What is a value that is a good thing in itself and is pursued for its own sake?

Introduction to Plato

Plato was one of the founding figures of philosophy in the western world. Like his teacher Socrates and his student Aristotle, Plato was deeply concerned with what it meant to be a virtuous human being.  And he believed that philosophy plays a central role in ordering our lives.  Having seen his teacher executed, he was also pessimistic about the prospects of a democracy to encourage the good life.  (Learn more about Plato and his work here)

His philosophical works were written as dramatic dialogues between a character called Socrates (based on Plato's teacher), and various others. This present dialogue is taken from Book II of The Republic, Plato's most famous work. Socrates is speaking here with Glaucon and Adeimantus - two of his pupils - about the nature and value of justice.  In this chapter, Glaucon asks one of the central questions in moral philosophy: Why should anyone care about being moral or just?  

You can access the full text of Plato's Republic here.  

Republic, Book II 357a-358a

Prior to this, Socrates (in typical Socrates fashion) has been extolling the importance of justice to his friends.  

Glaucon: Socrates, do you want to seem to have persuaded us that it is better in every way to be just than unjust, or do you want to truly convince of us this?

Socrates: I want truly to convince you, if I can...

Glaucon: Well, then, you certainly aren't doing what you want. Tell me, do you think there is a kind of good we welcome, not because we desire what comes from it, but because we welcome it for its own sake -- joy, for example, and all the harmless pleasures that have no results beyond the joy of having them?

Socrates: Certainly, I think there are such things.

Glaucon: And if there a kind of good we like for its own sake and also for the sake of what comes from it---knowing, for example, and seeing and being healthy? We welcome such things, I suppose, on both counts.

Socrates: Yes.

Glaucon: And do you also see a third kind of good, such as physical training, medical treatment when sick, medicine itself, and the other ways of making money? We’d say that these are onerous, but beneficial to us, and we wouldn’t choose them for their own sakes, but for the sake of the rewards and other things that come from them.

Socrates: There is also this third kind. But what of it?

Glaucon: Where do you put justice? 

Socrates: I myself put it among the finest goods, as something to be valued by anyone who is going to be blessed with happiness, both because of itself and because of what comes from it.

Republic, Book II 358a-358d Glaucon's Challenge

Socrates: I myself put it among the finest goods, as something to be valued by anyone who is going to be blessed with happiness, both because of itself and because of what comes from it.

Glaucon: That isn’t most people’s opinion. They’d say that justice belongs to the onerous kind, and is to be practiced for the sake of the rewards and popularity that come from a reputation for justice, but is to be avoided because of itself as something burdensome.

Socrates: I know that’s the general opinion. Thrasymachus faulted justice on these grounds a moment ago and praised injustice, but it seems I am a slow learner.

Glaucon: Come then, and listen to me well, and see whether you still have that problem… I’m not yet satisfied by the argument on either side. I want to know what justice and injustice are and what power each itself has when it’s by itself in the soul. I want to leave out of account their rewards and what comes from each of them. So, if you agree, I’ll renew the argument of Thrasymachus...I’ll state what kind of thing people consider justice to be, I’ll argue that all who practice it do so unwillingly, as something necessary, not as something good, and I’ll argue that they have good reason to act as they do, for the life of an unjust person is, they say, much better than a just one.

I'm going to speak at length in praise of the unjust life, and in doing so I'll show you the way I want to hear you praising justice and denouncing injustice. But see whether you want me to do that or not.

Socrates: I want that most of all. Indeed, what subject could someone with any understanding enjoy discussing more often?

Connection Social Contract Theories and the Origins of Justice

If this argument sounds familiar, it may be because the notion of justice at its core is foundational for many of the social-contract theories favored by modern political philosophers like Locke, Hobbes, and Rousseau.

According to these philosophers, in the original "state of nature" human beings were in a state of war against all other human beings, but soon realized that there were major benefits to living in community. Doing so, however, required the formulation of a set of laws that everyone in that community had to abide by.

Typically, these philosophers think of themselves as offering an account of where political power (and such laws as such power puts in place) derives its authority. Still, the parallels between such accounts and Glaucon's account here of the origins of justice are striking.

Thought Experiment The Ring of Gyges

Glaucon continues his argument with a Thought Experiment:

We can see most clearly that those who practice injustice do it unwillingly and because they lack the power to do injustice, if in our thoughts we grant to a just and an unjust person the freedom to do whatever they like. We can then follow both of them and see where their desires would lead. And we’ll catch the just person red-handed traveling the same road as the unjust. The reason for this is the desire to outdo others and get more and more. This is what anyone’s nature naturally pursues as good, but nature is forced by law into the perversion of treating fairness with respect.

