Republic

​But, my good friend, make an effort to show us too—it will certainly not be laid up badly for you if you benefit so many of us as we are—for indeed, speaking for myself, I tell you that I am not persuaded, nor do I think that injustice is more profitable than justice, not even if one lets it be and does not prevent it from doing what it wishes. But, my good friend, let there be an unjust man, and let him have the power to do injustice, either by going undetected or by fighting it out, nevertheless it does not persuade me, at least, that it is more profitable than justice. This, then, is perhaps what someone else among us also feels, not only I. Persuade us, then, my happy friend, sufficiently that we are not deliberating correctly in valuing justice above injustice. “And how,” he said, “shall I persuade you? For if you are not persuaded by what I was just saying, what more can I do for you? Or shall I take the argument and stuff it into your soul?” “By Zeus, no,” I said, “don’t you do that! But first of all, whatever you say, stand by it, or if you change your mind, do so openly and do not deceive us. But as it is, you see, Thrasymachus—for let us still examine the previous points—that though you first defined the doctor who is truly so, you did not think it necessary afterward to keep strictly to the shepherd who is truly so; instead, you think that he, insofar as he is a shepherd, fattens the sheep, looking not to what is best for the sheep, but, like some guest who is going to feast, to the banquet, or again, to selling them, like a money-maker and not a shepherd. But surely the shepherd’s art is not concerned with anything else than that over which it is set, how it will provide what is best for it—since its own affairs, so that it may be the best, have surely been sufficiently provided for, so long as it lacks nothing of being the shepherd’s art—and in this way I, for my part, thought just now that it is necessary for us to agree that every rule, insofar as it is a rule, considers what is best for nothing other than that, the ruled and the cared-for, both in public and in private rule. But do you think that the rulers in cities, those who truly rule, rule willingly?” “By Zeus, I do not think so,” he said, “but I know it well.”

”Why is that?” I said, “Thrasymachus. Do you not realize concerning the other offices that no one is willing to rule voluntarily, but they demand pay, on the ground that benefit from ruling will come not to themselves but to the ruled? Since tell me this much: do we not say that each of the arts is always different from another in this, in having a different power? And, my happy friend, do not answer contrary to your opinion, so that we may get somewhere.” “Yes, it is different in this,” he said. “Does not, then, each of them also provide us with some private benefit and not a common one, as for example medicine provides health, navigation safety in sailing, and the others in the same way?” “Certainly.” ”And does not the art of wages provide wages? For this is its power. Or do you call medicine and navigation the same? Or, if you wish to define strictly, as you proposed, if someone acting as a navigator becomes healthy because sailing on the sea is advantageous to him, would you on that account call it medicine any the more?” “Surely not,” he said. “Nor, I think, do you call the art of wages medicine, if someone is healthy while earning wages.” “Surely not.” “And what of this? Do you call medicine the art of wages, if someone earns wages while healing?” ”No,” he said. “Did we not, then, agree that the benefit of each art is private?” “Let it be so,” he said. “Then whatever benefit all the craftsmen benefit from in common, it is clear that they benefit from it by using some same thing in addition in common.” “It seems so,” he said. “And we say indeed that the benefit that comes to the craftsmen by earning wages comes to them from their additional use of the art of wages.” He agreed with difficulty. ”Therefore, this benefit, the receiving of wages, is not for each from his own art; but, if one must examine strictly, medicine produces health, and the art of earning wages produces wages, and housebuilding produces a house, and the art of earning wages, following upon it, produces wages, and all the other arts in the same way, each works its own work and benefits that over which it is set. And if pay is not added to it, is there any way in which the craftsman benefits from the art?” “It does not appear so,” he said. ”Does he then benefit no one even when he works for nothing?” “I think he does.” “Then, Thrasymachus, this is already clear, that no art or rule provides what is beneficial to itself, but, as we were saying long ago, it both provides and commands what is for the ruled, looking to the advantage of that which is weaker, and not to that of the stronger.”