(including Antiphon, Critias, Hippias, Gorgias, and Protagoras) who
became famous in Athens during the fifth century BCE. We know that
Thrasymachus was born in Chalcedon, a colony of Megara in Bithynia,
and that he had distinguished himself as a teacher of rhetoric and
speechwriter in Athens by the year 427. Beyond this, relatively little
is known about his life and works. Thrasymachus' lasting importance is
due to his memorable place in the first book of Plato's Republic.
Although it is not quite clear whether the views Plato attributes to
Thrasymachus are indeed the views the historical person held,
Thrasymachus' critique of justice has been of considerable importance,
and seems to represent moral and political views that are
representative of the Sophistic Enlightenment in late fifth century
Athens.
1. Life and Sources
The precise years of Thrasymachus' birth and death are hard to
determine. According to Dionysius, he is younger than Lysias, who
Dionysius falsely believed to be born in 459 BCE. Aristotle places him
between Tisias and Theodorus, but he does not list any precise dates.
Cicero mentions Thrasymachus several times in connection with Gorgias
and seems to imply that Gorgias and Thrasymachus were contemporaries.
A precise reference date for Thrasymachus' life is provided by
Aristophanes, who makes fun of him in his first play Banqueters. That
play was performed in 427, and we can conclude therefore that he must
have been teaching in Athens for several years before that. One of the
surviving fragments of Thrasymachus' writing (Diels-Kranz Numbering
System 85b2) contains a reference to Archelaos, who was King of
Macedonia from 413-399 BCE. We thus can conclude that Thrasymachus was
most active during the last three decades of the fifth century.
2. Doctrines
The remaining fragments of Thrasymachus' writings provide few clues
about his philosophical ideas. They either deal with rhetorical issues
or they are excerpts from speeches (DK 85b1 and b2) that were
(probably) written for others and thus can hardly be seen as the
expression of Thrasymachus' own thoughts. The most interesting
fragment is DK 85b8. It contains the claim that the gods do not care
about human affairs since they do not seem to enforce justice.
Scholars have, however, been divided whether this claim is compatible
with the position Plato attributes to Thrasymachus in the first book
of the Republic. Plato's account there is by far the most detailed,
though perhaps historically suspect, evidence for Thrasymachus'
philosophical ideas.
In the first book of the Republic, Thrasymachus attacks Socrates'
position that justice is an important good. He claims that 'injustice,
if it is on a large enough scale, is stronger, freer, and more
masterly than justice' (344c). In the course of arguing for this
conclusion, Thrasymachus makes three central claims about justice.
1. Justice is nothing but the advantage of the stronger (338c)
2. Justice is obedience to laws (339b)
3. Justice is nothing but the advantage of another (343c).
There is an obvious tension among these three claims. It is far from
clear why somebody who follows legal regulations must always do what
is in the interest of the (politically) stronger, or why these actions
must serve the interests of others. Scholars have tried to resolve
these tensions by emphasizing one of the three claims at the expense
of the other two.
First, there are those scholars (Wilamowitz 1920, Zeller 1889, and
Strauss 1952) who take (1) as the central element of Thrasymachus'
thinking about justice. According to this view, Thrasymachus is an
advocate of natural right who claims that it is just (by nature) that
the strong rule over the weak. This interpretation stresses the
similarities between Thrasymachus' arguments and the position Plato
attributes to Callicles in the Gorgias.
A second group of scholars (Hourani 1962, and Grote 1850) emphasizes
the importance of (2) and contends that Thrasymachus advocates a form
of legalism. According to this interpretation, Thrasymachus is a
relativist who denies that justice is anything beyond obedience to
existing laws.
A third group (Kerferd 1947, Nicholson 1972) argues that (3) is the
central element in Thrasymachus' thinking about justice. Thrasymachus
therefore turns out to be an ethical egoist who stresses that justice
is the good of another and thus incompatible with the pursuit of one's
self-interest. Scholars in this group view Thrasymachus primarily as
an ethical thinker and not as a political theorist.
In addition, there is a group of scholars (A.E. Taylor 1960, and
Burnet 1964) who read Thrasymachus as an ethical nihilist. According
to this view, Thrasymachus' project is to show that justice does not
exist. Burnet writes in this context: '[Thrasymachus] is the real
ethical counterpart to the cosmological nihilism of Gorgias.'
