But before Socrates completes the reiteration of his earlier...

But before Socrates completes the reiteration of his earlier attack on unlimited self-assertion-that restraint within the personality and between people is a condition of their well-being-he invokes the concept of ἀρετή, and the notion that there is a specifically human virtue, to exercise which will be to be in a state of well-being or happiness. Ἀρετή belongs now not to a man’s specific social function, but to his function as a man.

The connection between virtue and happiness is written into this concept in what initially must seem an arbitrary way; the rest of the argument of the Republic is an attempt to remove this arbitrariness. The revival of Thrasymachus’ case by Glaucon and Adeimantus runs as follows.

Men in a state of nature are moved entirely by self-interest; the origin of laws lies in the moment when men discovered and agreed that clashes of self-interest were so damaging that it was more to their interest to forego doing injury to others than to continue in their natural way of life, so risking any injury that others might do to them.

And ever since, men have obeyed the law only from fear of consequences; if men could avoid suffering the ill consequences of their actions, unlimited self-love would manifest itself openly instead of in law-abiding disguises. Suppose two men, one man now apparently just, the other unjust, were given a magic ring such as Gyges had to make himself invisible, so that both had complete liberty of action; then both would behave in the same way.

They would, like Gyges, who seduced his queen and murdered his king, pursue the path of complete self-aggrandizement. That is, everyone prefers injustice to justice if he can be unjust successfully. This example depends on that fallacious portrait of the presocial, natural man which I have already criticized. For Plato’s suggestion is that perhaps Gyges with his ring is natural man.

The superiority of the present case over that originally put into the mouth of Thrasymachus is that Plato now turns sharply toward the identification of self-interest as a trait in social and not merely in natural man. He makes Adeimantus stress that the conventionally virtuous and just citizen is on the side of Thrasymachus, not of Socrates.

For the Greek equivalent of the bourgeois father teaches his children to pursue virtue and to flee vice precisely and only because virtue brings rewards and vice has unfortunate consequences both in this world and in the next.