11. Gyges’ Ring Justice requires restraint, sacrifice of self-interest
People only act justly because they fear punishment (personal, social, legal)
Punishment depends on detection
Gods can be bought off with sacrifice

13. The completely rational man will seek to be unjust where possible, just when necessary
Injustice is always better...if you can get away with it!
Justice is only instrumentally good in some cases
High chance of being caught
Severe consequences

15. Glaucon’s Conclusion: It’s best to seem just but be secretly unjust.
Actual justice is a necessary evil.

16. Glaucon’s Challenge Plato’s Response
Glaucon’s Challenge: Prove justice is better than injustice
Plato says injustice
subordinates reason to desire, dehumanizes
is the sign of an unbalanced or diseased mind

17. Glaucon’s Challenge Plato’s Response
Plato says injustice
makes us a slave to our desires
robs us of freedom
Free choices are made through rational deliberation, not compelled by desire

18. Critique of Plato’s Response
Man is an animal
Dualist assumptions
Denigration of the body and its desires
Philosophy as practice for death

19. Critique of Plato’s Response
Disease account relies on primitive, pre-scientific model
Anti-social behavior as “sick” = a hidden normative judgment, assumes “proper function” - naturalistic fallacy

20. Plato’s Response Critique
Reason itself
cannot motivate
chooses means, not ends
Weakness of will is a conflict between two desires, not reason and desire

21. Rand’s Answer: Natural Rights
Rights stem from Man’s nature as a living being
Virtue entails respecting life, reason and freedom generally, as values
Hypocrisy requires false consciousness

22. “You can’t derive an ought from an is.” - David Hume
Such and such are the facts of the situation, so one ought to do X.
Related “naturalistic fallacy” - x is natural, therefore x is good.
Values as pragmatic guides to survival and happiness?

23. “Life is exploitation.” - Friedrich Nietzsche
Living things exploit other living things and their environment to further their own ends
Survival of the fittest
The Law of the Jungle
Man is a predator
Why not prey on weak men?

24. If holding truth, human life, liberty and happiness as values create prohibitions against force or fraud, why don’t they also create altruistic moral requirements to advance these values for others?

25. Obligations to render aid and promote the general welfare, even sacrifice for it, (especially where the cost to me is small but the benefit to the group is large), serve Man’s survival and flourishing also.

26. What is generally good for humanity generally isn’t always good for me in every particular case
What Man requires for the furtherance of his life and happiness vs. what this man requires
Rigid, exceptionless ethical principles based on Man’s nature don’t obviously serve my particular interests
Lost wallet example

27. What is generally good for humanity generally isn’t always good for me in every particular case
Egoism like utilitarianism is a teleological theory
Flawed criticisms of utilitarianism don’t work against egoism either
Since your action will always depend on the particulars of the case, it is a form of moral relativism
It’s too difficult to calculate the consequences

28. What is generally good for humanity generally isn’t good for me in every particular case
Rules of thumb: practical guidelines which serve a general principle in most cases
Rules of thumb are a means to an end, not an end in themselves
When the rule doesn’t serve its purpose, you break it

29. “It’s irrational for you to violate the rights of others while not wanting others to violate your rights.”
“What if everybody acted like that?”
“You should treat others as you’d like to be treated.”
“You should respect the same rationality in others as exists in you.”
“How would you feel if someone did that to you?”
Kant’s “contradiction in concept” is not a true contradiction!

30. Pejorative terms like hypocrite, thief, criminal, liar, etc
Pejorative terms like hypocrite, thief, criminal, liar, etc. beg the question and amount to emotionally charged rhetoric
Hypocrisy creates a false consciousness only if rights are treated as Kantian absolutes
Guilt arises only if you are not serving your self-interest, e.g. if you get caught

31. Weak Arguments
“The weed of crime bears bitter fruit...crime does not pay!”
Most career criminals are not rational
We only see the ones who get caught
Mao, Stalin didn’t pay

32. Weak Arguments
The assumption that immorality will always lead to worse consequences
Naïve
Mystical (e.g. a personification of justice as a force, like karma
Assumes a perfect Platonic world where justice is a law which cannot be violated without tragic effects

33. Weak Arguments
Two choices: deal with others via reason or force/fraud - must choose one
Why deal with all the same way?
Why all the time and in every case?
Equivocates on “not using reason” - not using rational persuasion vs. not reasoning or being irrational

34. Weak Arguments
Two choices: deal with others via reason or force/fraud - must choose one
Reason and force are not opposites, voluntary cooperation and force are

35. Squaring Egoism with Justice
Hobbesian enlightened self-interest
Promoting a system of government to protect your rights and to obey the law when necessary
Whether you should obey how good the State is at catching and punishing people generally and the particulars of the case

36. Squaring Egoism with Justice
Humean sentiments of sympathy and benevolence
I irrationally associate the sufferings of others with my own suffering even when there is no direct causal connection

37. Squaring Egoism with Justice
Evolutionary psychology and man as a social animal
Morality based on blood and kinship, abstracted to “all men are brothers.”

38. Squaring Egoism with Justice
Pragmatic considerations: injustice as impractical most of the time in modern American society
Social and legal structures generally reward good behavior

39. Squaring Egoism with Justice
Even petty crime has serious consequences
Consistent bad behavior will ostracize you
Large consequences can make even a small risk not worthwhile

40. Squaring Egoism with Justice
Good character, self-esteem, psychological realities and relationships
The way to win friends and influence people is by following objectivist virtues

41. Conclusions
Must a satisfactory egoist account of justice show that it is always rational to be just?
Platonic perfection
Values as practical guides vs. absolute abstract principles which are ends in themselves
Integration with natural human sentiments - it feels good to have and espouse values of reason and liberty (though espousing unpopular values may also lead to negative consequences)
Justice pays for most people much of the time and it’s in most people’s interest to perpetuate conditions in which this continues to be true