Thrasymachus He was an ancient philosopher of the Greek sophistic school, who lived around 459-400 BC. It is known that he was born in Caledonia, present-day Turkey, on the banks of the Bosphorus, from where he traveled to Greece. There he stood out as a teacher of rhetoric and writer of speeches, with which he amassed a great fortune.
Very little is known about his work, except for the appeals that other Greek philosophers make of him. Only a few fragments of his speeches survive from his work. He is best known for his mention in the book The Republic of Plato: it is named during a meeting with Socrates in which both develop a dialogue about the nature of justice.
For Thrasymachus justice is nothing more than the advantage of the strongest. Thrasymachus' ideas have often been seen as the first fundamental critique of moral values. His thought is considered a precursor of the ideas of Nietzsche.
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There is very little information regarding the precise years of birth and death of the philosopher Thrasymachus. From quotes in the works of other ancient Greek thinkers, he is believed to have been born in 470 BC. C.
Nor is anything known about the reasons that motivated Thrasymachus' trip from Macedonia to Greece: whether it was for work or for studies.
Cicero mentions it several times citing Gorgias, which seems to imply that Thrasymachus and Gorgias were contemporaries. According to Dionysus, Thrasymachus was younger than Lysias, who lived between 445 and 380 BC. C., but Aristotle places it between Tisias and Teodoro, although he does not establish precise dates.
Aristophanes mocks him in his work The Banqueteros, whose game was made in 427; therefore, he must have taught in Athens during those years. Even in one of the surviving fragments of his speech, it refers to King Archelaus of Macedon (413-399 BC)..
This allows us to infer that Thrasymachus was very active during the last three decades of the 5th century BC. C.
Thrasymachus taught rhetoric and wrote speeches for others, which allowed him to obtain a great fortune and live in opulence..
Like all the other sophists of his time, he charged large sums of money in fees. In addition, his good education was a characteristic of the rich and famous people of that time..
Due to the lack of precise records, historians have not been able to determine the exact date of Thrasymachus' death. However, the thesis that he died of natural causes is accepted.
At that time the strange custom of writing biographies about prominent personalities who died in tragic circumstances was common; that is, executed, by suicide or on the battlefield.
Due to the fact that the death of Thrasymachus has not been documented, it is believed that he died of natural causes.
It is also suspected that this thinker may not have aroused sufficient interest among ancient biographers, among other reasons because he was contemporary with figures like Socrates, more prominent than him and captivating to the masses..
The ideas of Thrasymachus have greatly influenced contemporary ethical and political theory. Although there is no agreement on the interpretation of Thrasymachus' arguments described in the work The Republic, his ideas are considered as the first critical reference to moral values.
Thrasymachus belonged to the sophistic current together with Protagoras, Gorgias, Callicles, Hippias, Prodicus and Critias. In the first book of The Republic attacks Socrates' argument that justice is an important good.
On the contrary, he argues that on a large enough scale, "injustice (...) is stronger, freer, and more masterful than justice." Like Callicles, he maintains that justice finds its foundation in force.
His reasoning about justice centers on these three ideas:
Several questions arise from the three statements. Why follow the rules that are best for the politically strongest? Or why should these actions serve the interests of others and not their own??
On the other hand, because the ruling elite is stronger in every way, the weakest are usually more likely to be punished for breaking any law..
They are in a greater state of defenselessness in the face of forced confiscation of property, forced slavery or loss of freedom due to imprisonment.
In his exposition to Socrates, Thrasymachus expresses three inferences: the first is that justice gives a greater advantage to the strongest, the second that justice is an invention of powerful rulers (whom it never harms), and the third indicates that justice justice is at the service of another, be it an individual, a group or a government.
The fragments that are preserved of the works of Thrasymachus do not provide further clues about his philosophical ideas..
These address rhetorical questions or are speeches that may have been written for others. In this sense, they cannot be considered as a faithful expression of their own thoughts..
Perhaps the most important fragment of his work is the one in which it is stated that the gods do not care about human affairs, since they do not enforce justice.
However, there are disagreements among his scholars about whether this thought is compatible with the position that Thrasymachus expresses in The Republic.
There is a man with the same name mentioned in Aristotle's Politics, who overthrew democracy in the Greek city of Cime. However, details of this event are completely unknown and it cannot be said that it is the same person.
In his work Phaedrus Plato called Thrasymachus a successful rhetorician; however, he did not attribute another significant quality to it. The Byzantine Encyclopedia Sweat also offers a brief description of Thrasymachus as a rhetorical theorist.
He says that "A Chalcedonian sophist (...) was the first to discover the period and the colon, and introduced the modern type of rhetoric." He concludes by saying that he was a disciple of the philosopher Plato and Isocrates.
Thrasymachus is recognized for his influence on contemporary political theory and is described as "a primitive version of Machiavelli." On Prince, Machiavelli argued that the true statesman does not stop at moral constraints in his quest for power..
In his book Isaous Dionysius of Halicarnassus exalted the rhetorical abilities of Thrasymachus. He describes it as "pure, subtle, inventive and capable, depending on what you want, to speak rigorously or with an abundance of words".
At the same time, Dionisio considered him a second-rate speaker, since Thrasymachus did not leave speeches to study his work, only manuals and exhibition speeches..
Thrasymachus composed a rhetoric manual and compiled a collection of passages that served as models for his students: they were the so-called oratorical resources that describe the Sweat.
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