POL200Y5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Healthy City, Meddle, Glaucon
20 Sep 2017
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Socrates believes he has adequately responded to thrasymachus and is through with the discussion of justice, but the others are not satisfied with the conclusion they have reached. Glaucon, one of socrates"s young companions, explains what they would like him to do. What glaucon and the rest would like socrates to prove is that justice is not only desirable, but that it belongs to the highest class of desirable things: those desired both for their own sake and their consequences. Glaucon points out that most people class justice among the first group. They view justice as a necessary evil, which we allow ourselves to suffer in order to avoid the greater evil that would befall us if we did away with it. Since we can all suffer from each other"s injustices, we make a social contract agreeing to be just to one another. We only suffer under the burden of justice because we know we would suffer worse without it.
