>>>>Plato, the enemy of the Sophists, the
man who's responsible for giving the Sophists
a bad name, nevertheless puts in the mouth
of Glaucon the ideas of the Sophists. And
in fact, gives the finest expression to the
challenge of the Sophists to traditional morality
and the foundations of justice. Glaucon gives
voice to the idea that justice is merely convention.
That justice is the set of laws, the rules
that we've created not to harm each other,
whose consequences allow us to pursue our
individual interests in an idealist way. Now
Glaucon, in other words, is saying that laws
are simply like driving down the right side
of the road. It could be the left, it could
be the right, there's no objective reason
one or the other but, to maximize, we've agreed
upon this convention and it has no deeper
moral essence. For the rest of the dialogue,
Socrates will pursue the idea that in fact
morality is good in and of itself. That justice
is somehow true and not simply the pursuit
of interest, but in fact has a moral grounding.
Socrates says, "Let's go back and think about
the origins of society. You've said that it's
an agreement not to hurt each other." But
Socrates says that society has its origins,
in fact, elsewhere. 
First it originates out of mutual need,
 and second, it originates
out of differences in ability. Socrates says
this is the foundation of human society. People
need each other and people have different
abilities, and somehow it's the combination
of these abilities that they come to live
in communities and pursue a greater good.
Plato, throughout the rest of the dialogue,
will have Socrates explore the nature of an
ideal constitution-- an ideal republic, and
it's an amazing experiment in utopian thinking.
Socrates says, "Imagine an ideal republic."
It would have what he calls three classes:
rulers, auxiliaries, and workers. That in
this society, there would be a small set of
rulers who would be the best, who would have
the abilities that would allow them to guide
the state. There would be a class of auxiliaries
who serve a protective function. They enforce
the rules. They protect the society. They
serve a military role. And then there are
the workers, the common laborers who produce
the agricultural produce that will feed and
nurture this society. And so, we see quickly
the idea that there are differences in ability
translated into differences in a social role.
And for Socrates, these differences allow
individuals collectively to pursue a greater good.
Socrates imagines that this is an extraordinary
kind of society, and famously, he envisions
that the ruling classes will live an exceptional
kind of life. He says that they will have
no private property. Following through to
its radical conclusion the idea that the state
should be a community that pursues the common
good. And Socrates believes that private property
is what causes individuals to pursue private
good. So he says we should have, in effect,
a kind of community property among the ruling
classes. He also says, even more radically
that there should be no private families among
the ruling class. That women and children
should be had in common. That there shouldn't
be husband and wife, but in fact, that there
should be no individual families. That children
shouldn't know who their parents are. That
there shouldn't be husband and wife, that
this kind of division promotes the pursuit of
individual good rather than public good.
And so Socrates envisions a kind of communism
of property and a kind of communism of family
life among the ruling classes. It is at least,
in broad outline, not radically distinct from
the kind of society that Sparta was reputed to have.
 And in Plato's scheme, put in the
mouth of Socrates, this will be turned into an ideal republic
 in which the rulers and the auxiliaries guide the state in the common good.
