In Plato's Tough Guys and Their Attachment to Justice, Peter J. Hansen opens with a short chapter explaining his approach to reading Plato and then begins a close examination of Socrates's conversation with Thrasymachus in book 1 of the Republic. He moves on to an even more fine-grained reading of Callicles in the Gorgias. He closes the book with a short chapter on Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov, Gide's Michel, and Shakespeare's Richard III, and a brief synoptic conclusion.

What all these philosophical and literary characters have in common, according to Hansen, is that they are tough guys. By “tough guy,” Hansen means “somebody who rejects justice understood [as devotion to the common good] and embraces injustice” (xvi). He admits that this is not a perfect term for the quality of character he wishes to highlight and that “immoralist” comes in a close second, so Hansen says he will use “tough guy” and “immoralist” interchangeably. In actuality, he drops the “tough guy” language fairly early and consistently uses “immoralist” until he switches back to “tough guy” in the final chapter.

Hansen's account of Thrasymachus begins with the idea that “selfishness is a fundamental fact of life” (28). He encapsulates Thrasymachus's view this way: “All men seek their own good; all men seek to enrich themselves. One who freely expropriates what belongs to others lives the life that all men long for. He wins the only contest that matters; he demonstrates incontestably superior virtue” (28). Hansen is quick to claim that this view “won't bear the light of day,” but that insofar as this is Thrasymachus's orientation, he is more attached to justice than he knows. Additionally, he gleans from Thrasymachus's treatment of artisans that he is an admirer of art pursued for art's sake. He then derives from Thrasymachus's appreciation of the arts his admiration of an orderly cosmos, human action that is fitting within that cosmos, and cosmic reward for one who acts fittingly.

As his character study of Thrasymachus continues in chapter 3, Hansen claims that Thrasymachus's unselfconscious commitment to justice also renders him more self-sacrificing than he knows. He then argues that if one believes that justice requires giving each his due, then one also believes that justice requires one to give his due (to others). But this does not seem to follow from Hansen's own account of justice, since he claims also that Thrasymachus looks to the cosmos to give him his due, not necessarily to other human beings. The only giving required in this model is done by the cosmos, not human beings (except perhaps insofar as the cosmos works through them).

Yet, according to Hansen, this tacit commitment to justice is what makes Thrasymachus blush. A more conventional reading is that Thrasymachus blushes because Socrates has publicly bested him in his own art, rhetoric. Hansen does not deny that, but he believes that something more substantial is at work. Socrates does not just show Thrasymachus that he is wrong on Hansen's account; he shows him that he is right in ways that he is neither aware of nor ready to accept. Hansen's Thrasymachus loves justice, but he did not know it until Socrates held up a rhetorical mirror that allowed him to see himself more clearly.

The chapters on Callicles are the centerpiece of this book, and they are impressive in their detail. It is clear that Hansen has lived with this dialogue for many years. He argues that while Thrasymachus's unselfconscious commitment to justice is revealed by his admiration of the arts, Callicles's unselfconscious commitment to justice is shown by his attachment to virtue. In both cases an explicit commitment to selfishness and immorality hides an unselfconscious appreciation for selflessness and justice. The thread that runs through four chapters on Callicles follows his “tough-guy” presentation of himself, Socrates's dismantling of it, and the tacit commitment to justice that can be found closer to the heart of his true commitments.

Hansen's Callicles is fundamentally conflicted about virtue because he finds it infuriating that a virtuous man cannot protect himself against injustice. He rejects virtue because he finds it unacceptable to organize his life around a principle that would make him vulnerable. “To an unusual extent for a young man who is neither enslaved nor impoverished, he experiences the world as a hostile and dangerous place. The only thing he feels one can rely upon is power. These feelings interact with a normal human attraction to justice (as a principle) in forming his view of natural justice; thus, a man who cannot protect himself is a slave who deserves to die” (134). Real men have the capacity to protect themselves and their loved ones, so real virtue (i.e., natural justice) is what is conventionally known as vice (i.e., a rejection of justice as a principle). Socrates takes apart every one of these ideas and the links that Callicles presents between them, culminating in the argument that self-preservation itself is not a particularly laudable ambition. At the end of the dialogue Callicles is reduced to silence, and Socrates turns to myth.

I find Hansen's development of Callicles's character persuasive on many levels, but I become uneasy when the lines do not seem to be drawn clearly enough between Hansen's interpretations and his speculations. So, for example, I find it plausible that Socrates reveals to Thrasymachus that his deeply held appreciation of art for art's sake is a manifestation of his even more deeply buried sense of justice. I also find it plausible that Callicles's insistence that he be able to defend himself and his family is revealed to him to be a mistaken understanding of virtue and that he realizes (or is brought to the brink of realizing) that he is more deeply committed to virtue than to his misunderstanding of virtue as the capacity for self-preservation. But, as I step back from Hansen's speculative development of these characters, it becomes just as plausible to me that when Thrasymachus and Callicles are shown the incoherence of their positions, they are left in a state of aporia that brings with it no more necessary commitment to justice than to power or self-preservation.

When we get to chapter 8, “Other Tough Guys,” Hansen's commitment to developing a deep understanding of character and motivation is on full display. Hansen's brief essay on Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov puts a finer point on his definition of “immoralist” and creates an embodied set of boundary conditions that more clearly delineate the nature of Thrasymachus's and Callicles's immoralism—both of which are among his explicit goals for the chapter. The most striking thing about the account, though, is the carefulness, depth, and imagination of the character analysis that Hansen presents in just a few pages. Likewise, but perhaps to a slightly lesser extent, his accounts of Gide's Michel and Shakespeare's Richard III are impressive in their brief but probing characterizations. This chapter does not really feel like a proper conclusion to Hansen's book, despite its merits. I found myself wishing these examples had been embedded into earlier accounts rather than added at the end, but, on the other hand, as a reader of Dostoevsky, Gide, and Shakespeare, I was grateful that his insights to these characters were developed uninterrupted.