In Justice in Plato’s Republic: The Lessons of Book 1, Roslyn Weiss offers both a detailed commentary on the opening book of the Republic and a throughline argument about its distinctive lessons and how it ought to be understood relative to the Republic as a whole. Contrary to a widespread tendency to treat Republic 1 as a mere prologue or foil for the remainder of the dialogue, Weiss argues that Book 1 can be read as a “self-contained work” with “something important to teach us” (14). Further, while Republic 1 could stand alone without the rest of the dialogue, the rest of the dialogue cannot stand without Book 1 (16). Weiss’s exegesis is careful, thought-provoking, and stimulating. While I agree with Weiss on the need to give Republic 1 its due and am convinced by much of her account, I have reservations about her hermeneutical framework, particularly her defense of what she calls a “reading forward” approach, and about what may be lost by treating Book 1 as a standalone text against which the remaining books should be measured.
The book opens with a methodological chapter defending the value, and even necessity, of reading Republic 1 on its own terms. Typically, scholarship wrongly undervalues Book 1, seeing it alternatively as an “early” text propounding views Plato came to reject, or as amounting to little more than stage-setting and foreshadowing. Were Republic 1 exhausted in mere foreshadowing, readers would be justified in thinking that nothing would be lost if we were to just skip ahead to the real “meat” of the dialogue (cf. 4). By contrast, Weiss argues for the inextricability of Republic 1 relative to the Republic as a whole, particularly in that it provides fundamental ideas about the nature of justice and rule that make it possible for us “to resist ideas that appear later in the work, when later ideas conflict with the earlier ones” (15). Hence, it serves as a “prophylactic” against later proposals that Weiss takes to be problematic (16). Weiss dubs this approach, wherein earlier claims are taken as the standard against which later ones are to be tested, “reading forward” (15), in contradistinction to common approaches that seek to “read backward” the content of latter books into Republic 1.
Chapters 2 and 3 focus on Socrates’s exchanges with Cephalus and Polemarchus, providing character studies of both interlocutors and drawing from the disputations on justice some key takeaways that could be seen as the “real” Socratic teaching on justice. Weiss argues that Cephalus’s concern with justice, whereby the topic is first brought up in the dialogue, stems from fear of divine vengeance looming at the cusp of old age, a consequence of a life not well lived (cf. 39-41). Contrary to Greek norms of paternal deference (see 34-35), Polemarchus appears to have usurped his father’s household and sees himself as the dispenser of benefits and harms; his concern with justice stems from his desire to do so in a suitable way.
Cephalus subscribes to a jejune notion of justice as simply rule-following. Socrates reformulates Cephalus’s view as one that foregrounds the actor’s agency, their responsibility for those who are in need, and their capacity for ethically discerning how to apply higher principles in particular situations (see 41-46). Given that these points remain operative throughout Republic 1, we have reason to take them as the “real” Socratic teaching on justice, especially since they cohere with Socrates’s explication of his self-understanding in the Apology (see 76).
From the conversation with Polemarchus, Weiss develops a key distinction between “lay justice” (“l-justice”) and “technē justice” (“t-justice”). L-justice is the virtue by which one acts justly in concrete situations, whereas t-justice is the art of inculcating l-justice in others (53). Polemarchus oscillates between the two, with his lay insights often at odds with his theoretical understanding of justice as the art responsible for doling out rewards and punishments. Socrates’s goal is to move Polemarchus away from partiality toward more objective and impartial criteria for t-justice. Instead of worrying about whether I can securely distinguish friend from foe, I should instead consider whether I have the right criterion in the first place (74), which is whether my actions promote the proper virtue in the person affected by them. Hence, justice cannot “harm,” since to harm means to make “worse with respect to that virtue” (75). T-justice cannot harm, just as, analogously, the art of music cannot make someone less musical (77).
Chapters 4 and 5 develop a sustained interpretation of Socrates’s arguments with Thrasymachus about ruling, the nature of technē, and what motivates people to rule. In the argument about the “precise sense” of ruling, Socrates’s intent is to clarify what makes an art an art. Contrary to Thrasymachus’s insistence that artfulness is defined by efficacy, Socrates shows that it is the art’s concern for doing a certain kind of work well that makes it what it is. Hence any art concerned with bringing something into a good state will measure its success by the degree to which it perfects its object, not the degree to which it benefits the artisan. Thus, the perfection of ruling lies in the ruled being directed toward well-being. Ruling serves the interests of the ruled primarily, and can only serve the interest of the ruler indirectly, if at all. Weiss insightfully notes that Thrasymachus’s contention that ruling serves the advantage of the ruler actually suggests the ruler’s indigence rather than their power (117). One point where Weiss is less convincing, though, is in her claim that Thrasymachus’s proposed definition of justice is “more a slogan than a theory or definition” (102). Thrasymachus’s stance is more radical than Weiss gives it credit for —he seems to think that, through force, he can make his views into reality (cf. the threat of a “forced feeding of the argument” at 345b).
