[348c]
“I affirm
it,” he said, “and have told you my reasons.”
“Tell me then how you would express yourself on this point about
them. You call one of them, I presume, a virtue and the other a
vice?” “Of course.” “Justice the
virtue and injustice the vice?” “It is likely,1 you innocent,
when I say that injustice pays and justice doesn't pay.”
“But what then, pray?” “The
opposite,” he replied. “What! justice vice?”
“No, but a most noble simplicity2 or goodness of heart.” “Then do you call
injustice badness of heart?”
1 Thrasymachus's “Umwertung aller Werte” reverses the normal application of the words, as Callicles does in Gorgias 491 E.
2 Thrasymachus recoils from the extreme position. Socrates' inference from the etymology of εὐήθεια(cf. 343 C) is repudiated. Injustice is not turpitude (bad character) but—discretion.εὐβουλία in a higher sense is what Protagoras teaches (Protagoras 318 E) and in the highest sense is the wisdom of Plato's guardians (428 B).
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5 & 6 translated by Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1969.
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