Thrasymachus on Justice and Power: Some Problems of Interpretation

Abstract

Philosophers and scholars have debated for long the nature and import of Thrasymachus’ views.¹ More recent commentators have tended to concentrate on the propositional content of Thrasymachus’ pronouncements, seeking to identify his doctrine by exhaustive elimination of various alternatives. This procedure can yield important insights, yet Guthrie is surely right to emphasise the danger of neglecting ‘the dramatic situation and emotional tension between the speakers’. Whether he is also right in claiming that ‘the driving-force behind Thrasymachus is passionate feeling rather than philosophical inquiry’ remains to be seen.² The task of this chapter is to show that while there are difficulties in interpreting Thrasymachus’ views consistently, Plato presents him as having a consistent and coherent attitude to justice. The rhetorical effect built into his speeches is that of rejecting the need to understand justice as an object of moral knowledge. Thrasymachus aims to cut off just conduct from the domain of the admirable, and does so by suggesting that the true nature of just conduct can only be grasped from the perspective of power. From this perspective one can see clearly why the conventional praise of justice is not an expression of genuine admiration. If Thrasymachus is right, to seek a moral understanding of justice is pointless and wrongheaded from the start: one does not have to explain why justice is an unqualified good given that those who praise it do not do so because they admire it in itself. The ‘fact’ which moral theory sets out to explain is not even a fact.