Key Arguments

• Arts are ‘pure and faultless’ as arts and have no needs; they consider the interest of their subject-matter.
• Medicine aims at the body’s good; horsemanship at the horse’s good; the pilot at the sailors’ good.
• Hence, as superiors of their subjects, arts do not enjoin the interest of the stronger, but the interest of the subject and weaker.
• Thus a ruler qua ruler seeks the ruled’s benefit, overturning ‘justice is the interest of the stronger’ in the strict sense too.

Source Quotes

Or have the arts to look only after their own interests? Or have they no need either of themselves or of another?—having no faults or defects, they have no need to correct them, either by the exercise of their own art or of any other; they have only to consider the interest of their subject-matter. For every art remains pure and faultless while remaining true—that is to say, while perfect and unimpaired. Take the words in your precise sense, and tell me whether I am not right.

Yes, clearly. Then medicine does not consider the interest of medicine, but the interest of the body? True, he said.

True, he said. Nor does the art of horsemanship consider the interests of the art of horsemanship, but the interests of the horse; neither do any other arts care for themselves, for they have no needs; they care only for that which is the subject of their art? True, he said.

To this he assented with a good deal of reluctance. Then, I said, no science or art considers or enjoins the interest of the stronger or superior, but only the interest of the subject and weaker? He made an attempt to contest this proposition also, but finally acquiesced.

That has been admitted. And such a pilot and ruler will provide and prescribe for the interest of the sailor who is under him, and not for his own or the ruler's interest? He gave a reluctant 'Yes.'

Key Concepts

• they have only to consider the interest of their subject-matter. For every art remains pure and faultless while remaining true—that is to say, while perfect and unimpaired.
• Then medicine does not consider the interest of medicine, but the interest of the body?
• Nor does the art of horsemanship consider the interests of the art of horsemanship, but the interests of the horse
• no science or art considers or enjoins the interest of the stronger or superior, but only the interest of the subject and weaker
• such a pilot and ruler will provide and prescribe for the interest of the sailor who is under him, and not for his own or the ruler's interest

Context

Republic I: Socrates exploits the ‘strict’ technê model, arguing from the end of arts to conclude that ruling qua ruling benefits subjects; the audience recognizes Thrasymachus’s definition has been overturned.

Perspectives

Plato

Endorses the technê-teleology: political leadership properly conceived is a knowledge serving the common good, not private gain.

Socrates

Affirms that justice aligns with proper function and order—ruling aims at the good of the ruled, revealing the moral norm embedded in technê.