4 - Wise Guys and Smart Alecks in Republic 1 and 2

Summary

A curious thing happens at the beginning of Republic 2. Socrates and Glaucon are seen to have sharply divergent opinions regarding Socrates' success in his preceding conversation with Thrasymachus. Socrates is sufficiently pleased with how things went that he is ready now to leave. He has made his argument against Thrasymachus who sought, first, to locate justice in the camp of vice and ignorance and, second, to claim for injustice greater profitability than justice (354b). To be sure, Socrates berates himself at the end of Book 1 for letting the question of the nature of justice get away and pursuing these lesser matters instead. And although he there insists - as he frequently does in Plato's dialogues - that until he has knowledge of the nature of a thing he can know nothing else about it, he registers no real doubt about the outcome of his arguments. Indeed, at 368b he says to Glaucon and Adeimantus that “in what I said to Thrasymachus I thought I showed that justice is better than injustice.” The only reason Socrates feels he must stay is because, as he observes, “you did not accept it from me.” Glaucon, and apparently Adeimantus as well, are, then, far less sanguine about Socrates' performance than Socrates himself is. What Socrates regards as a done deal, Glaucon and Adeimantus make him see as a mere “prelude” (357a).