Abstract

In Plato's Gorgias, Socrates makes the paradoxical-sounding claim that it is always better to be treated unjustly than to treat someone else unjustly. I examine Socrates' two arguments for this claim in my dissertation. If Socrates' arguments are correct, I claim that we have a good reason for thinking that ethical egoism is a better ethical theory than is usually thought and the modern distinction between descriptive and normative statements and the modern distinction between psychological and ethical truths are unnecessarily made