Chapter 2: The Challenge To Socrates

Summary: Adiemantus and Glaucon want Socrates to go further in proving the superiority of morality over immorality.

There are 3 categories of things worth pursuing: 1 - Things that are pleasureable without any future negative consequences, such as 2 - Things that are pleasureable and have positive consequences, such as knowledge. 3 - Things that are unpleasant but ultimately good such as medicine or discipline.

Socrates will prove that morality belongs to the second category, it is worth pursuing for its own sake and for its advantages. That is to say morality has both intrinsic and instrumental value.

The conventional view is that morality is a compromise. Everyone would benefit from it but fear being on the recieving end of immorality. Immorality is socially shameful but is individually beneficial. Morality is a compromise and anyone who can be immoral and get away with it ought to.

Adeimantus and Glaucon steelman the case for immorality by putting some key assumptions and restrictions in the investigation: Immorality cannot be hindered by the gods because they are either uninterested, non-existent or can be bought of with the riches gained from immorality. The immoral person is an expert and never makes a mistake that puts them at a disadvantage thus all their immoral actions are unknown to society and they have reputation for being good. The opposite goes for the moral person who gets no benefits of seeming moral and has the lowest reputation.

Discussion:

I really like the dilligence here, after many dialogues criticisng the ideas of others we see Plato put himself to a high standard when advocating for morality. I also appreciate the separation between intrinsic and instrumental value. Too often in discussions around choices or policies will I hear people confuse these two aspects. For example its often said that Thing A is good because of B, but they would not say Thing A would be bad if B was not.

Observatons:

I wonder if Tokien was inspired by the ring of Gyges that turns its wielder invisible, directly or not.