Finally, there are a number of scholars who claim that Thrasymachus is
a confused thinker. Cross and Woozley (1964) contend, for example,
that Thrasymachus advances different criteria for justice 'without
appreciating that they do not necessarily coincide.' This claim has
been renewed by Everson (1998). J.P. Maguire (1971) argues that only
some of the arguments in book I of the Republic are Thrasymachus' own,
while other ideas are falsely attributed to Thrasymachus by Plato in
order to prepare the ground for his own arguments.
3. Influence
In spite of the disagreement about how to interpret Thrasymachus'
arguments in book I of the Republic, his ideas have been influential
in ethical and political theory. In ethics, Thrasymachus' ideas have
often been seen as the first fundamental critique of moral values.
Thrasymachus' insistence that justice is nothing but the advantage of
the stronger seems to support the view that moral values are socially
constructed and are nothing but the reflection of the interests of
particular political communities. Thrasymachus can thus be read as a
foreshadowing of Nietzsche, who argues as well that moral values need
to be understood as socially constructed entities. In political
theory, Thrasymachus has often been seen as a spokesperson for a
cynical realism that contends that might makes right. This view
frequently associates Thrasymachus with the arguments Thucydides
attributes to the Athenians in their negotiations with the island of
Melos (History of the Peloponnesian War, Chapter XVII). Thrasymachus
is therefore frequently portrayed as an early version of Machiavelli
who argues in The Prince that the true statesman does not recognize
any moral constrains in his pursuit of power. In the scholarship on
Socrates, Thrasymachus is sometimes seen as an interlocutor who shows
the limits of the Socratic elenchus. C.D.C. Reeve (1988) argues, for
instance, that the conversation between Socrates and Thrasymachus
illustrates that Socratic questioning cannot benefit a person like
Thrasymachus, who categorically denies that justice is a virtue. Reeve
contends that this limit of the elenctic method provided the impetus
why Plato proceeded to modify Socrates' ethical principles in the
remaining books of the Republic.
4. References and Further Reading
a. Primary Sources
* Diels, Hermann. Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. Rev. Walther
Kranz. Berlin: Weidmann, 1972-1973.
* Plato. Republic. Trans. G.M.A. Grube (rev. C.D.C. Reeve).
Indianapolis: Hackett, 1992.
* Sprague, Rosamund Kent, ed. The Older Sophists: A Complete
Translation by Several Hands. Columbia SC: University of South
Carolina Press, 1972.
b. Secondary Sources
* Burnet, J. Greek Philosophy. London: Macmillian, 1964.
* Everson, S. "The Incoherence of Thrasymachus" Oxford Studies in
Ancient Philosophy 16 (1998): 99-131.
* Cross, R.C. and Woozley, A.D. Plato's Republic. A Philosophical
Commentary. London: Macmillian, 1964.
* Grote, G. A History of Greece. London: J. Murnay, 1888.
* Hourani, C.F. "Thrasymachus' Definition of Justice in Plato's
Republic" Phronesis 7 (1962): 110-120.
* Kerferd, G.B. "The doctrine of Thrasymachus in Plato's Republic"
Durham Univ. Journal 40 (1947): 19-27.
* Kerferd, G. B. The Sophistic Movement. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1981.
* Maguire, J.P. "Thrasymachus…or Plato?" Phronesis 16 (1971):142-163.
* Nicholson, P.P. "Unravelling Thrasymachus' Argument in the
Republic" Phronesis 19 (1974): 210-232.
* Reeve, C.D.C. "Socrates meets Thrasymachus" Archiv für
Geschichte der Philosophie 67 (1985): 246-265.
* Reeve, C.D.C. Philosopher-Kings. Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1988.
* Strauss, L. Natural Right and History. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1952.
* Taylor, A.E. Plato, the Man and his Work. London: Methenn, 1960.
* Willamowitz-Moellendorff, U.v. Platon I. Berlin: Weidmann, 1920.
* Zeller, E. Outlines of the History of Greek Philosophy. New
York: H.Holt, 1889.
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