Hello, I'm Dr. Anadale and I teach philosophy at Mount St. Mary's University in Emmitsburg, Maryland.
This video summarizes the final part of Book 1 of Plato's Republic.
Socrates takes up the question of whether the life of an unjust person is better than the life of a just person.
This is an important question since its answer will tell us something about how to live the best life possible.
Discussion of this point begins at 348c, where Thrasymachus claims that injustice is a virtue and justice is a vice.
To explore this point, Socrates will determine whether injustice has the qualities of a virtue and whether justice has the qualities of a vice.
He is going to compare them both and say which one belongs with the virtues and which one belongs with the vices.
He gets Thrasymachus to say that a just person wants to outdo an unjust person, while an unjust person wants to outdo everyone, both the just and the unjust alike.
Then Socrates considers the case of a musician and a doctor.
The musician tries to outperform the non-musician but she does not try to outperform her fellow musicians. She regards them as her equals.
In restoring health the doctor tries to outdo the non-doctor but he does not try to triumph over his fellow doctors, at least not insofar as he's a doctor.
The craft of medicine itself does not include this orientation toward trying to best or outperform other doctors.
A doctor might engage in that activity insofar as he's a businessman, but his identity as a physician doesn't include that attempt to outdo his equals.
Socrates' point is that experts in any given field try to be excellent by the standards of that field.
They do not regard other excellent practitioners as rivals but as members of the same elite group.
So, he concludes, bad and ignorant people try to outperform everyone, while good and knowledgeable people only try to outperform those who are unlike them, in other words the bad and the ignorant.
This suggests that the unjust person is more like a vicious person, since he turns out to be like the ignorant and bad rather than like the good and clever.
Once Socrates identifies injustice as a vice, though, he is also able to draw out another important conclusion.
As we move through the next few pages it is important for you to keep in mind that a virtue, also translated as excellence, is something that enables you to perform an activity well.
If injustice is a vice, then rather than bringing power to the one who has it, it brings "factions hatreds and quarrels... while justice brings friendship and a sense of common purpose."
My first reading question for you is: How then will two unjust people behave toward each other?
What does Socrates say accounts for the ability of unjust people to act together towards a common project?
Look around 352c for the answer. In the next section of the argument Socrates ties virtue even more closely to the thing's proper activity and to its well-being.
He argues, beginning at 352e, that each thing has a function, "that which one can do only with it or best with it,"
and the virtue of each thing is what enables it to perform its function well. The function of a soul is living and the virtue or excellence of the soul, Socrates says, is justice.
Justice is what enables the soul to live well. And so we can see that a just soul is a soul that is living well or happily.
Socrates concludes this book by saying that he's gone very quickly through all of these points and much more remains to be said.
This brings us to the end of Book 1 of Plato's Republic.
Thanks for watching today; goodbye.