Is the One Who Gets All He Wants Happy?

Talking about Plato's Republic and the character Thrasymachus' statement that "might makes right".

“We need to distinguish between two of Thrasymachus’ claims. The first is his connection of justice with power. That is not popular today because it seems too similar to crass totalitarianism. But his second conclusion is very popular. That morality is man-made. It happens by human social contract or by social consensus. It is not some universal, timeless objective truth that we discover as we discover the laws of physics or the truths of mathematics. Justice is an art, like building bridges. Or a game, like baseball. We make the rules, therefore we can change them. And we can cheat and sometimes cheating wins. That’s Thrasymachus.” -Peter Kreeft

Thrasymachus also says that the reason we have law is the attempt by the weak to control the strong. The weak band together to create government—a false, unnatural equality-- so the strong cannot have their will. “If this is the case, then there is no reason to be moral except fear of punishment. If you could get what you want by force—whether mental force or physical force—and if you could get away with it, why not? This is a question I ask my students in Ethics class. They think that we shouldn’t do anything morally wrong, so I ask them, ‘Why not?’ ‘Well, because you’ll be punished.’ Well, suppose you won’t, suppose you can get away with it? ‘Well, because people will hate you.’ Well, suppose they won’t. Suppose you can con them. Suppose your power includes propaganda, power over their minds. Or suppose you don’t care what other people think. Why not do evil if you can get away with it and get what you want?”

Yet if a person obtained all power, that person wouldn’t be happy anyway. Why? Because the people around him wouldn’t really be happy. We are not just isolated individuals, but we are connected to others. In the end, we cannot be happy with our own happiness, but we must have others around us be happy as well. Therefore, those who are truly connected to others will sacrifice some of their own happiness in order to create happiness in those around them. In the end, to make others happy increases our own happiness.

So why are we not happy in society, if everyone is connected to others, and some, let’s say, have the power to make others happy? Shouldn’t everyone be happy in that case? Well, no, because of separations and segregations in society. Judges don’t rub elbows with the homeless and Senators aren’t peers with people on welfare. If every president, justice, congressperson, bishop, governor and mayor were required, by law, to spend six month either living on the street or living in a mental health institution or in a nursing home or with a family on welfare, the society would change remarkably. Because then the poor would be real to those in power, they would have relationships with the poor and want to do something about it. Then, at least, the basic needs of those in society would be met.

What is Justice?

The basic question of The Republic is this: What is justice?

Justice is taking what is good to do to others and applying it to a community. So if it is wrong to kill a human being, then there is a law that applies that idea to all, equally. When law allows some to kill human beings while others cannot, that is injustice.

Ultimately, the basic principle of ethics, and thus the foundation of justice is, “Do to others as you would have done to yourself.” This does not mean that we should treat each other exactly with what we would prefer, e.g. I like chocolate, thus everyone should have chocolate. Rather, it is understanding human nature that we all share, and granting people to do the good that we all share. We all have life, and a drive for survival. Thus continued physical existence is something we all share. Thus, we should recognize that life is a right that we all share and so should be supported by the community. When the community accepts the responsibility to protect the lives of all human beings equally, that is justice in that area of human nature.

God supports this idea by giving us a command not to murder, and by extending that command in Jesus to love our enemies. Thus, life is to be protected in all its forms, even to those who do us harm. Life is a basic principle that is to be granted to all humanity. This is the wisdom of God and if we see this accomplished in a community then God’s justice is realized.

“Might makes right” can also be summarized with another cliché: “The end justifies the means.” “There is no moral absolute. Morality is just a set of rules or ideals, something abstract in human minds, it isn’t real. This moral subjectivism or moral relativism was quite rare among the ancients, except among the Greek sophists, but it is far from rare among the intellectuals in our culture. In ancient culture, the teachers were more moralistic than the students—it is just the opposite in our culture.”

