How To Tell If You Re A Jerk Analysis

Throughout life, one encounters a certain type of person that can be classified as self-indulgent. Though it may sound like a childish insult, the thought is plain and simple; everybody knows a jerk. They know that person who has no regard for others, who glares at strangers, abuses their partners, and even one who cuts in line. These people all are similar to a man named Dale, a person who does all those vile acts and much more. According to “How to Tell If You’re a Jerk” by Eric Schwitzgebel, Dale is a jerk in every aspect of his life and his behavior is an injustice in accordance to the definitions of justice provided in Plato’s The Republic. Moreover, Schwitzgebel does not classify a jerk as one who with such a single irredeemable quality but rather someone whose personality is made up of many morally unjust qualities. He states that …show more content…
Polemarchus defines justice as a process “to render every man his due,” (Plato). He sees justice as an act in which everybody gets what they deserve, friends deserve to be helped and enemies deserved to be harmed. By this definition, Dale’s behavior is uncalled for. His partner should be viewed as a friend, one who deserves to be treated with the utmost love and respect, not an enemy who is forced into the harmful environment created by Dale’s temper tantrum. Similarly, one can consider their neighbors to be friends and Dale’s tendency to glare at them without any other motive other than the crossing of their paths is considered unjust in the sense that he is simply being rude. Polemarchus also states that “the just man is good [and] the business of harming people, whether friends are not, must belong to his opposite, the unjust,” (Plato). The just man is one who would never harm anyone, not even for their own benefit, the way that a jerk would. A just man is one who would not glare at their neighbors like Dale but rather smile at them because any form of harm is to be wrongfully