Much of Chapter 5 is devoted to an interpretation of the “wages of ruling” argument. Weiss notes that Socrates’s insistence that “no one wishes to rule willingly” (345e) seems to be grounded in a background anthropological assumption that helping others is odious (137), an assumption seemingly at odds with Plato’s portrayal of Socrates’s willingness to neglect himself in his persistent desire to help others become better. Weiss contends that Socrates adopts this Thrasymachean position to showcase its implications and limitations and to provoke Glaucon’s reaction (and thereby also the reader’s), since, in this view, even “noble and good men” seek perquisites for ruling, just less crass ones than wealth and honors. Indeed, Socrates even posits the questionable idea of an auxiliary wage-earning art to perform a reductio on the Thrasymachean position that all actions are motivated by self-interest:—if every technē is essentially profit-seeking, what distinguishes the technai would become something incidental. By implication, the Thrasymachean view rules out in advance the specific, essential content of ruling, which is wholly divorced from profit seeking. As Weiss pointedly asks, “Has not something gone terribly wrong when good and decent men would eagerly seize the opportunity to avoid helping someone else?” (140). Weiss makes it clear that Socrates does not actually uphold what he says in this section (see 141-142), but nevertheless Glaucon fails to be provoked, and his silence speaks volumes (144). Thus, it is up to the reader to push back and posit that a ruler could indeed rule out of a concern for their subjects’ well-being (146).
In Chapters 6 and 7, Weiss puts forth her most controversial thesis: the account of justice in Republic 1 is not an internalist account that prefigures that of Republic 4 (see 166). An “internalist account” of justice is one in which the justice of a whole comes from proper internal relations among its constitutive parts. Instead, Republic 1 retains an “externalist account,” i.e., one in which justice is a relation of wholes to other wholes. Socrates does not actually argue that “an unjust entity becomes just … when its parts treat each other well.” Instead, it merely becomes “more successful (‘stronger’) in its injustice when its parts treat each other well” (167). Indeed, contrary to the account in Book 4, Socrates’s account in Book 1 allows for an entity to have an internal harmony oriented towards the whole’s external injustice towards others. Weiss thus sees Book 4 as diverging from Book 1 and takes Book 1’s account to be more philosophically compelling (180), especially since Book 4’s account appears to collapse justice into moderation (see 181-188) in order to meet the constraints imposed on the investigation into justice’s goodness in Book 2. Attempting to defend justice by appeal to its benefits loses sight of the simple truth that the justice is always an externally directed virtue and that a just life is “self-justifying,” in no need of external vindication (193).
Though I appreciate Weiss’s careful exegesis, insights, and spirited defense of Book 1’s inextricability, I have two related concerns. First, the warrant for Weiss’s “reading forward” approach is underdeveloped. Although this approach does well to preserve the integrity of Republic 1 and in principle avoids the developmentalist’s extratextual presumption of a change in the mens authoris to explain challenging tensions, Weiss offers little direct textual evidence that Plato intends for us to adopt such a hermeneutics of resistance. Instead, the evidence offered is the tensions themselves (that between the externalist and internalist accounts of justice in Books 1 and 4, and that between the seemingly voluntary care for those whom one can benefit and the compulsion to rule in Books 1 and 7)—but if those tensions can be diffused in some other way, what warrant for “reading forward” remains? There are other ways of account for the inextricability of Republic 1 that do not rely on positioning it as a contender within an intratextual agon.
Second, reading Republic 1 as a standalone work risks obscuring dramatic and philosophical cues from later in the dialogue that may help us better appreciate just what Book 1 is doing. In partial agreement with Weiss, I propose that “reading backward” is justified, but only if it makes Republic 1 stand out more clearly in its inextricability. At 504a, Socrates suggests that reality is the only true measure, and so anything that fails to measure up to reality is partial or inadequate at best. Reality can only be rightly understood (to the extent that it can be understood at all) under an intuition of the Good. Given that the first half of the Republic operates without any indication of such an intuition, we are invited to reassess earlier accounts in light of new criteria, and doing so from a new perspective may help us see how opposing, partial formulations may be reconcilable. Moreover, Socrates explicitly claims that the internalist account of justice from Book 4 can explain ordinary, “demotic” instances of just action (442d-444b), suggesting that internalist and externalist dimensions may actually be complementary.
Similarly, the tension between Book 1’s voluntary care for the ruled and the compulsion to rule in Book 7 may be resolved through careful study of the meaning of “compulsion” in the descent into the Cave. As Damian Caluori rightly argues, such compulsion is a matter of internal necessity, not externally imposed requirement.[1] Internal necessity is not incompatible with genuine desire, and so those who escaped the Cave and saw the Good would desire to go back down out of a deep-seated care for those who remained imprisoned. Hence, it is not that Republic 1 teaches us to resist Republic 7; instead, Republic 1 gives us one of the hermeneutical keys required for seeing Republic 7 rightly.[2]
Despite these reservations, I would strongly recommend this study to students and scholars of Plato interested in the Republic and its inquiry into justice. Even if one ultimately resists Weiss’s externalism or her hermeneutics of resistance, her book decisively reopens the question of what Republic 1 is doing—and forces any interpretation of the Republic as a whole to reckon seriously with its opening book.
Notes
[1] See especially Damian Caluori, “Reason and Necessity: The Descent of the Philosopher Kings,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 40 (2011): 7–27.
[2] I discuss this and some of the preceding points in more detail in “The Descent of Reason: Reading Plato’s Cave as Psychic Drama,” Rhizomata 12.2 (2024): 173-215.