Might Makes Right, Part 3

However, there is an argument that says that God is the source of justice not by means of might. This is that God is the wisest in the universe, due to his great knowledge and the application of that knowledge in creation. In this argument, God is the source of justice because He knows what justice is and thus applies it to creation. In the previous arguments, it would be pointless for humans to determine the essence of justice, for justice is held in the decision of God, which cannot be sought by human beings—all we can do is follow His commands, whatever they may be. But if justice is held by God simply because He is wise, then that justice can be sought by humans and imitated by them. We can look to God as an example, we can understand and apply the principles of justice in reality.

And these two approaches to justice is one of the major differences between the law of Moses and Jesus. The law of Moses gives laws, rules, commands, which one either obeys or disobeys. Justice is ultimately a mystery, and the closest a human can get to justice is to obey God. But Jesus gives us principles instead of laws. Jesus does not say, “Put a rail around your roof”, but rather, “love your neighbor.” Jesus does not say, “Place the entrails of the animal upon the altar”, but rather “Love the Lord your God with all your heart.” Jesus does not say, “Keep your vows to the Lord,” but rather, “Let your yes be yes and your no, no.” Jesus speaks principles and we are to apply those principles in our circumstance.

Jesus’ approach to justice is different from the law, because Jesus is not looking for clones, but lovers. Everyone is not supposed to worship the same way, or to do justice exactly the same way, but rather to be led by the Spirit, and the Spirit leads different people in different ways. This means that justice might look differently in different places, but ultimately comes from the same source of wisdom. God can lead both a modern city and a small tribe by the same principles, and each context will look different, but still be unified in the wisdom of God.

Might Makes Right, Part 2

This point of view, that might makes right, is shared by many who think that they don’t hold to this point of view. It is held by those who claim that democracy is the best kind of government and that the world would be better if the whole world was made up of democracies (by which they usually mean a democratic republic, not a true democracy). They claim that if people were given power, that they could create their own laws and governance, that they could establish their own kind of justice for themselves. But this means that justice is different in each place, and looks like whatever those with power—the people—make it. Also, democracy of any form is actually granting those of wealth, popularity and majority the upper hand, while the disenfranchised or the minority do not allow their concept of justice to be realized. For instance, the homeless in the United States do not get their idea of justice realized, nor do women in a democratic Muslim country. Thus, democracy is ultimately might makes right, and while the power isn’t just one person, certainly those who can sway majority opinion are those with the vision for “justice”.

Another group that agrees with Thrasymachus are most religious ideas of justice. Justice, the religious philosopher claims, is held by God because He is God and no one can argue with God. God is, by definition, just, therefore God is justice. But this is basically to say that God is the most powerful being and thus justice is held by him. To be honest, this is pretty much the argument made by the book of Job. Job argues with God about justice, and God answers him by contrasting His power with Job’s. “Where were you when each star was made by my hand?” This is basically the argument that God is the most powerful and so He determines the rules. Might makes right.

A similar religious argument is that God is justice because He created the world. Because God is the Maker of all things, then He can determine what justice is, by right of creation. This is an argument of origin and possession. God created, therefore He owns all things. And the one who owns can determine the rules. This also is a “might makes right” argument.

Might Makes Right, Part 1

Italicized quotes are by Peter Kreeft in his lecture series, "What Would Socrates Do?"

In Plato's book The Republic, Socrates is looking for the essence of justice. This is not just a definition of the word, but what justice truly is, what it looks like, everywhere.

