As I recall, Thrasymachus says that justiice is the interest of the stronger
not the right of the stronger. Why would you read it as a statement about
the right of the peasantry and artisans to participate in politics. Surely
Thrasymachus did not take them as the stronger. Thrasymachus and Protagoras
are quite divergent in their political views though both are Sophists.
Thrasymachus's argument is that the the powerful determine the rules and
define "justice" and Plato's arguments against him appear to me as sophistic
idealistic twaddle...successful only because Thrasymachus lacks the skills
to combat Socrates critical questioning. This is not surprising since
Thrasymachus is more or less a creature of Plato's making in the Republic.
CHeers, Ken Hanly.
> Incidentally, Protagoras was probably making a political rather than
> metaphysical or epistemological point in that remark. It was a defense
> of democracy vs. oligarchy. This is really what Thrasymachus is saying
> (or rather should be saying if Plato was honest in writing dialogue for
> the opposition) in the first book of the _Republic_. Wood comments that
> "In this dialogue [_Protagoras_, perhaps foir the last time in his work,
> Plato gives the opposition a reasonably fair hearing, presenting the
> sophist Protagoras in a more or less sympathetic light as he constructs
> a defence of the democracy, the only systematic argument for democracy
> to have survived from antiquity" (_Democracy against Capitalism_, p.
> 192). If you read "justice is the right of the stronger" as a statement
> about the right of the peasantry and artisans to participate in
> politics, Thrasymachus's argument rises from the ashes Plato consigned
> it to.
>
> Carrol
>
>
> Carrol
>
