Plato’s Tough Guys and Their Attachment to Justice

This book challenges the assumption that self-interest is the basis of our actions. It does so through examining two Platonic characters, Thrasymachus in Plato’s Republic and Callicles in Plato’s Gorgias, both of whom attack justice and champion thoroughgoing selfishness. The author argues that by following the subtleties of Plato’s presentation, we see that both characters unwittingly display a kind of devotion to their selfish principles, and more broadly a combination of contempt for justice and unselfconscious attachment to it. They thereby offer surprising support for the proposition that human beings are not simply self-interested. Moreover, the author argues that the attachment to justice that Thrasymachus and Callicles display is in many respects akin to the attachment to justice that most people feel. The book also presents a distinctive approach to reading Platonic dialogues, taking questionable arguments offered by Socrates not as indicating his or Plato’s views, nor as tricks by which Socrates refutes his interlocutors, but as revealing beliefs held by those interlocutors. Finally, the author considers “tough guys” portrayed by Dostoevsky, Gide, and Shakespeare, and finds that these portrayals suggest similar conclusions regarding self-interest and attachment to justice.

“Plato's Tough Guys and Their Attachment to Justice is an engrossing examination of the human concern for justice, the power of which is revealed by showing that it continues to move even those ‘tough guys’ who claim to have abandoned it. Hansen’s interpretation of Plato is careful and perceptive, but, most important, it serves to illuminate an enduring aspect of our humanity.”, "Plato's Tough Guys and Their Attachment to Justice is a lucid and penetrating study of the strange power of justice to inspire those who want to deny it.  And Peter Hansen makes his point—where better than in Plato?”, “Peter Hansen’s remarkable book demonstrates how much we can still learn about ourselves by reading Plato well. Plato’s Tough Guys suggests that we are more complicated beings than our own theories usually acknowledge: we are more attached to the idea of justice than we realize, and more unsettled by this attachment than we care to admit.”

Peter J. Hansen is lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.