-but... so Glaucon gives us this genealogy of justice, in which weak people (who are apparently the great majority) face a sort of Prisoner's Dilemma, since the evil of suffering injustice outweighs the good of doing injustice, and the only way to avoid the former is to foreswear the latter. Very much a social contract sort of thing.
Thrasymachus doesn't really give us a genealogy, but he sort of hints at one when he says that rulers "proclaim" the just at 338e, so his genealogy might go something like: I'm the ruler of a polis, sitting pretty in my palace, and I say to my demos, "Let me tell you what's just - it's paying taxes to fill my coffers, serving in my army and navy and fighting my wars, building what I tell you to build, teaching your children what I say they should be taught, worshipping my gods." I do these things because I have calculated that it is to my advantage to do them - and although the disadvantage of the bulk of the citizenry isn't a goal in itself, it is an inevitable consequence of my laws.
Now you might think that one of my goals will be to restrain other unjust people - after all, I don't want competitors around - but Thrasymachus doesn't hint at this I don't think, at least until Socrates drags it out of him that the unjust try to "outdo" other unjust people. The whole point of justice, if we take this to be an illustrative example, is to exploit those who are naive enough to follow its commands. This looks like a 180-degree reversal of Glaucon's story.
What's weird about this is that the ruler acts unjustly making these laws, but the populace acts justly in following them. (I think this is the source of a lot of difficulty and confusion in the secondary literature.) But this isn't really that weird - the important thing about justice is that it's someone else's advantage, and the important thing about injustice is that it's one's own advantage, so when two people engage in a relationship (like the ruler-ruled relationship) which benefits one at the expense of the other, the one is acting unjustly and the other justly, even though they appear to be in harmony.
This is probably tenuous
-but... so Glaucon gives us this genealogy of justice, in which weak people (who are apparently the great majority) face a sort of Prisoner's Dilemma, since the evil of suffering injustice outweighs the good of doing injustice, and the only way to avoid the former is to foreswear the latter. Very much a social contract sort of thing.
Thrasymachus doesn't really give us a genealogy, but he sort of hints at one when he says that rulers "proclaim" the just at 338e, so his genealogy might go something like: I'm the ruler of a polis, sitting pretty in my palace, and I say to my demos, "Let me tell you what's just - it's paying taxes to fill my coffers, serving in my army and navy and fighting my wars, building what I tell you to build, teaching your children what I say they should be taught, worshipping my gods." I do these things because I have calculated that it is to my advantage to do them - and although the disadvantage of the bulk of the citizenry isn't a goal in itself, it is an inevitable consequence of my laws.
Now you might think that one of my goals will be to restrain other unjust people - after all, I don't want competitors around - but Thrasymachus doesn't hint at this I don't think, at least until Socrates drags it out of him that the unjust try to "outdo" other unjust people. The whole point of justice, if we take this to be an illustrative example, is to exploit those who are naive enough to follow its commands. This looks like a 180-degree reversal of Glaucon's story.
What's weird about this is that the ruler acts unjustly making these laws, but the populace acts justly in following them. (I think this is the source of a lot of difficulty and confusion in the secondary literature.) But this isn't really that weird - the important thing about justice is that it's someone else's advantage, and the important thing about injustice is that it's one's own advantage, so when two people engage in a relationship (like the ruler-ruled relationship) which benefits one at the expense of the other, the one is acting unjustly and the other justly, even though they appear to be in harmony.