Friends, Enemies...or Neither?

I was looking over my notes after class on Wednesday and my attention was drawn to the definitions of justice that were given by each of the “players” we covered in The Republic. I came to realize the one which raises the most questions for me is Polemarchus’ definition. Polemarchus basically states that justice is doing good to your friends and harm to your enemies. What I find so wrong about this is that “friends” and “enemies” come across as very ambiguous terms when you put deeper thought into the matter.

The Merriam Webster dictionary defines an enemy as “one that is antagonistic to another; especially: one seeking to injure, overthrow, or confound an opponent”.

One could say that it makes sense to retaliate with harm to someone who is trying to cause harm to you, after all it is only human nature to try to survive. Though when you try to apply this concept to to broader aspects of justice there is a lot of gray area. Take the example of someone robbing a bank, is the bank teller an enemy of the robber? No. Or plantation owners in the south before the Civil War and the African slaves they “owned” against their will?  Surely we would not describe the slaves as the enemies in that situation, and yet they were the receivers of harm. Polemarchus’ definition does not account for instances like these, which we would consider today as being legally and/or morally wrong, where the person that is the receiver of the injustice is not an enemy and was not “asking for” the unjust action. Also, there's the matter of people that you think are your friends who turn out to be backstabbers and were actually enemies all along. I honestly don't know what he would have to say on the matter of those people who fall in-between his two firm categories.

Furthermore, on the topic of “friends” for everything to work properly in a society, who you consider friends would have to be every citizen that was also attempting to be "good" and law abiding. To me Polemarchus' definition seemed very inward turning and exclusive to only the friends and enemies in one's personal circle. If this was the only concept of justice we had in our society I think it would end badly. To be truly just everyone would have to have some degree of common, human concern for those outside our circles, or else we could end up with small pockets of people creating their own rules based on who they like and dislike. Friends and enemies, just as likes and dislikes, are matters of opinion and thus cannot provide a good foundation for true justice.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/enemy