Justice and Misery in Plato

Must the just be unhappy? A comparative analysis of Gorgias 474c–475d and Laws II.659d–663d

Above: Plato as depicted in “The School of Athens” (Scuola di Atene) by Raphael (1482-1520).

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People of Thebes, my countrymen, look on Oedipus.
He solved the famous riddle with his brilliance,
he rose to power, a man beyond all power.
Who could behold his greatness without envy?
Now what a black sea of terror has overwhelmed him.
Now as we keep our watch and wait the final day,
count no man happy till he dies, free of pain at last.
– the closing chorus from Oedipus the King by Sophocles

Call him, however, until he dies, not happy but fortunate.
– Solon speaks to Croesus in The Histories, book 1 by Herodotus

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Introduction

The most well-known treatment of justice in Plato’s dialogues appears in the Republic, where he explores, among other things, the nature of justice itself. But in several lesser-known dialogues, Plato turns to a different question: how justice relates to the good life. Is it better to suffer injustice than to commit it? Is a just but impoverished man better off than one who is unjust but wealthy? Can we live unjustly and still be happy? How can we persuade people to act justly if injustice can bring pleasure?

Two passages in particular—one from Gorgias, the other from Laws—take up these questions. At first glance, they appear to offer similar answers by similar lines of argument. I argue that this impression is misleading. In what follows, I reconstruct the core theses and arguments of each passage before highlighting the similarities and differences. This will help us focus on one very important divergence between them.

Gorgias

In this dialogue, Socrates questions Gorgias—a self-proclaimed orator—about the nature of oratory: whether it is a craft (art or skill). The discussion eventually draws in Polus, a young rhetorician and friend of Gorgias, and shifts to questions of justice: whether the just are always happy, and the unjust always miserable.

The argument I focus on appears in 474c–475d.¹ Here, Socrates leads his interlocutors through an elenchus—a refutation in the form of reductio ad absurdum. They begin with a claim that Polus eagerly affirms:

1. Suffering injustice is worse (or less good) than committing injustice.

Questioning Polus in his usual fashion, Socrates gets him to agree to each step in the following chain of reasoning—until it ends in contradiction:

2. Committing injustice is more shameful (less admirable) than suffering injustice.

3. Therefore, the admirable is not the same as the good, nor is the shameful the same as the bad. [Follows from 1 & 2]

4. A thing is admirable because it’s either pleasing or useful.²

5. A thing is shameful because it’s either painful or bad.

6. Therefore, if A is more admirable than B, then A surpasses B in either pleasure or usefulness. [4]

7. Therefore, if A is more shameful than B, then A surpasses B in either painfulness or badness. [5]

8. If committing injustice is more shameful than suffering it, then the former surpasses the latter in either painfulness or badness. [7]

9. Committing injustice does not surpass suffering injustice in painfulness, i.e., it’s not more painful than suffering injustice.

10. Therefore, committing injustice surpasses suffering injustice in badness. [8 & 9]

11. If A surpasses B in badness, then A is worse than B.

12. Therefore, committing injustice is worse than suffering it. [10 & 11]

Clearly, the conclusion (12) contradicts Polus’s initial claim (1), and both parties reject the latter and retain the former—that is, they agree that it’s better to suffer injustice than to commit it. Neither Socrates nor Polus considers rejecting another premise.

The argument in Gorgias takes the form of a straightforward reductio. A passage in Book II of the Laws appears—at first glance—to pose the same question and reach the same conclusion. On closer inspection, however, both the question and the answer diverge from those in Gorgias. The trouble is that there are two puzzling features of the Laws passage which complicate any attempt to reconstruct its dialectic. Before addressing those features and outlining my interpretation, let’s set the broader context.

Laws II

The dialogue picks up from the end of Laws I. An unnamed Athenian is discussing the nature of education with a Cretan named Clinias. A central question emerges: what kind of education and laws will produce just, or virtuous, citizens? Closely related is the question of persuasion: how might a legislator persuade citizens to live justly when when living unjustly seems to offer rewards? What, if anything, makes the just life preferable? The ensuing discussion of justice and happiness in Laws II must be read in light of these questions.³

The Athenian describes education as the “the initial acquisition of virtue” (653b–d). Through education a child is directed to

accept the right principles as enunciated by the law and endorsed as genuinely correct by men who have high moral standards and are full of years and experience.

Education thus involves rightly ordered affections: taking pain or pleasure, joy or sorrow, admiration or shame, when and where we should—loving and hating what we ought to love and hate. A child formed this way will be naturally drawn to the principles of the virtuous legislators and elders, and will mature into an man whose soul enjoys a concord of reason and emotion. Such a man would not only know what the proper emotional response to a given act is, but would feel it at the right time and place. Music, poetry, and rhythm are named as instruments in this education or moral formation. They might help produce the right concord of reason and affection—compelling where the laws fail to persuade.⁴ In 653c, Clinias seems to agree with everything the Athenian says about education.

