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[367a]
For if you had all spoken in this way from the
beginning and from our youth up had sought to convince us, we should not now
be guarding against one another's injustice, but each would be his own best
guardian, for fear lest by working injustice he should dwell in communion
with the greatest of evils.1 This, Socrates, and perhaps even more than this, Thrasymachus and
haply another might say in pleas for and against justice and injustice,
inverting their true potencies, as I believe, grossly. But I—
[367b]
for I have no reason to hide
anything from you—am laying myself out to the utmost on the
theory, because I wish to hear its refutation from you. Do not merely show
us by argument that justice is superior to injustice, but make clear to us
what each in and of itself does to its possessor, whereby the one is evil
and the other good. But do away with the repute of both, as Glaucon urged.
For, unless you take away from either the true repute and attach to each the
false, we shall say that it is not justice that you are praising but the
semblance,
[367c]
nor injustice that you
censure, but the seeming, and that you really are exhorting us to be unjust
but conceal it, and that you are at one with Thrasymachus in the opinion
that justice is other man's good,2 the advantage of the other, and that injustice is advantageous and
profitible to oneself but disadvantageous to the inferior. Since, then, you
have admitted that justice belongs to the class of those highest goods which
are desirable both for their consequences and still more for their own sake,
as sight, hearing, intelligence, yes and health too,
[367d]
and all other goods that are productive3 by their very nature and not by opinion, this is
what I would have you praise about justice—the benefit which it
and the harm which injustice inherently works upon its possessor. But the
rewards and the honors that depend on opinion, leave to others to praise.
For while I would listen to others who thus commended justice and disparaged
injustice, bestowing their praise and their blame on the reputation and the
rewards of either, I could not accept that sort of thing from you unless you
say I must, because you have passed
[367e]
your
entire life4 in the
consideration of this very matter. Do not then, I repeat, merely prove to us
in argument the superiority of justice to injustice, but show us what it is
that each inherently does to its possessor—whether he does or does
not escape the eyes of gods and men—whereby the one is good and
the other evil.”While I had always
admired the natural parts of Glaucon and Adeimantus, I was especially
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