Chapter 21 Part 3

The Happy World of Plato's Republic

Jude remembered Matthew’s cries for justice and Ernst laughingly calling him Polemarchus. “Socrates effectively said dike was not only justice, but wrong,” Jude commented. “It meant he rejected his society, and it must have been hugely controversial.” 

“More than you can possibly think. But let us move on to the blustering and insolent Thrasymachus,” Schafer said. “As a Sophist, he was a teacher of wisdom, but he also made his living as an entertaining showman. In their wanderings, the Sophists had the opportunity to see how cities differed from tyrannies to democracies, and this surely helped define his definition of justice.” 

“What was it?” 

“Might makes right,” Schafer said promptly. “Justice belongs to the strong.” 

Might makes right. Where had Jude heard it before?

“It’s very crude,” he said.

“As obnoxious as Thrasymachus might be, he has stripped away all pretensions to the righteousness found in dike and gotten to the heart of the matter. He knows meanings of justice can differ from place to place, and what they shared in common is that justice is what the rulers dictate,” Otto Schafer the bookseller explained.

“Because rulers have the power to enforce their wishes,” Jude conceded. “So Thrasymachus is arguing that those who control power get to define what is right and there is nothing more to justice beyond the ruler’s might?” 

Schafer picked up the Baltimore Sun and then the Sentinel, shaking his head at the pro-secessionist headlines. “Thrasymachus does have a point. Laws are made by those who rule us. Men who defy laws are punished because they violated the lawmakers’ wishes. Thus, we have might makes right.”  

“Some people do think laws are the only justice we have,” Jude admitted, thinking of Judge Harwood.  

“A common man cannot argue with what the ruler, or the state, wants. If a common man stands in their way, he is often destroyed,” Schafer said. “It is easy to see why many feel justice does not exist for them, as the slaves must do under laws that renders them property of their masters.” 

“And that’s why many people still resort to vengeance,” Jude said. “The only justice they feel they have.”