Book II

Glaucon challenges Socrates by classifying goods and arguing that justice is a compact born of weakness, which no one would follow if invisible.

Glaucon contrasts the fates of a perfectly unjust man with a reputation for justice and a perfectly just man with a reputation for injustice.

Adeimantus argues that justice is praised only for its rewards, while poets and prophets teach that injustice is profitable and easily forgiven.

A youth hearing these arguments would conclude that appearing just while being unjust is the most advantageous path, as even the gods can be appeased.

Adeimantus asks Socrates to praise justice for its own sake, clarifying that Glaucon's thesis makes right the necessity of the weaker.

The author critiques cynical theories like Glaucon's, arguing they are foolish, false, and ignore the mixed nature of humanity and the State.

The author explains that framing an ideal of justice is not absurd, but a paradoxical tool for education, and notes Plato's dramatic method.

The author summarizes the arguments of Glaucon and Adeimantus, noting how they anticipate Socrates by demanding an account of justice as an internal principle.

The author explains that Socrates enlarges the definition of justice to mean universal order, harmonizing the individual and the social.

The author notes Socrates' indirect answer: he will first seek justice in the ideal State before considering the individual.

The author explains two other points: the Greek priority of the State over the individual and the confusion of ethics with politics.

Socrates praises the brothers but, finding the question difficult, proposes to first look for justice in the larger letters of the State.

Society arises from human needs, leading to a division of labor, trade, and the formation of a simple city.

After Socrates describes the simple, rustic life of the city's inhabitants, Glaucon objects, calling it a "city of pigs" and demanding luxuries.

To satisfy Glaucon, Socrates adds luxuries to the city, which leads to expansion, war, and the need for specialized, philosophical guardians.

Socrates argues that the guardians' education must begin with censored literature, removing immoral stories about the gods, like those from Homer and Hesiod.

The first principle for stories is that God must be represented as he is: the author of good only, not of evil.

The second principle is that God is unchanging and does not deceive, so poets' stories of shape-shifting or lying deities must be suppressed.

The author clarifies that Plato's primitive state is an imaginative illustration, not a serious ideal, and a necessary step before the complex state.

The author notes that Plato scattered economic ideas throughout his writings but never combined them into a systematic theory of trade.

The author discusses Plato's use of humor and his startling affirmation that children must be trained in falsehood before truth.

The author reflects that for ancient Greeks, the morality of religion was more important than its historical factuality, a perspective moderns often reverse.

The author discusses the allegorical interpretation of myths, which Plato rejected, and the coexistence of popular and philosophical religion in Greece.

The author explains Plato's concept of the "lie in the soul," a true and hateful falsehood corrupting the highest part of the soul.

The author concludes by noting Plato's approval of traditional education, his preparation for attacking the poets, and his allusions to divine scandals.