[351a]
What is the nature of
injustice as compared with justice? For the statement made, I believe, was
that injustice is a more potent and stronger thing than justice. But
now,” I said, “if justice is wisdom and virtue, it will
easily, I take it, be shown to be also a stronger thing than injustice,
since injustice is ignorance—no one could now fail to recognize
that—but what I want is not quite so simple1 as that. I wish,
Thrasymachus, to consider it in some such fashion as this. A city, you would
say, may be unjust and
1 Cf. 331 C, 386 B. Instead of the simple or absolute argument that justice, since it is wisdom and virtue, must be stronger, etc., then injustice, Socrates wishes to bring out the deeper thought that the unjust city or man is strong not because but in spite of his injustice and by virtue of some saving residue of justice.
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5 & 6 translated by Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1969.
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