“Cephalus says, ‘Justice is paying your debts and telling the truth.’ But that definition doesn’t work in all cases because it doesn’t make sense to return a weapon to a maniac. Polymarkus says that justice is giving people what they deserve. He identifies this with ‘helping friends and harming enemies.’ But Socrates reminds him that we make mistakes and sometimes we think of our enemies as our friends and our friends as our enemies. So Polemarchus improves the definition to: ‘helping true friends and harming true enemies.’ Doing good to the good guys and bad to the bad guys. Socrates critiques this definition by saying something quite amazing. That justice should do good even to your enemies, to the bad guys! Because justice is a virtue, a virtue is a good, and good can only do good to everyone without exception. Socrates holds to the same principle as Jesus, ‘Do good to those who hate you, love your enemies.’ At this point Thrasymachus barges in to interrupt in order to bully Socrates. Thrasymachus claims that justice is whatever the strong man wants. Might makes right. Justice is only a mask painted on the face of power.”

Thrasymachus’ point of view is not so much a definition of justice as a denial of it. To say that justice changes with each powerful ruler is to say that justice resides in the heart of the powerful, and thus cannot be determined by reason or from a single source. That there is no essence of justice.

Spirit and Flesh

“ ‘A good man cannot be harmed by a bad one.’ In other words, Socrates’ answer to the big question of evil, Why bad things happen to good people, is that they never do.” -Peter Kreeft refering to Plato

Peter Kreeft concludes correctly that Socrates (at least Plato’s interpretation of him) is saying that it is the eternal, unchanging soul of a person that cannot be harmed by bad people. It is interesting that Jesus makes a similar statement. “Do not fear man who can harm the body, but rather fear Him who can take both body and soul and throw it into hell.” Note, though, that Jesus is not saying that bad men cannot hurt a good man. Rather, he is saying that the harm God could do is greater. To take Socrates’ position is to say that torture does no harm, while the fact is we all know that starvation, beatings and death are certainly acts of harm. The main point that Jesus makes in his teaching, however, is that whatever harm a good man receives, it is only temporary. Jesus is always pointing to the fact that the final state is greater than the present state. And that whoever is persecuted due to their faithfulness to God will receive greater reward in the end than the suffering they endured.

Platonists see a divide between the spirit and the flesh. Jesus sees a divide between the present and the future.

The First Step of Morality

“The first step of moral virtue is to know yourself. And that meant to know how foolish and unwise you are. And that meant to search for the wisdom you know you don’t have. But it also meant a second thing: to know human nature. To know what kind of a creature you were.” -Peter Kreeft

What Ethics Is Not, Part 4

Italicized text is quoted from Peter Kreeft.

7. Ethics is not Religion

“You don’t need religious faith to do ethics, though it may help you to do it. Philosophy and religion may be synthesizable, but they are different. Philosophy is based on reason, religion is based on faith… or on fear. But religious fear is very different than practical fear. The fear of God or a spirit is very different from the fear of a tiger or a bullet… The religious instinct is to believe in or aspire to or to worship that transcendent mysterious something. The moral instinct is to feel obligated in conscience to avoid evil.”

The religious act is to obey a Spirit being due to loyalty. The ethical act is to do good for good’s sake. The act may be the same, but the reasoning is different.

“We might confuse these two things with each other, especially in the West where in the three major monotheistic religions That which is worshipped is also supremely moral. God is righteous and commands us to be righteous. But the religious instinct and the moral instinct can be found separated from each other, more in Eastern religions than in Western where morality does not go all the way up to ultimate reality, to a God who is a person with a moral will. And religion and morality is separated much more in pagan religions which are not only often amoral but also immoral. And, of course, it is separated in atheistic and secularist humanism, which reject religion but not morality. Atheists have ethics, too.”

What Ethics Is Not, Part 3

5. Ethics is not “Meta-Ethics”
“Ethics is thinking about good and evil. Meta-ethics is thinking about ethics. Much of contemporary philosophical ethics is meta-ethics. It asks questions like how moral statements are linguistically meaningful or how moral reasoning is different than reasoning about facts, whether any judgment can be infallible, and how we make these moral judgements. Those are important questions, but they are secondary. They come secondary in time, in fact in the third place, after we have first made moral choices, and then, in the second place, we have reflected on this moral experience, only then do we, in the third place, do we reflect on our ethical reflections.”

