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through a paper I made for a class. Please don't mind it if the content is wrong (because it is; I just crammed, even reading the books).

A. Definition of Justice, based from the 1st and 2nd books of The Republic

Justice is the interest of all, in regards to morality.

One of the given definitions of justice is it being the interest of the ruling class but it was rejected by Socrates. After a few discussions, Socrates constructed a simple model of a state and in this model, each person of the state honed or mastered only one skill and the combination of these skills creates a working state.

This definition, then, is about maintaining the balance of the interests of the people. Excessive benefits of a single or few persons is defined to be unjust since it’ll mean that there’ll exist people who’ll receive benefits less than the average, which in turn might lead to dissatisfaction and would create disturbance in the well-functioning state. And for the people who have excessive benefits, to which we are sure feels good for them to have such benefits, will try to keep the feeling. As such, we can be sure that they will continue to what they are doing, which is disturbing the balance of the state and it would then lead into wars, which was discussed in the 2nd book of The Republic.

B. Rejected definitions of justice and the reasoning behind it:

• Justice is speaking the truth and paying your debts.

This definition of justice was indirectly defined by Cephalus, a friend of Socrates, when he was talking about the greatest blessing which he had reaped from his wealth.

Explanation for rejection:

This definition of justice had been rejected by Socrates for its imperfectness (for justice to have only this meaning is lacking) and for it having exceptions (or counterexamples), like a person asking for the money he once deposited to another person when they are not in their right minds, drunk, for example, and the latter would have to decide whether to give the money back to the drunk person on that state or not.

• Justice is the art which gives good to friends and evil to enemies.

This definition of justice was said to come from Simonides, and was further improved by the discourse of Socrates and Polemarchus.

Explanation for rejection:

This was rejected by Socrates because if we follow the logic from the supposed definition of justice, then we will arrive at the conclusion that the just man is useful, compared to other professions, only for money to be kept safe. This would then arrive us into 2 other conclusions, one being that justice is useful only when it is useless and useless when it is useful and vice-versa, and the other being that justice is then an art of theft.

• Justice is to do good to friends when they are good and harm to enemies when they are evil.

This definition of justice is in fact just a revision of the previous definition, defined by Polemarchus when he realized that his previous definition was proven to be wrong.

Explanation for rejection:

This definition was rejected by Socrates since he first argued and proved that giving a burden to any kind of person is unjust and so, adding it with the logic of the given definition, which is to harm evil enemies, then the just person is then an unjust person since he is also giving burden to the evil person.

• Justice is the interest of the stronger.

This definition of justice was defined by Thrasymachus. In this definition, it does not mean that if a person is physically stronger than another, then the former is just while the latter unjust. It only means that the rulers of the land are the ones who says what is just and unjust, and so, their interest is justice. Also, he further elaborated that by rulers, he meant that they are the ones who haven’t erred yet since if they have, they aren’t considered as rulers then. When Socrates inquired, he then agreed that by rulers, they are meant to be in the strictest of all senses; and rulers being rulers only because they are popular are not included.

Explanation for rejection:

This definition was rejected by Socrates since the definition implies that the rulers only work for themselves. But it was then discussed that all interests are contained in themselves only. The skill of medicine, for example, is for treating patients only and gaining money from it is another skill, which is the skill of profit. They are two different things. He then argued that rulers, then, as rulers, has the skill to rule. As such, to govern the welfare of the people beneath them is their skill, which is contradictory to the definition of justice of Thrasymachus.

C. A categorical statement concluded from the 1st and 2nd book of The Republic:

One of the discussions of The Republic is the construction of an imaginary state. Due to the insistence of Glaucon, Socrates improved the simple yet healthy state to that of a luxurious state. One of the characteristics of the luxurious state is that it gives the members of the state not only their “needs” but also “wants”. But in doing so, resources, much larger than that in the simple state, is needed and so, the territory must be enlarged. But we can be sure that there aren’t only one such luxurious state, and so, the other states will do what the first one will do. Then there will come a time wherein the resources within the territory is not enough and taking resources from other territories is the only way for the luxurious state to work. And so, wars will happen. Thus, luxurious states beget wars. We can be sure that wars, as seen in history are destructive. It affects the lives of people, resources of states, economies of countries, and development of things. As such, wars are destructive.

Wars are destructive. Luxurious states beget wars.

Luxurious states are destructive. (by AAA-1)