The relevant passage for our purposes runs from 659d to 663d. There are three reasons to see it as parallel to the argument above from Gorgias. First, both passages take up a similar question: is it better to live justly than unjustly? Second, each arrives at a similar conclusion. In Gorgias, it’s that (a) committing injustice is worse than suffering it; in Laws, it’s that (b) the unjust life is less pleasant than the just life. Third, in both dialogues, the conclusion is reached through argument. In Gorgias, it’s the Socratic elenchus; in Laws II.663d, Clinias affirms that the Athenian’s reasoning has persuaded him of (b).

On a closer look, however, the differences outweigh these similarities. First, while both conclusions are comparative, they are not logically equivalent. Whereas claim (b) concerns lives in their totality, claim (a) concerns particular acts. Second, the argument in Gorgias is a classic Socratic refutation—a tightly constructed reductio. The reasoning in Laws II, by contrast, is more diffuse and less formally rigorous. It does not follow the familiar structure of Socratic dialectic.

In fact, two puzzling features make the reasoning in Laws II difficult to reconstruct. First, the topic appears to shift. In 661e, Clinias apparently disputes the claim that (c) the unjust person lives a wretched and miserable life—even if he enjoys health, wealth, and power. But this is not obviously the same claim as (b), the one on which they later agree. One might suggest that (b) entails (c), and therefore that reasons for the former are reasons for the latter. But that isn’t correct. The fact that my car is greener than yours does not imply that your car isn’t green. Likewise, even if the unjust are always less happy (more miserable) than the just, it doesn’t follow that the unjust are totally unhappy; perhaps they are happy, but to a lesser degree than the just. The subject matter, then, appears to shift.

The second puzzling feature is the sheer range of topics. In two short exchanges, the dialogue covers proper laws, justice and the just life, how to persuade citizens to live justly, what the gods and lawgivers should say about the just life and whether they’d be inconsistent or unpersuasive in what they say, and so on. At times it’s unclear whether the Athenian and Clinias are still discussing the supremacy of the just life. When the conclusion (b) appears at 663d, Clinias claims to have been persuaded—but the reader must go back and reconstruct the reasoning that led there and how it fits with the earlier discussion of education.

A satisfactory reconstruction of the argument must account for these two puzzles. That is my aim. I argue that we can identify three distinct arguments in the passage, each contributing to the defense of (b) and helping to clarify the dialogue’s structure.

We begin with an important premise stated in 663b, which I will call the psychological thesis:

Nobody would willingly agree to do something which would not bring him more pleasure than pain.

In other words, we choose what we think will bring the greatest pleasure.

Notice the conclusion in 664d: the unjust life is more base and shameful, and also less pleasant than the just life. As we see, Clinias agreed earlier with the first conjunct, and the Athenian proceeds to argue for the second, namely, (b). And he argues for (b) by first arguing that the just life is identical to the good (happy or pleasant) life, which implies that the unjust life is the same as the evil (unhappy or unpleasant) life. He offers a third and final argument for the claim that the just life is pleasant, and the unjust life unpleasant.

What, then, are the three lines of reasoning? The two initial arguments appear in 662b–663b and the first can be reconstructed as an inconsistent triad:

1. The psychological thesis: a man never does what he thinks will bring him more pain than pleasure.

2. The legislators persuade the citizens to live as pleasant as possible and also to live as justly as possible.

3. The legislators maintain that the just life is not the same as the pleasant life.

The truth of any two of these propositions implies that the remaining third is false. For example, if (1) and (3) are true, then insofar as a man believes that he will suffer more pain than pleasure by living justly, he will not live justly, which means that (2) is false: the legislators fail to persuade the citizens to live justly. This is why the Athenian says that the legislator “will look as if he cannot speak without contradicting himself.” The Athenian, of course, accepts (1) and (2) and rejects (3): the just life is the pleasant life, and happiest are those who live justly.

The second argument for the same conclusion goes as follows:

1a. If the ‘just’ is not the same as the ‘pleasant’, then avoiding wrongdoing can be just but unpleasant, and wrongdoing pleasant but unjust.
2a. But avoiding wrongdoing can't be unpleasant, and wrongdoing can't be pleasant.
3a. Therefore, the ‘just’ is the same as the ‘pleasant.’

