Cephalus Vs Socrates

Words: 633
Pages: 3

The first book of Plato begins with a friendly conversation between Socrates and Cephalus, in which Socrates asks Cephalus: “Is life harder towards the end, or what report do you give of it?” and then Cephalus replies by explaining the trouble of old men, where there was a good time once and now it’s gone. Seconds after him explaining what he thought about the old men, the conversation had a little twist. They started to talk about justice, figuring out its meaning. For them justice is to speak the truth and pay the debts but is justice just about that? No, it cannot be the case that justice is nothing more than honoring legal obligations and being honest. Simonides, also part of this conversation, says that he thinks a friend ought always to do good to a friend and never evil, which means good to a friend and evil to an enemy.
How do we know who is a friend and who is an enemy? Connecting this with now a day, this is something a lot of people think about because the friend is not always a friend and the enemy is not really the enemy. Sometimes we make an error when punishing the wrong person. Evil for evil would not produce good results, in that case we will have to say, “he who seems only, and is not
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“Justice is nothing more than the advantage of the stronger.” In other words what Thrasymachus claimed with this definition is that it doesn’t pay to be just, that you need money and power. People in power make laws; the subjects are supposed to obey the laws, and that is justice; obedience to laws made by the rulers in the interest of the rulers. This is the argument where he says “might makes right”. Continuing with the discussion, Socrates and Thrasymachus shared a mutual dislike for one another; the dialogue was more like irony, which means they were saying the opposite of each other trying to insult their own