6. Ethics is not Applied Ethics
Ethics is not specifically about the issues of abortion, genetic research, war or poverty. Rather, ethics is the development of the truths which we can apply to these issues. But if one is teaching ethics, we do not just delve into the application of the principles until the principles are established.

What Ethics Is Not, Part 2

Italicized quotes are by Peter Kreeft

3. Ethics is not psychology
Ethics is not about how we feel, but about real, substantial truths. We cannot establish truth by how we feel about something. If that were true, then every scientific hypothesis would be correct.

Instead, the scientist tests the hypothesis to determine the truth of her assumption. Ethics is different than science, in that to “test” an ethical hypothesis, such as “Jews are naturally evil and thus must be eliminated” can lead to monstrous actions. This is why it is best to allow the testing happen in one’s head, fully in the theory before it is tested in real life. This is one of the functions that fiction writers provide us—they take an ethical idea (or many of them) and test the idea in a separated universe where no one can get hurt. Philosophers do much the same thing by telling stories. We can also look at real life incidents and speak of the ethical implications of the incident, but real life often has complications that provide us with “red herrings” to erode a clear ethical idea.


4. Ethics is not ideology
Ethics cannot be labeled “conservative” or “liberal” or be connected with any political party or ideological fad. Ethics is truth, without regard to time or place. “Ideologies can be judged as moral or immoral… Ethics argues about and judges ideology.”

“Some philosophers today disagree with this, the Deconstructionists. They argue that ethics is just ideology. In fact, camouflaged ideology. Power putting on the mask of justice. In other words, ‘might makes right.’ Machiavelli teaches this. It is a claim as old as the Greek Sophists.”

Certainly some ethics is just an excuse to obtain more power, to control the masses. But there is an ethics that accomplishes truth. There are right and wrong actions that can be determined by reason.

What Ethics Is Not, Part 1

The outline is from Peter Kreeft's What Would Socrates Do? Comments are my own, unless quoted with italics, in which they are Dr. Kreeft's.

1. Ethics is not a checkup
Ethics is not something you use “just in case” something immoral comes up. This assumes that ethics is only negative. Rather, ethics is about the best way of living, oneself in connection with others.

The reason that many people think of ethics as a checkup is because they see it as a set of abstract “rules”. Most philosophers see it as something real and solid and substantial. What is a good person and what is a good life. Those are more fundamental than a set of rules.

2. Morals are not mores
Ethics is not just a collection of behaviors. You cannot take a poll and find out the right thing to do.

“The difference between morals and mores correspond to the difference between shame and guilt. Shame is the frustration of the desire to be accepted by others, the desire to save face. Guilt is the frustration of the desire to be morally good. Shame is social, guilt is individual. Shame comes from others, guilt comes from yourself. When the dog pees on the carpet, it feels shame, not guilt. If you weren’t there to see it, it wouldn’t feel anything at all.… In guilt, the self is divided in two in a way no animal can do. One of the two is the observing and judging self that says, ‘You are guilty,’ or ‘You are not guilty.’ ‘You are evil,’ or ‘You are good.’ The other self is the observed, judged self that hears this judgment. It is this self consciousness, this ability to split ourselves in to two—the judging and the judged self—that separates us from the beasts. It is not consciousness but self-consciousness that separates us. All animals have consciousness, and many of them are superior to us in their consciousness of the world. They often have better senses than we do. But only man has self-consciousness. That’s why only man has ethics.”

Peter Kreeft Quotes

Some quotes from Peter Kreeft,Catholic Philosopher, writer and professor, in What Would Socrates Do?

“You always find something new (in a great book) each time if you read both with your ears and with your tongue. That is, if you both listen and talk back.”

“Any great book is like the ghost of its author. It is not as alive as the embodied person was, but nevertheless it is alive. For minds are immortal.”

“Sex is something you do with someone else, if only in your fantasies. And thus it always has to do with justice, with fairness to others.”