The third and final argument appears in 663c:

1b. When viewed by one who is unjust and evil, injustice appears pleasant and justice unpleasant; but it's the opposite from the view of one who is just.
2b. The correct judgment belongs to those who are just.
3b. Therefore, injustice is unpleasant and justice is pleasant.⁵

Notice that (3b) implies claim (c): if injustice is always unpleasant, then the unjust man must live unpleasantly, in spite of any wealth or power he enjoys. Although (b) does not imply (c), a trivial implication runs the other way. Therefore, by establishing (c) as an intermediate conclusion, claim (b) is properly drawn. Despite how things initially seemed, the interlocutors don't change the subject. That takes care of the first puzzling feature.

What about the second puzzling feature? We’ve focused mainly on the topic of justice and whether the supremely just life is the happiest. Is there a connection between that topic and the myriad others that come up in the passage: education, laws, persuasion, the good life, and so on?

I think so. As the Athenian says in 659d, education is

a process of attraction, of leading children to accept right principles as enunciated by the law and endorsed as genuinely correct by men who have high moral standards and are full of years and experience.

Two components are at work here. First, there must be a vision of the good life. What are the right principles to which a man should be drawn? Who is truly well off? Which life is happiest? Without a vision, there is nothing for the law to commend as attractive—nothing for the citizen to be formed toward. The law must propose a life worth pursuing while discouraging the pursuit of others.

The second component is about the attraction itself. Whichever vision is best for the city—whatever “deserves commendation of the law” (663a)—will fail if it’s unattractive, or unappealing, or otherwise generally unaccepted. Thus, persuasion is central to Laws II. In 663d, the Athenian tells Clinias to suppose that the conclusion of their argument is false—that the unjust life is not more disgraceful and less pleasant than the just life. Even so, no mediocre legislator could invent a lie more useful or effective in moving citizens to choose justice. Clinias responds with a memorable line: “Truth is a fine thing, and it is sure to prevail, but to persuade men of it certainly seems no easy task” (663e).

The end goal is persuasion, not coercion. For citizens to voluntarily choose the just life, it must appear superior to the unjust life. It is no small task for legislators to persuade the citizens to willingly choose the just life when anyone can see that some insolent and unjust men, enjoying wealth and power, appear to live pleasant lives. And the stakes are high: if persuasion fails, the state must either resort to coercion or resign itself to citizens who never adopt the “right principles.”

These two elements—what the law should teach about the just life, and how it should persuade—frame the central concern in Laws II. Justice matters because it gives substance to the vision that the law must commend; it is the natural goal of the educational process the Athenian describes. And happiness matters because the just life cannot be freely chosen unless it can be seen as genuinely good—worth choosing above alternatives. That is the burden of Laws II.

Significance

While the Gorgias and Laws II passages share similarities on the surface, they ultimately diverge in both subject and emphasis. A central theme in Laws II—absent in Gorgias—is the challenge of persuasion: how to lead citizens to willingly choose the just life. Notably, Laws emphasizes the role of non-rational forms of influence—poets and musicians, alongside lawgivers. The lesson seems to be that elenchus, though valuable, is not always sufficient for persuasion or moral formation.

It’s important to note that non-rational does not mean irrational. One of the central insights of these passages is that both rational and non-rational persuasion are essential for forming the good citizen. Rational persuasion—such as through dialectic or elenchus—is unpredictable. People may be convinced by poor reasons, while others remain unconvinced in the face of good reasons. Socratic dialogues like the Apology and Euthyphro illustrate this point.

The goal is to guide action, and both rational and non-rational forms of persuasion matter. Even without an argument against the wickedness of murder, a person repelled by it will act rightly because of that repulsion. By contrast, someone armed with sharp logic and a false premise may end up defending the indefensible. What matters first is identifying the right ends—something reason may be uniquely suited to do. But to pursue those ends, sentiment, imagination, and habit may be just as necessary.

These dialogues press us deeper into philosophy’s perennial questions: Who is truly well off? What is the good life? And how, if at all, can the law persuade—or compel—us pursue it?

1. All quotes are from the Donald J. Zeyl translation of Gorgias and the Trevor J. Saunders translation of the Laws. Both can be found in Plato: Complete Works (1997), edited with introduction and notes by John M. Cooper (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Co.).

2. The term “useful” means something like “instrumentally good”, “beneficial or good for something else”, ect.

3. Throughout Laws II, Plato seems to use the following terms (and their respective antonyms) interchangeably: ‘just’ and ‘good’, ‘pleasant’ and ‘happy’ and ‘blessed’, ‘wretched’ and ‘evil’ and ‘unhappy’ and ‘unpleasant.’ I do the same in this essay.

4. See 659d–660a. This also means that music and poetry, when misused, can form a person with a disharmonious soul.

5. Put another way: the more trustworthy judgment is that of the just man, who holds that injustice is unpleasant and justice pleasant. We should accept the more trustworthy judgment; therefore, we should accept that injustice is unpleasant and justice is pleasant.