Key Arguments

• By nature, 'to do injustice is ... good' while 'to suffer injustice' is evil, and the evil outweighs the good; experience of both leads people to agree mutually to renounce both.
• From this agreement 'arise laws and mutual covenants,' and what law ordains is called 'lawful and just.'
• Justice is 'a mean or compromise' between the best (doing injustice unpunished) and the worst (suffering injustice without retaliation), hence accepted as the 'lesser evil.'
• Those with power would never accept such agreements; only inability to do injustice drives compliance.

Source Quotes

I am delighted, he replied, to hear you say so, and shall begin by speaking, as I proposed, of the nature and origin of justice. They say that to do injustice is, by nature, good; to suffer injustice, evil; but that the evil is greater than the good. And so when men have both done and suffered injustice and have had experience of both, not being able to avoid the one and obtain the other, they think that they had better agree among themselves to have neither; hence there arise laws and mutual covenants; and that which is ordained by law is termed by them lawful and just.

They say that to do injustice is, by nature, good; to suffer injustice, evil; but that the evil is greater than the good. And so when men have both done and suffered injustice and have had experience of both, not being able to avoid the one and obtain the other, they think that they had better agree among themselves to have neither; hence there arise laws and mutual covenants; and that which is ordained by law is termed by them lawful and just. This they affirm to be the origin and nature of justice;—it is a mean or compromise, between the best of all, which is to do injustice and not be punished, and the worst of all, which is to suffer injustice without the power of retaliation; and justice, being at a middle point between the two, is tolerated not as a good, but as the lesser evil, and honoured by reason of the inability of men to do injustice.

And so when men have both done and suffered injustice and have had experience of both, not being able to avoid the one and obtain the other, they think that they had better agree among themselves to have neither; hence there arise laws and mutual covenants; and that which is ordained by law is termed by them lawful and just. This they affirm to be the origin and nature of justice;—it is a mean or compromise, between the best of all, which is to do injustice and not be punished, and the worst of all, which is to suffer injustice without the power of retaliation; and justice, being at a middle point between the two, is tolerated not as a good, but as the lesser evil, and honoured by reason of the inability of men to do injustice. For no man who is worthy to be called a man would ever submit to such an agreement if he were able to resist; he would be mad if he did.

This they affirm to be the origin and nature of justice;—it is a mean or compromise, between the best of all, which is to do injustice and not be punished, and the worst of all, which is to suffer injustice without the power of retaliation; and justice, being at a middle point between the two, is tolerated not as a good, but as the lesser evil, and honoured by reason of the inability of men to do injustice. For no man who is worthy to be called a man would ever submit to such an agreement if he were able to resist; he would be mad if he did. Such is the received account, Socrates, of the nature and origin of justice.

Key Concepts

• They say that to do injustice is, by nature, good; to suffer injustice, evil; but that the evil is greater than the good.
• hence there arise laws and mutual covenants; and that which is ordained by law is termed by them lawful and just.
• it is a mean or compromise, between the best of all, which is to do injustice and not be punished, and the worst of all, which is to suffer injustice without the power of retaliation
• justice, being at a middle point between the two, is tolerated not as a good, but as the lesser evil
• For no man who is worthy to be called a man would ever submit to such an agreement if he were able to resist

Context

Glaucon’s first plank in reviving Thrasymachus: justice as a human convention born of weakness and mutual vulnerability rather than natural goodness.

Perspectives

Plato

Presents this as the strongest conventionalist thesis to be refuted by showing justice is the proper order of the soul and thus genuinely good, not merely a truce.

Socrates

Will argue that this account mistakes external constraints for internal virtue; true justice is not a mere compromise but a psychic harmony constitutive of well-being.