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Socrates, Stop Gaslighting Me: Early Thoughts on The Republic


Never did I think The Republic of all books would make me laugh, but here we are; Socrates addressing Thrashymus as “my dear chap” while defying his argument was literally the modern version of “sweetheart, chill.”

I’m only a few pages from finishing Part I of the Introduction, and my opinions on it so far are pretty good.

Tell me why Socrates is literally the most condescending speaker? I honestly get why the Athenian court wanted him gone. As brilliant a philosopher as he is, the tactics he uses to make someone think they’re the smartest person in the room, letting their guard down only for him to pull them onto his side, got under my skin so bad. If you’ve read the book, I am totally with Thrashymus on his seeming anger toward him.

Speaking of Thrashymus, I wanted to comment on his argument on justice, because even if Socrates proved his position wrong, I think it still deserves some merit. For Thrasymahus’s argument—where what the superior deems right is right and just, and its subjects must follow it—as unethical as it may sound, it is technically what is practiced in politics. I understand Socrates’s pushback, because in an ideal world justice, or what is considered just, must be objective. But in reality, to some extent, what Thrasymachus said stands true, yet Socrates expects people to understand what justice is, as though philosophy can simply reiterate real life, untouched by power or circumstance.

Glaucoma says that if you put a just man and an unjust man in a world where no consequences for wrongdoing exist, one would find the just man caught red-handed in the same wrong as the unjust man. I think this is a fallible argument. According to me, we humans have a moral boundary—some placed close and others set far away. If no wrong actions had consequences of punishment under the law, I would not commit murder for satisfaction, as committing such an act is heinous in my mind and unforgivable; I would never take someone’s life. A murderer with killing instincts would. Yet I would rob a bank, as the benefits of wealth without consequences would surpass the innate guilt of theft, whereas an even more virtuous man might abstain from it altogether.

And maybe that’s what reading The Republic does to you—it forces you into these uncomfortable corners of your own mind, where your moral boundaries suddenly become visible, almost measurable. It shows you that justice lives inside people, in different shades and intensities. Even when I disagree with Socrates, or feel irritated by his tone, I can’t deny that he drags these questions out of me. And for a book written thousands of years ago to still get under my skin like this… honestly, that’s its own kind of justice.

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