The Practice of Justice & Injustice
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The second argument of Glaucon in defense of a life of injustice is that those who practice justice "do so against their will . . . but not as a good" (255). In other words, to behave justly is a hardship, even for the best of the just, presumably because it is so much easier to behave unjustly. The third argu ment proceeds from the second, that "the life of the unjust is after all better far than the life of the just" (255). This is Glaucon's formulation of the view that crime pays, that there are material rewards for behaving badly but little reward for behav ing well. Therefore injustice is to be preferred to justice.The strength of the arguments together is that the weight of real-world evidence is all on the side of Glaucon's view that it is difficult to behave justly on one hand, for the reason that on the other hand there is no reward for doing so. Material advan tage confers privilege and benefit on everyday experience of those who can manipulate their environment and who do not shrink from doing so just because it may impinge on the well-being of others. Indeed, to maintain the good life, the natural human tendency is to seek advantage at the expense of others. The strength of an argument that those who behave justly do so against their will derives from the fact that the society in which test of justice comes is governed not according to the nat ural unfolding of social intercourse but according to the rule of law. Fear of punishment, not natural inclination to do
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knesses of Glaucon's arguments. According to Soc rates, the practice or enactment of justice is a function not of actions or behavior as such--and by implication not of material experience more generally--but rather of the just conceptualiza tion, which must precede the just action if the action and the one who performs it are to be considered authentically just, either by oneself or by others. On the other hand, if justice is properly conceptualized and internalized, it will perforce be realized (= made real) in the external life of the community.
Socrates summarizes the nexus of justice as idea and prac tice preferable to injustice near the end of Book IV of The Re public, noting that justice is concerned, "not with the outward man, but with the inward, which is the true self and concernment of man: for the just man does not permit the several elements within him to interfere with one another, or any of them to do the work of others--he sets in order his own inner life, and is his own master and own law, and at peace with himself" (329). It can be said, indeed, that the conceptualization of justice is its ideal form and that just actions reflect that form.
The strength of this argument is that it makes irrelevant the issue of wh
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Approximate Word count = 2037
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)
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