Glaucon's Argument Analysis

In the Republic written by Plato, Glaucon presented an argument concerning “the nature and origin of justice”. This argument has caused many beliefs and interpretations from Glaucon about justice. Glaucon presents his arguments by stating the four premises and what each one of them mean. His first premise is “It is by nature good to harm”. This premise is broken up into different meanings by nature, being referred to character individuality, good being referred to an enjoyable experience and harm as a physical or mental injury. This premise shows how being harmed can be beneficial or a good repercussion, through different experiences in life. Overall, the conclusion of this premise shows how justice plays a typical role in society to prohibit people in doing unjust deeds and disrupting the structure of society. The second premise Glaucon states is “It is by nature bad to be harmed”. In this premise he brings upon
This represents how a person cannot avoid being harmed throughout their whole life’s, except they have some type of superpower to separate themselves from society. This is referred to again to the Ring of Gyges and the ring of invisibility. Due to the invisibility, it’s not impossible for the just person to not commit a crime because of the separation they have between societies. As a result, in premise four, there are no superpowers, which causes us not being able to avoid being harmed. Justice is a set of rules that authorizes order in society. Socrates showed a correlation, with his example of the gang of thieves. He explained how if the thieves didn’t follow a set of rules, then every man would be on their own, instead of working together and accomplishing the task. In conclusion, towards Glaucon’s argument, he describes how we choose to agree with one another on a daily basis, which brings to the fact of how justice can bring upon a balance in society and in the