The freedom I mentioned would be most easily realized if both people -- the just and the unjust -- had the power they say the ancestor of Gyges of Lydia possessed. The story goes that he was a shepherd in the service of the ruler of Lydia. There was a violent thunderstorm, and an earthquake broke open the ground and created a chasm at the place where he was tending his sheep. Seeing this, he was filled with amazement and went down into it. And there, in addition to many other wonders of which we’re told, he saw a hollow bronze horse. There were window-like openings in it, and peeping in, he saw a corpse, which seemed to be of more than human size, wearing nothing but a gold ring on its finger. He took the ring and and came out of chasm. He wore the ring at the usual monthly meeting that reported to the king on the state of the flocks. And as he was sitting among the others, he happened to turn the setting of the ring towards himself to the inside of his hand. When he did this, he became invisible to those sitting near him, and they went on talking as if he had gone. He wondered at this, and, fingering the ring, he turned the setting outwards again and became visible. So he experimented with the ring to test whether it indeed had this power---and it did. If he turned the setting inward, he became invisible; if he turned it outward, he became visible again. When he realized this, he at once arranged to become one of the messengers sent to report to the king. And when he arrived there, he seduced the king’s wife, attacked the king with her help, and took over the kingdom.

Let’s suppose, then, that there were two such rings, one worn by a just and the other by an unjust person. Now, no one, it seems, would be so incorruptible that he would stay on the path of justice or stay away from other people’s property, when he could take whatever he wanted from the marketplace with impunity, go into people’s houses and have sex with anyone he wished, kill or release from prison anyone he wished, and do all the other things that would make him like a god among humans…

No one believes justice to be a good when it is kept private, since, wherever either person thinks he can do injustice with impunity, he does it. Indeed, every man believes that injustice is far more profitable to himself than justice. And any exponent of this argument will say he’s right, for someone who didn’t want to do injustice, given this sort of opportunity, and who didn’t touch other people’s property would be thought wretched and stupid by everyone aware of the situation, though, of course, they’d praise him in public, deceiving each other for fear of suffering injustice...

As for the choice between lives we’re discussing, we’ll be able to make a correct judgment about that only if we separate the most just and the most unjust. Otherwise we won’t be able to do it. Here’s the separation I have in mind. We’ll subtract nothing from the injustice of an unjust person and nothing from the justice of a just one, but we’ll take each to be complete in his own way of life...an unjust person’s successful at attempts at injustice must remain undetected, if he is to be fully unjust. Anyone who is caught should be thought inept, for the extreme of injustice is to be believed to be just without being just…We must allow that, while doing the greatest injustice, he has nonetheless provided himself with the greatest reputation for justice... 

Having hypothesized such a person, let’s now in our argument put him beside a just man, who is simple and noble and who, as Aeschylus says, doesn’t want to be believed to be good but to be so. We must take away his reputation, for a reputation for justice would bring him honor and rewards, so that it wouldn’t be clear whether he is just for the sake of justice itself of for the sake of those honors and rewards. We must strip of him everything except justice and make his situation the opposite of an unjust person’s. Though he does no injustice, he must have the greatest reputation for it, so that he can be tested as regards justice unsoftened by his bad reputation and its effects. Let him stay like that unchanged until he dies---just, but all his life believed to be unjust. In this way, both will reach the extremes, the one of justice and the other of injustice, and we’ll be able to judge which of them is happier.

This section of the Republic ends with Adiemantus (Socrates' other friend) giving a plea to Socrates:

Don’t merely give us a theoretical argument that justice is stronger than injustice, but tell us what each itself does, because of its own powers, to someone who possesses it, that makes injustice bad and justice good… You agree that justice is one of the greatest goods, the ones that are worth getting for the sake of what comes from them, but much more so for their own sake…. Therefore, praise justice as a good of that kind, explaining how---because of its very self---it benefits its possessors and how injustice harms them.

The remainder of the Republic is Plato attempting to just this.

His solution will be to argue that to be happy, one must have a balanced soul -- one where the rational and just part rules over appetites and emotions.  Those who, like the King of Lydia, give in to their appetites are destined to misery.  We see a similar claim argued for quite differently by Aristotle in Nicomachean Ethics Book II.

Where a value is a good thing in itself and pursued for its own sake?

Is the quality by which a value is a good thing in itself and is pursued for its own sake whether anything comes from that pursuit or not?

What is the intrinsic value of life?

What is an example of intrinsic value in philosophy?