How to Win an Argument in Ancient Greece

Plato’s Republic

This is a conversation that took place in Greece about 2,400 years ago. The famous Socrates appears as the main character.

Polemarchus says, “Justice is helping friends and harming enemies.”

Socrates immediately asks, “Then if a just person harms someone, does that person become better—or worse?” Polemarchus answers that the person would become worse.

“Then justice cannot produce ‘harm’ that makes people worse. So isn’t the conclusion that a just person should harm no one?”

Thrasymachus, who had been listening, tried several times to interrupt, but the people sitting nearby kept stopping him because they wanted to hear Socrates’ discussion.

But at this moment, Thrasymachus lunged forward as if he were a beast ready to tear everything to pieces. “What kind of nonsense have you two been talking all this time? Why do you keep passing the task back and forth like idiots?

Socrates! If you truly want to know what justice is, then stop acting smug by only asking questions and refuting other people’s answers. Everyone knows asking questions is easier than giving answers. So tell us yourself what justice is.

And don’t tell me it’s ‘what one ought to do,’ or ‘what is fitting,’ or ‘what is beneficial,’ or ‘what is advantageous,’ or ‘what is useful to everyone.’ I don’t want to hear that kind of nonsense. Tell me plainly and clearly what justice is.”

Socrates was a little shaken, but he managed to reply. “Thrasymachus, if I had not been watching you before you began staring at me, I would probably have been left speechless. Don’t people say that if a man does not see the wolf first, and the wolf sees him first, he becomes speechless?

If we were searching for gold, we would not miss our chance by passing the work off onto each other. And if we are searching for justice—something more precious than a lump of gold—would we really be so foolish as to pass the task off and fail to do our utmost to discover what it is?”

Then Thrasymachus laughed loudly and said, “Good heavens! This is exactly the trick Socrates always uses—playing innocent. I knew you’d respond like that.” Socrates said,

“Thrasymachus, your prophecy came true because you are clever. Suppose someone asked a person what twelve is, but said in advance, ‘Listen, you must not say that twelve is twice six, or three times four. If you say that kind of nonsense, I won’t listen. Now explain what twelve is!’—what answer could that person possibly give?”

Thrasymachus replied, “So you think these are the same kind of thing?” Socrates said, “Why shouldn’t they be? Even if they aren’t the same, if they appear the same to him, it amounts to the same. In the end, he will have to answer using one of the answers you forbade.”

Thrasymachus said, “Fine—then I will tell you myself what justice is. Pay me a fee. Justice is the advantage of the stronger. Justice is when the ruler makes laws to benefit himself.”

Socrates said, “And rulers in each city make laws and order the people to obey them. Then is a just person someone who obeys those laws?”

“Of course!” Thrasymachus said. Socrates said, “But don’t rulers make mistakes? If a ruler makes a mistake, he may make laws that harm himself rather than benefit himself. Yet by your account, the just person must still obey those laws. Then justice would not be the advantage of the stronger, but sometimes the disadvantage of the stronger, wouldn’t it?”

Polemarchus, who had been listening, said, “I swear, Socrates, that is perfectly obvious.”

(Transition)

The video I’m presenting is a reconstruction of a portion of Plato’s Republic. Although Socrates appears as a character, I think it is highly unlikely that these are words Socrates actually said.

Plato’s Republic consists of ten books. If you were to speak it aloud, it would probably take nearly twenty hours. In reality, sustaining such an extremely dense conversation for that long, in one sitting, seems impossible—even if Socrates was exceptionally intelligent.

In the text, Socrates is portrayed as someone with extremely fast information processing and, at the same time, extremely high metacognitive ability.

It’s like buying a $1,000 computer, only to find that it has a $900-class CPU and a $900-class RAM—an absurdly overpowered set of specs.

To me, it seems more plausible that Plato borrowed the figure of Socrates and left behind his ideas in written form for standardized education at the Academy he founded.

The method Socrates uses in these dialogues is his distinctive “midwifery” technique. By asking questions, he leads the other person to recognize contradictions in their own position.

Plato seems to have been deeply impressed by this method. In particular, Thrasymachus’s line—“asking questions is easier than giving answers”—is quite striking.

In fact, Thrasymachus’s outburst hits the sore spot of the Socratic method. No matter what definition you propose, language is a net with holes in it.

This suggests that Plato thought deeply about the fundamental incompleteness of any proposition or claim that gets captured by human language.

As an analogy, it is like rotating several stone plates and trying to align their patterns: when you line them up to form a plausible sentence on one side, a mismatched pattern inevitably appears on the other. Socrates’ role is to point out the mismatched part on the reverse side of what looks correct on the surface.

But that does not mean Plato thought all claims are false and therefore everything is meaningless. From Book 3 onward, Plato talks about the city in order to understand justice—this can be read as an attempt to identify the foundations and assumptions that make human life possible.

He also tries to understand fundamental elements by separating them out: the three parts of the soul—spirit, appetite, and reason—and the virtues of the individual. This seems to show a philosophical faith in extracting the general from the particular properties of the world.

His idea of philosopher-rule is not unrelated to this. In Plato’s view, the philosopher does not want to become a ruler. The reason is that the contradictions in what people say are painfully easy for the philosopher to recognize. And because the philosopher grasps the essence—the “Forms”—he would not willingly distort himself or lower himself through self-deception.

If we look at how Socrates refutes Thrasymachus, Thrasymachus must rely on a kind of circular reasoning to justify the claim “justice is the advantage of the stronger”: the stronger are stronger because they are stronger, and advantage is advantage because it is advantage.

Plato introduced a priori principles—Forms—as one way to avoid that circularity. And he also does not end philosopher-kingship as a purely utopian fantasy; he leaves it as “very difficult, but not impossible,” keeping open at least a sliver of possibility.

This avoids the collapse where, once you assume the impossible, any argument becomes possible. It also keeps the ideal city from being a mere thought experiment, leaving it as a goal that remains, at least in principle, practicable.

Plato named this work Politeia, perhaps because he cared less about the definition of justice being argued over than about the foundation—the assumptions—that would have to exist for that argument to be possible at all. And perhaps that is the important attitude toward life Plato wanted to pass down to us.