Thrasymachus View Of Justice Essay

In Book I of Plato’s Republic the famed philosopher Socrate debates with a trio of characters the very definition of justice and what it means to be just. The last to present his ideas of the three, Thrasymachus argues that justice is the interest of the strongest party, and that the weak can do right by serving the interest of said party. In essence, Thrasymachus proclaims that the lifestyle of the unjust is far more profitable than the lifestyle of the just, so long as one can get away with being unjust. In the reality painted by Thrasymachus, tyranny takes the place of democracy, as the individual who is not weak must see government as an obstacle to their rise to power and accumulation of wealth. The weak are then destined to be ruled over

Trump, who has shown a penchant for walking over justice whenever he’s deemed that being unjust would profit him better. Williams argues that Trump, like Thrasymachus, follows a philosophy of pleonexia--“the condition of insatiable appetites” that leads one to always place their own welfare above those others.(Williams, pg.2) And yet, while William’s piece does a satisfactory job at explaining Book I’s significance, it does get lost a bit too much in it’s Thrasymachus’s portion, rather ignoring the importance of the other two sections that are there. The idea that the strongest party dictates what is justice and what is just doesn’t begin with Thrasymachus, but starts with Cephalus and then transfers to his son, Polemarchus’ argument, with Socrates’ insistence that their definitions of justice have been influenced by their wealth and social status. This later ties into the definition that Thrasymachus provides Socrates, which holds that the strongest party expects its weaker subjects to adhere to justice so that their authority may go unchallenged.