Glaucon, the convert

Plato, Republic, trans. Benjamin Jowett (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1881).

As Book Four wraps up, Socrates drives home his earlier points asking Glaucon if they haven’t clearly proven virtue, “the health and beauty and well-being of the soul, and vice is the disease and weakness and deformity of the soul? ” (p. 134)

Glaucon agrees that this has been proven, and adds to it his affirmation of Socrates’ common sense claim that good practices lead to virtue, and evil ones to vice.

[SOCRATES:] Still our old question of the comparative advantage of justice and injustice has not been answered : Which is the more profitable, to be just and do justly and practise [sic] virtue, whether seen or unseen of gods and men, or to be unjust and do unjustly, if only unpunished and unimproved?

[GLAUCON:] In my judgment, Socrates, the question has now become ridiculous. We know that, when the bodily constitution is gone, life is no longer endurable, though pampered with all kinds of meats and drinks, and having all wealth and all power; and shall we be told that when the very essence of the vital principle is undermined and corrupted, even though a man be allowed to do whatever he pleases, life is still worth having to him, if he be forbidden to escape from vice and injustice, and to attain justice and virtue; for we now see the true nature of each. (pp. 134–135)

Thus, Socrates seems to have thoroughly satisfied Glaucon’s earlier hesitations and skepticism about the preferability of living a just life over an unjust one.