Thrasymachus And Glaucon: Socrates's View Of Justice

Socrates’s view of Justice After the debate about justice between Socrates and Thrasymachus, Glaucon plays a devil’s advocate and argues with Socrates about justice. Glaucon starts out his argument by stating, “we can see most clearly that those who practice justice do it unwillingly and because they lack the power to do injustice” . He then goes on to say that people do just acts out of fear and weakness and are afraid of punishments for injustice. At the end of Book IV, Glaucon changes his view and agrees with Socrates. Socrates argues that people are just not because they are afraid of the consequences for doing unjust acts, but because justice in itself is desirable and beneficial to one’s mental well-being since having the wisdom of knowledge, courage to stand up what is right, and having self-control to stop yourself from the wrong doing leads to a virtuous life. Socrates explains that there are three types of goods. The first type of good is desired only for its own sake, the second type of good is desired for their own sake and its good consequences and the third not desired for its own sake but only for its consequences . Socrates explains further that individuals have three parts of the soul and each part of the soul have …show more content…
He believes that if being a good person doesn’t get you any instrumental values, then there are no reason practice moral rules . If being a good to your neighbor doesn’t guarantee that your neighbor will dog sit every time you are out of town, Thrasymachus would say that you should not be neighborly. On the other hand, Socrates argues that you should strive to be a friendly neighbor, even if you don’t expect favors in return. If being neighborly doesn’t benefit you in anyway, that should not stop you from being nice to your neighbor. You should hope that if you are nice to your neighbors, it can encourage your neighbors to be nice to you in the