The argument of the Republic is the search after Justice, the nature of which is first hinted at by Cephalus, the just and blameless old man. Socrates then discusses it on the basis of proverbial morality and Polemarchus, then caricatured by Thrasymachus and partially explained by Socrates, and finally reduced to an abstraction by Glaucon and Adeimantus, and having become invisible in the individual reappears at length in the ideal State, which is constructed by …
showed first 75 words of 674 total

showed last 75 words of 674 total
…making it impossible that he would act unjustly. Does this mean that Socrates' justice is simply doing what you are told? Socrates himself acknowledges that this argument will not hold in Book 1 of The Republic. It seems however, that the intrinsic sense of justice that members of the kallipolis naturally have is useful only in terms of "following the laws," not for anything more abstract or permanent, as Socrates argues in Book 1 of The Republic.