I would like to hear some opinions on The Republic and of the substance of the Republic. Socrates started debating with a rich man. And the issue that came up was is it better to be a good person or better to be a seeming good person but take every opportunity to cheat and get ahead. Basically the premise of the rich man was you want to seem good to make friends, but also be realistic ("be evil") to get ahead. Whereas Socrates argues that you should be good, and from what I remember he then justifies it by saying "good people" know both good and evil. Whereas an evil person only knows evil. It's been some time for the exact arguments, plainly.
But when I attempted to read it again a couple years ago, I was feeling the rich man was making better points than Socrates and I actually didn't get past the first 20 pages because of it. Are you able to flesh out the argument of particularly Socrates better than myself to kind of defend him?
And also, if you don't lie to yourself, I think a lot of people definitely try to "seem to be good" to make friends, it's one of the most natural things we do. And when opportunities arise, we make crude survival based decisions, like "that's a pretty girl" I'm going to try to go out with her. Or "that's a pretty girl, oh she is limping? I think I'll pass, let's not tell my conscious self I just made that really cold analysis." Once we have the Mighty Seat of "might makes right" equation, I think our feeble minds take it much more times than we suppose, conscious of it or not.
Maybe there is a spiritual element to "doing what we would want others to do unto us" - which is essentially what Socrates defines as "good people" Anyhow, I would like the Socrates part of the argument to win, but I want to be cautious of using the childish argument, of "because it's good" and "good beats bad", and so Socrates has a better argument.
Because right now, I think I'm more in the camp of the rich man, because I think it is the more realistic conservative opinion. I might try behave differently or "properly" because it's what I prefer, but maybe I'm not being very rational about that. If you happen to support the rich man, then, I can't blame you.