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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Republic by Plato: I do not think that I misapprehend your meaning, Thrasymachus, I replied;
but still I cannot hear without amazement that you class injustice with
wisdom and virtue, and justice with the opposite.
Certainly I do so class them.
Now, I said, you are on more substantial and almost unanswerable ground;
for if the injustice which you were maintaining to be profitable had been
admitted by you as by others to be vice and deformity, an answer might have
been given to you on received principles; but now I perceive that you will
call injustice honourable and strong, and to the unjust you will attribute
all the qualities which were attributed by us before to the just, seeing
that you do not hesitate to rank injustice with wisdom and virtue.
The Republic |
