At this point, Glaucon jumps into the conversation, who Socrates describes as “courageous”. Glaucon, like the reader, is not satisfied with Socrates’ argument against Thrasymachus and wants Socrates to do a better job of defending justice. Glaucon and his brother, Adeimantus, proceed to detail all the things that are said by people about how justice is for suckers and injustice is good, if you can get away with it and be thought of as just. They mention the story of Gyges and the invisibility ring that lets the wearer get away with crimes undetected. They want to know in what way justice is good in and of itself, not for the benefits of its reputation. In short, they do everything in their power to present society’s argument in favour of not being a just man in order to force Socrates to address the issue fully.

 

Socrates is pleased that these two brothers are so interested in hearing justice defended, but he is hesitant to actually do so. Why? Because he claims he doesn’t actually have an answer for them. But he refuses to not answer. He gives his “opinion.” What are we to make of this? Is Socrates/Plato saying that they are telling a noble lie? Or, is this, again, Socrates/Plato pretending not to have the truth so that others have to strive for it themselves? We can’t just inherit someone else’s truths, we have to discover them ourselves.

 

In any case, Socrates quickly launches into the discussion by asking a weird question again, or, at least, it seems weird to me. And, in fact, it’s not a question, really, but a proposal, that there are two “justices”. There is the justice of a man and the justice of a city. At first glance, this may seem okay, but when you really think about it, isn’t this problematic? I mean, let’s take a man. We can say of a man that he is just or unjust or acts justly or unjustly. In doing so, we are referring to others, for the man acts justly or unjustly towards others. But what of a city? What is a just city if not the relations between just individuals in it? I suppose this could be our modern view of the state as simply a contract between individuals. For example, could you have an unjust city if all the people in it are just? If the laws were unjust but the city was full of just people, wouldn’t they change the law to make it just? I suppose the opposite is not true, though. If your city was full of unjust people, would they change the laws so that they were all unjust? That seems odd. You would think that in either case, people would want a just city, at least the bulk of people. So I suppose you could then speak of the justice of a city separately from the justice of a man, but it seems a bit odd, still.

 

The Republic is such a crazy book. People think Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is weird, but check this out: “If we should watch a city coming into being in speech, we would also see its justice coming into being, and its injustice (369a)”. I feel like I am watching Inception. First off, it’s hard to wrap your head around this idea. Here are a bunch of people talking and they say, “hey, let’s imagine in our heads that we create a city from scratch. As we’re doing that, we can watch out to see if we see justice creeping in somewhere.” I mean, if you’re creating a city, wouldn’t you be responsible for creating its justness or not? The way Socrates describes it, it’s as if they will create this city in speech and then it will surprise them by having certain attributes that they may not have given to it. Much as you might picture a car in your head and then walk around it to see what colour it happens to become of its own accord.

 

But let’s go with them; though before we go further, I should mention that Socrates has a reason for looking for justice in the city. If there is justice in both a city and a man, Socrates hopes that by seeing justice in the city, which is large, they will be able to more clearly see what justice is in a man, which is small. Again, this is a really weird way to go about trying to determine what something is. They’re not only creating a city in speech and watching out for justice, but they then plan to look for justice in the man more easily based on what justice looks like in their imaginary city. This is really, really weird.

 

A city comes into being because people are not self-sufficient, according to Socrates. That is, people are not complete units. Man is dependent on others for life. Man has needs and this drives the creation of cities. Or, to put it another way, man lives as he does because of what he needs. His needs dictate the type of social arrangement he lives in. He needs many things, but cannot efficiently produce them all himself. It is better, says Socrates, for a man to pursue one task so that it can be done well. In addition, some men are better at some tasks than others, so people are not free to choose what to do (regardless of whether the law permits it), but are suited to one or another thing more than others. The city cannot be small, for if each specializes in one thing, such as farming, then someone else has to make the plow. The builder does not manufacture his own hammer or nails. So the size of the city grows with specialization. The city also will need to trade with outsiders in order to access a good diversity of things, which means some of what the city produces will go to non-citizens. Socrates has described a market economy, complete with labourers, businesspeople, merchants, traders and money for ease of exchange.
The city is plain, however. It satisfies the needs of the people, but little more. Interestingly, Socrates mentions that the people will be careful about how many children they have so that they can avoid war and poverty. The ancient Greeks, as Malthus argued later, knew that a population that grows too fast (faster than the increase in production), leads to either poverty or to the need to take things from others (war). A well-governed city ensured that the people practiced some form of population control.