Justice
Plato’s Republic, begins with a discourse between Socrates, Glaucon, Lysias, Euthydemus, Thrasymachus, Charmantides, Clitophon, and Cephalus. I think this discourse is the best part of the book. Here is my abridged retelling of the dialog (I am not going to research who said what – otherwise, I would just post the whole discourse here. Socrates is the principal actor here, the others are just there to keep the discourse going, so they have been lumped together as Friend): Socrates: “What is justice?” Friend: “It is doing good to ones friends and harm to ones enemies.” Socrates: “Sounds sensible. But what if your friend was really your enemy and your enemy was really your friend? Then you would have harmed your friend and done good to your enemy.” Friend: “Well, we should amend that to say, ‘Do good to true friends and harm to true enemies’”. Socrates: “Ah! That is much better. But how do we distinguish between true friend and true enemy?” Friend: “That is not easy.” Socrates: “So i...