What does Plato’s Republic argue?
A conclave at Melos is all that stands between the Athenian navy and the island it intends to swallow. In Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War, nestled in an abundance of stirring political speeches, the Melian Dialogue stands out as a strikingly philosophical exchange on the role and domain of justice in war. The Melians, in their disadvantage, repeatedly cry for “fair play” (5.90, 5.96). The Athenian envoys, however, have little sympathy for their interlocutors. They are predecessors of political realists like Thrasymachus from Plato’s Republic, who mock the foolishness of truly just men.
Moreover, this essay will interrogate how Thucydides and Plato contextualize their realist arguments and show that they are flawed: the Athenian envoys, insistent on enlightening the idealist Melians, fail to negotiate with moderation; meanwhile, Thrasymachus’s tirade against justice merely inspires his interlocutors to aim at leading a just life. Perhaps political realism ultimately serves as foil to Thucydides and Plato’s imagination of a more ideal and just approach to politics. Together, the authors invite readers of history to consider how the powerful can act justly after all.
In the Melian Dialogue, the Athenian envoys argue that justice is equivocal. It is most sensible and necessary for any party, powerful or not, to act in self-interest and call it just. The envoys begin their negotiation by dismissing any possibility for the ideal kind of justice. The situation at hand, as they put it, is hemmed in by an unmistakable difference in power, whereas “the standard of justice” is contingent “on the equality of power to compel” (5.89). In effect, the Athenians reject the moral compulsion to act justly. They direct the discussion, instead, toward an investigation into the most ‘just’ conclusion possible, and wage arguments to convince Melos that justice can be that which aligns with their necessity— self-preservation.
Firstly, the Athenians assert that the act of conquest does not put an empire in the wrong (5.104). The envoys cite the “general and necessary law of nature to rule whatever one can” (5.105). The Athenians claim that the Melians “or anybody else with the same power…would be acting in precisely the same way” (5.105). One line of interpretation, thus, is that gods favor they who make the most of their power. If the Melians should claim that the right is that which the gods favor, then an act of justice would be to use one’s power to one’s advantage, to conquer (5.104-105). It follows that their necessity to expand, to “increase not only the size but the security of our empire,” is both just and natural (5.97). In this way, Athenians have shown justice, at least in war, to be more complicated than a strict ideal. The envoys press on, making it known that the Melians’ alleged saviors, the Spartans, abuse the ambiguity of justice most of all. They are “most conspicuous for believing that what they like doing is honorable and what suits their interests is just” (5.105). The Athenians speak of the Spartans as a case study: they rebranded justice to veneer their passions and greed and you, the Melians, should do the like to save yourselves. The ease with which Athenians embrace moral relativism should not be ignored. Do the envoys come out of the dialogue appearing more well versed in the realities of the political world, or simply to have lost reverence for justice altogether?
Conceivably, Thucydides intended for the envoys to epitomize Athenian moral depravity. It is the blind adoration of political realism that drove the Athenian demos off course. What remains is an empire servile to a rigid set of imperialist principles that it construes to be natural and unchanging. Returning to the opening of the dialogue, notice how the Athenians subtly compliment the Melians in their decision to exclude the corruptible masses from their conversation (5.85). Perhaps it is unexpected that Athenians, coming from a democratic tradition, should have little confidence in the masses. But this attitude is a consequence of the evolving political character in Athens.
Since the death of “first citizen” Pericles, demagogical figures have arisen, “each of whom aimed at occupying [that] first place” (2.65). In Thucydides’s own words, Athens was “nominally” democratic; the subjects of the regime itself placed their confidence in the few, not the many (2.65). Accordingly, the praise went to the opportunistic, and those daring enough to rank self-interest above all. The Athenian empire’s priorities shifted in precisely this direction.
The envoys say that, in the case of Melos, the Athenians would be indifferent to the facts of right or wrong (5.97). They care whether the “weaker islanders…escape,” whether Athens shows weakness (5.97). This imperialist Athens betrays Pericles’s vision for the Athenian demos, which should “do kindness to others [without] any calculations of profit or loss” (2.40-41). But most importantly, the Athenian envoys find themselves ill-equipped to negotiate with an idealist foe. This is poignant, considering that the Melians are to Athenians what Athenians were, just five decades earlier, to the Persians.
