At 331E, when Polemarchus responded to Socrates’ question about what Simonides had said about justice, Polemarchus said that, according to Simonides, “…it’s just to give what’s owed to each person…” And this formulation of the opinion of Simonides gives the impression that Polemarchus is defending his father’s definition of justice. But as soon as Polemarchus explains how Simonides’ statement can be interpreted in a way that escapes the force of the counterexample with which Socrates had seemingly defeated his father, we see that this way of interpreting Simonides gives us a definition of justice that is completely different from what Cephalus evidently meant.

It is important not to miss the extent of the difference between Cephalus and Polemarchus that is revealed here. There is all the difference in the world between a society in which people practice justice by telling the truth and paying their debts, on the one hand, and a society in which people practice justice by helping their friends and harming their enemies.

We noted in the previous section that Socrates, when he began to examine the meaning of the quotation from Simonides, immediately returned to the counter-example that he had raised earlier with Cephalus — whether it is just to return the man’s weapons to him when he comes back in a maddened condition. Except that, in restating the position of Cephalus, Socrates followed Polemarchus in silently omitting truth-telling as a requirement of justice, and in restating his counterexample Socrates omitted the reference to weapons. Both Socrates and Polemarchus pass over in silence the absurdity of the defanged restatement of Socrates argument against Cephalus. And Socrates says, “So it’s likely that Simonides means something other than this sort of thing in saying that the giving of what’s owed is just.” In other words, Polemarchus now tells Socrates that, when Simonides said that, “…it’s just to give what’s owed to each person,” he meant something quite different from, “It is just to honor contracts.” In response to Socrates’ question on this point, Polemarchus says, “He sure does, by Zeus, for he assumes that friends owe it to friends to do something good and nothing bad.”

Socrates now responds with yet another restatement of his counter-argument to the position of Cephalus,

> “I understand that whoever gives back to someone gold that’s been entrusted to him [332B] does not give what’s owed if the giving and the getting would be harmful and the people getting it back and giving it back are friends— isn’t this what you say Simonides means?”
> “Very much so.”

But this restatement by Socrates of the counterexample he gave to Cephalus at 331E not only omits reference to weapons and truth-telling, now he has substituted gold for weapons and for the altered mental state of the owner he has substituted, “if the giving and the getting would be harmful and the people getting it back and giving it back are friends.”

The situation described by Socrates in originally stating his counterexample to Cephalus might be regarded as an exceptional situation that could be accommodated as a minor qualification to the general rule that one should honor contracts: The rule could be amended to say, “Always pay back what is owed, except when the owner demands repayment in an obviously crazed condition AND the item on deposit is a weapon which the owner might immediately use to injure others or himself.” That’s not especially neat, but it might well be acceptable as a guide for prudent conduct, or even as a law. Certainly we could cite many real statutes no less riddled with exceptions and qualifications.

But suppose we now try to formulate the qualified rule contained in Socrates’ restatement of the case at 332A-B. Would it be something like this? “Always pay back what is owed, except when the debt is to a friend, in which case the debt should be repaid only if the debtor is sure that the repayment will not allow the owner/friend to do something that is harmful.”

Imagine going to your friendly neighborhood banker to make a withdrawal from your savings account so that you can buy Christmas presents for your children and having the banker say to you, “Friend, it has suddenly occurred to me that, instead of buying presents for your children you might use this money to purchase liquor or drugs or pornographic literature. As your friend I believe that, were I to permit you to withdraw your savings, I would be complicit in any wrong that you might do with this money, therefore, I believe that justice and friendship both oblige me to deny your request to withdraw your savings.”

This is not a mere qualification to the general rule of contractual obligation. It substitutes a general rule of CUSTODIAL obligation for the rule of CONTRACTUAL obligation, and effectively cancels the notion of private property among friends. For those who have read Books 4 and 5 of the Republic, this should sound curiously familiar. Such readers will recall that at 423e Socrates first mentions, in passing, that in the ideal city matters pertaining to marriage, procreation and children will be managed according to the proverb that “friends have all things in common,” and then, at the prompting of Polemarchus at the beginning of Book 5, this suggestion is developed into the paradoxical proposal to eliminate the family (and private property) and permit some forms of incest.

My reason for mentioning this now is not to open a premature discussion of this rather famous feature of the Republic. Rather, my present intention is to distinguish an important feature of Plato’s dialectical technique, which we will encounter repeatedly. It is important to pay attention to this distinction in order to understand how one can read the Republic and reach conclusions that seem in many cases so drastically opposed to the conventional interpretations.

The point to which I am calling attention is this: If the present passage in Book 1 is an anticipation of the paradoxical “communism of women and children” in Book 5, it is the views of Polemarchus, as expressed in Book 1, that are developed to such an extreme in Book 5. Socrates is extremely skillful in unfolding the latent consequences of what his interlocutors say or believe, often drawing out the absurd or pernicious consequences of their seemingly innocent or conventional ideas. One of the ways in which this skill is manifested is that Socrates is good at establishing an atmosphere of presumed agreement. Since in most cases he does not directly contradict what his interlocutors say, but mainly asks them questions, it is easy for them to suppose that Socrates has agreed to what they have already said.

Certainly Socrates gives no suggestion here (in Book 1) that he thinks Polemarchus has said something absurd. He simply asks, is this what you say Simonides means? To which Polemarchus responds, “Very much so.”

Lance