Can We Figure This Out?

The question that comes to mind while reading book II and beginning book III, is whether or not Socrates' city is going to make answering our question any easier. While I understand the principle behind what he is trying to do, I wonder if in reality it is going to make our situation any better. By adding all of the layers and parts of the city, we are supposed to gain insight into what is better, justice or injustice? But I am afraid that it is only going to make things less certain and a little more fuzzy.

Now I don't want to complain without suggesting a better way of doing things. So what I think we need to answer Glaucon's question, is a more definite answer of what justice actually is. While we are moving forward with some ruff understanding of what justice is and what injustice is, I don't think a concrete definition of either term has been given. And so how are we to know which is better, when we don't really know what either is. Perhaps I am the only person with this uncertainty, but maybe someone else does too.

And so I come to the part of the post where I really don't know where to go. Sometimes I think we should attack justice in the same way that virtue was attacked in Meno. But that still did not answer the original question that was posed. Or maybe we should continue on with the city, but I really am unsure where it is going. And I begin to think that Socrates is more serious than I first thought when he claimed that he did not know anyone who could tell what virtue is, or could tell what justice was and where it comes from. These are very difficult questions, and it is hard to tell where the answers are.