Athenians dismiss the Melians’ appeal to hope, when their ancestors left victory against the Persians “in the doubtful hands of Hope” (2.42, 5.102). Athenians say the Melians deluded by “false honor” and choose their own disaster, when their ancestors “chose to check the enemy’s pride… thought it more honorable to stand their ground and suffer death” (2.42, 5.111).
Possibly Thucydides presses one to consider whether Athens was always culpable of exceptionalism, for even Pericles said that while Athens fights for “what is sweet in life… others are brave out of ignorance” (2.40). Or, perhaps, the corrupting habits of injustice have blinded the Athenians to recognizing some legitimacy in political idealism. In any case, the Athenian envoys fail their own “safe rule”: that one should “treat [their] inferiors with moderation” (5.111). The negotiation fails and Melos becomes a subject of massacre. Thucydides does not step in to commentate; perhaps his silence bids the reader to decide whether a callous, imperialist Athens truly deserves the same praise as before.
Where Thucydides might contrast past and present Athens to caution against narrow-minded political realism, Plato’s Republic harnesses Thrasymachus’s challenge as impetus to investigate the relation between justice and injustice. Like the Athenian envoys before him, Thrasymachus first conceives of justice as that which is advantageous to the stronger, the ruling authority. To this, Socrates quickly assembles a refutation, demonstrating that the art of ruling requires genuine care for the subjects, and justice cannot preclude the weak (342e). The infuriated Thrasymachus then claims that injustice profits more than justice “in every situation” (343d-e).
Socrates thus interrogates whether one who strictly takes and exploits necessarily profits from their misdeeds. The philosopher points out that the unjust exploits both the just and unjust and, by principle, tries to outdo both the just and the unjust. In this way, they are not only bad and ignorant, but also ineffective in any group venture (350b-c, 351c-e). Curiously, it is Socrates’s interlocutor Glaucon who inadvertently demonstrates that one cannot stand behind true injustice. The men consider the perfectly unjust person, who always acts in accordance with injustice and makes the world a place of less good (361a-b).
They agree that the average person will not partake in this extremely unjust cause unless the injustice is dressed in just clothing (361a-b). In fact, as was discussed in the Melian Dialogue, both Athenians and Spartans are guilty of this practice. This reveals, crucially, that injustice is not tempting in itself. By contrast, the perfectly just person acts in accordance with justice regardless of outward appearances. They act just for its own sake (362b-e). This asymmetry shows that injustice cannot be intrinsically desirable. The matter of profit and whether justice is intrinsically desirable, however, remains the subject of discussion for the remainder of Republic.
Interestingly, Thrasymachus’s challenge only serves as a foreword to a more distinguished discussion of the just individual, and eventually the just soul and just city. Thrasymachus, not Socrates, is the one to move Glaucon to realize that he prefers the view that “the life of the just is more profitable” (347e). Arguably, Socrates arranged for this arc of discussion: consider how he carefully extracts the theme of justice from his exchange with Cephalus, how he overthrows Simonides’s definition of justice and paves ground for his eventual proposition to oust the poets from the ideal city (331b-c, 334b). It follows, naturally, that Socrates should also tackle the popular, realist perspective on justice next. Plato lends much description to Thrasymachus’s entrance: “he was incapable of remaining silent any longer…and sprang at us, like a wild beast at its prey” (336b).
Though initially “dismayed,” Plato’s Socrates comes to tame Thrasymachus; at one point when Thrasymachus concedes, Socrates even sees him “sweating profusely,” “blushing” (350d). Perhaps such is the project of the Republic: to reveal the nature of injustice and compel political realists such as Thrasymachus to rethink their tendency to construe generalizations (that “injustice is… stronger, more free and more powerful than justice, so long as it is practiced on a large enough scale”) as unobjectionable truths (344c). Altogether, though realist arguments take center stage in the Melian Dialogue and Book 1 of the Republic, the texts illustrate the lure of injustice to motivate readers and interlocutors to participate in the exercise of envisioning a more just outcome, a more ideal city. Perhaps to put realism into question is not to “make trouble” with it or see it as an enemy (498d). But realism’s imperfections might just make its defenders “blush.”
What does Plato’s Republic argue?
