[BLANK_AUDIO] I concluded the last video by saying Thrasymachus believes in justice, in more or less the conventional sense, even though his official line is that is that monster movie thing I showed you. The truth is that justice is highly suitable for children, and Persimicus perfectly well knows it. If there are 2 monkeys and 2 bananas, it's fair for each monkey to get one banana. Children know this. Frankly, even monkeys know it. Persimicus knows that this real thing, justice is, he knows what it is, and he has real contempt for it. What kind of a loser aspires to have one banana. Justice is not unsuitable for children. It's only suitable for children. Also in a more descriptive mode, you don't really meet with the pure spirit of justice, at least not in adults, not very often. Sure, there's a few simpletons like Socrates who live with their baby heads in the clouds of justice, but they're a rounding error in the grand scheme of politics. They have short life expectancy. But yeah, he gets the idea. Justice. Every monkey gets one banana. Good. But then, this is where he fools himself, kids. Watch the replay in slow motion. Thrasymachus takes justice, the word, and attaches it to injustice, the thing. But now, lacking a word for justice, the real deal that even children about, he stops talking about it. He stops thinking about it. He lies to himself into half disbelieving in it for as long as he talking philosophy, that is, as long as he is fantasizing about being the monkey who takes all the bananas. This produces conceptual incoherence, and what may be worse practical drawbacks. How so? The argument in book one ends with Socrates making the point that a gang of thieves will fight among themselves, so justice will be stronger than them. Socrates's point may seem weaker than it is, because he's trying to get to such a strong conclusion by means of it. It is always to my advantage to get just. But really it's a pretty good argument at least for a weaker conclusion than Socrates wants. Take Dayokes again. That was 2 videos ago in case you missed it. So the story goes, after he became king, his kingdom conquered the neighbors. How did they do it? Well, I imagine that being just helped. Non-corrupt governments are strong, justice is good for business. When it comes to fighting, if a large number of guys can trust each other enough to lock up like this, they are going to win, especially if the other side can't do the same. Thrasymachus, you might say, wants to be the apex predator. He wants to be the monkey, the monkey, the human, who preys on his fellow humans without being preyed upon, but humanity in general already is an apex predator. In virtue of what? Our teeth, our talons, our giant wingspan? No. Our justice, in a sense. What sense? We are normally very effectively cooperative, we humans. Our capacity for reciprocal altruism is arguably our greatest tool, and a weapon. What is reciprocal altruism? By all means, consult Wikipedia. But here's the short version. I do something that is not in my narrow self interest in the long term, in the expectation that others will do the same and in the long run we will collectively be the better for it. For example, not killing each other, not stealing each other's stuff, right this very second. Nietzsche says, that which does not kill me, makes me stronger. That's interesting but sort of open to counter examples. But how about this? Those who cannot kill me, who cannot kill me, make strong. Everyday, I'm surrounded by people who want money. I've got money, day after day, they don't kill me and take my money. We humans have the power to not kill each other, even though we have the power to kill each other. That's an awesome power, and it makes us very, very strong. I said that Thrasymachus sees injustice as the social norm, justice as the rare exception. It's easy to appreciate the intuition behind that. Life is unfair kid. It's easy to appreciate the moral cynicism that springs from that. You gotta grab what you can, while the getting's good, kid. But on theoretical reflection, there's a kind of social illusion here. We notice injustice. But in a way, that's just because justice, reciprocal altruism, it's so normal. The fish, the last to know it swims in water. The newspaper publishes the murder rate. It doesn't publish the non-murder rate. Thrasymachus doesn't deny this, but having deprived himself of the word justice to label it, having not come with any other new word for it, he didn't have anything to say about it. A theory of human society that makes no room for a positive function of sociality has a giant hole in it. In the book, I have a pretty good bit where I consider alternatives to classifying Thrasymachus as basically an ethical egoist. Is he maybe a relativist about justice or a conventionalist about justice, or about the word justice, or a realist in sort of the international relation sense, an amoralist? Thrasymachus is inconsistent, so you can reconstruct him in different ways. There isn't any one right away the pieces fit because the pieces don't ultimately fit but the reason why it's best, I say, to see him as primarily an ethical egoist is this, the alternative is to regard him as a shrewd anthropologist or a proto-political theorist or sociologist of justice. But there's no way he could be any of those things, and still be the blockhead he is when it comes to theorizing the power of cooperation, the social functionality of justice. But where does this leave us? Very uncertainly in position. Is justice in fact, the right word for these social phenomena, I am saying Thrasymachus overlooks. Does justice just mean cooperation? Who practices the craft of justice? Should we maybe say it is this - any species that normally exhibits socially complex forms of reciprocal altruism. In other words, maybe the question should be, what exhibits the adaptive behavioral traits of justice? Let's go with this proposal for just a minute. Perhaps the price for justice should then go not to philosophers, certainly not to humans, but to the most uusocial animals. There's a good word for the day. Look it up. Bees, ants, naked mole rats. If you don't know about naked mole rats, you're in for a treat. They were voted Vertebrate of the Year last year by Science Magazine. But I doubt naked mole rats will ever be voted best vertebrate practitioner of justice of the year by the journals, ethics or political philosophy even though in some ways, those ugly little guys get along better, more happily in a social sense than we humans. What am I really saying about mole rats? Justice in some sense, is functional, highly functional. Out there in nature, red and tooth and claw. Justice is as effective as either teeth or claws. Thrasymachus completely misses this due to his too clever by half attempt to not even have a word for this stuff. But is justice in this undeniably functional sense morally noble in the way Socrates insists it must be? If Thrasymachus is wrong because justice is in fact a very effective weapon, where does that leaves Socrates' argument against Polemarchus that justice ideally isn't any sort of weapon at all? Justice, Socrates emphasizes, does not seek advantage. By definition not. How then can we understand justice as a kind of adaptive trait of the species, or the society? Last but not least, is it always in my interest to be just, just because the practice of justice affords some kind of general advantage to people in general? After all, I'm not people in general. I'm me. [BLANK_AUDIO]
