Note 13 — Chapter XXXVI · REPUBLIC — REMARKS ON ITS MAIN THESIS.

Aristotel. Eth. Nikom. v. 2 (1), 1129, a. 25. ἔοικε δὲ πλεοναχῶς λέγεσθαι ἡ δικαιοσύνη καὶ ἡ ἀδικία.

Also v. 3 (1), 1130, a. 3. διὰ δὲ τὸ αὐτὸ τοῦτο καὶ ἀλλότριον ἀγαθὸν δοκεῖ εἶναι ἡ δικαιοσύνη, μόνη τῶν ἀρετῶν, ὅτι πρὸς ἕτερον ἐστιν· ἄλλῳ γὰρ τὰ συμφέροντα πράττει, ἢ ἄρχοντι ἢ κοινῷ.

This proposition — that justice is ἀλλότριον ἀγαθόν — is the very proposition which Thrasymachus is introduced as affirming and Sokrates as combating, in the first book of the Republic.

Compare also Aristotle’s Ethica Magna, i. 34, p. 1193, b. 19, where the same explanation of justice is given: also p. 1194, a. 7, where the Republic of Plato is cited, and the principle of reciprocity, as laid down at the end of the second book of the Republic, is repeated. We read in a fragment of the lost treatise of Cicero, De Republicâ (iii. 6, 7):— “Justitia foras spectat, et projecta tota est atque eminet. — Quæ virtus, præter cæteras, tota se ad alienas porrigit utilitates atque explicat.”