the rewards from it. But Glaucon isn’t satisfied with Socrates’ answer. He says that according to the majority of people, justice is in the third class. We need to do the drudgery for the sake of wages and reputation.
From there, Glaucon tries to argue against justice by defending the unjust life. He wants to get the best opinion from Socrates. He then tells the story of the ring of Gyges. When the shepherd found a ring that made him invisible, he then committed adultery with the king’s wife, killed the king, and took over the kingdom. Glaucon is afraid that if there are two rings, one for a just man and one for an unjust man, each will do the same thing since no one will see them do injustice. He’s afraid that people are compelled to be just only because they know they are watched and judged by others.
Glaucon depicts the life of unjust people as far better than the life of just people. He comes up with Thrasymachus’ opinion. Let the unjust person do the most unjust deeds, but seem to be a just person. Even if he is caught doing unjust deeds, he can speak persuasively and use his power to shut down the witnesses. He has power, a wife, friends, and money. He can give magnificent sacrifices to God. Hence, all people and even God are on his side. On the other hand, a just person is the opposite of an unjust person, who dies miserably, no one knowing that he was a just person. From those two different lives, Glaucon defies Socrates. If he is just, will he be happy?
To answer all these questions, Socrates starts an analogy. If there is a just man, then there is a just city. Because the city is bigger than a man, if they can find a just city, they will also find the just man. To start with, Socrates starts by forming a simple city. A city needs people. They have necessities to be fulfilled, such as food, homes, and clothes. People there will work to fulfill each other’s necessities. They can work according to their natural ability.
Because of human beings’ desire, the city needs to be bigger than just a simple town. People will want to have a luxurious city. Since the needs of a luxurious city are not only primary needs, but people will also need to widen it. From there, they found the origin of war-the need for more land- but didn’t determine whether war is good or not. War requires a whole army. According to Socrates, “Don’t you think that war is an art and fighting a profession?” (page 23) To achieve it, they must do the job that suits their nature.
When the city is bigger, people need to determine who will rule and who will be ruled. The rulers or guardians must be wise, intelligent, skilled, and love the city. It is necessary to have more experienced and, therefore, older rulers. Rulers will need helpers called auxiliaries. They must be strong, skillful, and brave. The young are the best match for this task. The majority of any city are craftsmen, who always follow their desire without reason.
From there, Socrates and Glaucon get three classes within the just city according to nature: Guardians (rulers), Auxiliaries (soldiers), and Craftsmen. If the just city has three classes, the just soul also has three classes. According to Socrates, the three classes imply three parts of the soul, where guardians will have reason, auxiliaries will have courage, and craftsmen will have desire.
However, all the possessions and desires from the luxurious city are not needed for humans. Socrates tries to replace luxury with education. He doesn’t want to follow the majority. Socrates thinks that with education, people can be made wise, courageous, and temperate.
But it is impossible to make a just city with those virtues. The guardian refers to a philosopher, but philosophers want neither to be the ruler nor to be ruled by them. While it’s impossible to make a just city, it is still possible to have just people. Justice is not necessarily how we act toward others. Justice and injustice are not a reflection of one another because “…nothing can behave in opposite ways at the same time.” (page 34). We should mind our own business. “…The just man does not permit the various parts of his soul to interfere with one another or usurp each other’s functions. He has set his own life in order. He is his own master and his own law.” (page 38)
Socrates implies that virtue is the beautiful. It comes from pure education, such as fine art and harmony, that is contained in music. When young people are trained and exposed to good music, they will easily differentiate between beauty (such as a good deed) and ugliness (such as an unjust life). But being educated is a difficult task because education is painful. We need to be skeptical, make the brain work, look in every direction while there is a chain around our neck. Try to get out of the cave and seek the natural light outside.
Socrates gives a complicated answer to Glaucon’s and Adeimantus’s simple question: Is it better to be just or merely appear just? He fulfilled the task of giving him the best argument for doing just. We do not really know whether Socrates truly persuades them that doing justice makes people happy, but he tries to make Glaucon think about the just life from his analogy and draw his own conclusion.