Key Arguments

• Only by 'isolate them'—making each perfectly furnished for their respective lives—can we assess intrinsic effects.
• The perfectly unjust man should achieve 'the highest reach of injustice' by 'to be deemed just when you are not' and be equipped with rhetorical, financial, and social resources to avoid exposure.
• The perfectly just man must 'be and not to seem good'—'being just and seeming to be unjust' to ensure honors and rewards do not explain his choice.
• By taking both to their 'uttermost extreme' and then judging 'which of them is the happier,' reputational bias is controlled.

Source Quotes

Enough of this. Now, if we are to form a real judgment of the life of the just and unjust, we must isolate them; there is no other way; and how is the isolation to be effected? I answer: Let the unjust man be entirely unjust, and the just man entirely just; nothing is to be taken away from either of them, and both are to be perfectly furnished for the work of their respective lives.

First, let the unjust be like other distinguished masters of craft; like the skilful pilot or physician, who knows intuitively his own powers and keeps within their limits, and who, if he fails at any point, is able to recover himself. So let the unjust make his unjust attempts in the right way, and lie hidden if he means to be great in his injustice: (he who is found out is nobody:) for the highest reach of injustice is, to be deemed just when you are not. Therefore I say that in the perfectly unjust man we must assume the most perfect injustice; there is to be no deduction, but we must allow him, while doing the most unjust acts, to have acquired the greatest reputation for justice.

If he have taken a false step he must be able to recover himself; he must be one who can speak with effect, if any of his deeds come to light, and who can force his way where force is required by his courage and strength, and command of money and friends. And at his side let us place the just man in his nobleness and simplicity, wishing, as Aeschylus says, to be and not to seem good. There must be no seeming, for if he seem to be just he will be honoured and rewarded, and then we shall not know whether he is just for the sake of justice or for the sake of honours and rewards; therefore, let him be clothed in justice only, and have no other covering; and he must be imagined in a state of life the opposite of the former.

Let him be the best of men, and let him be thought the worst; then he will have been put to the proof; and we shall see whether he will be affected by the fear of infamy and its consequences. And let him continue thus to the hour of death; being just and seeming to be unjust. When both have reached the uttermost extreme, the one of justice and the other of injustice, let judgment be given which of them is the happier of the two.

And let him continue thus to the hour of death; being just and seeming to be unjust. When both have reached the uttermost extreme, the one of justice and the other of injustice, let judgment be given which of them is the happier of the two. Heavens! my dear Glaucon, I said, how energetically you polish them up for the decision, first one and then the other, as if they were two statues.

Key Concepts

• we must isolate them; there is no other way
• the highest reach of injustice is, to be deemed just when you are not.
• wishing, as Aeschylus says, to be and not to seem good.
• being just and seeming to be unjust.
• When both have reached the uttermost extreme, the one of justice and the other of injustice, let judgment be given which of them is the happier of the two.

Context

Glaucon’s experimental design for an intrinsic comparison of lives, ensuring that seeming just or unjust does not contaminate the assessment.

Perspectives

Plato

Approves the control of extrinsic variables; this frames the later proof that justice, as psychic harmony, yields happiness independent of external acclaim.

Socrates

Accepts the need to strip away appearances to examine the soul’s condition; he will argue that the just soul is unified and thus happier than the factionalized unjust soul.