CIA and SOCRATES are on a plane with three prisoners. CIA pretends to execute the first prisoner in order to obtain a confession from the other two. Socrates begins by interrogating CIA on the nature of expertise, loyalty and inner virtue (120b-124a) after CIA claims to be the master of the plane. The third prisoner is revealed as BANE who then proposes that true virtue comes not through the knowledge an individual has, but through the individual serving the greater good as part of a whole (read notes xxvii-xxxi).
CIA: The first of you to talk can remain on my plane. He did not fly very well.
SOCRATES: My dear friend, do you feel in control?
CIA: Yes.
SOCRATES: Can you navigate this plane?
CIA: No.
SOCRATES: Is the captain of a ship not the master of the ship, or the expert rider master of horses?
CIA: I don't understand.
SOCRATES: Would it be cruel to allow one unskilled in the virtue of horse rearing to tend to horses?
CIA: Yes that would be cruel.
SOCRATES: And is not he who is most expert sailor the best suited to master a ship?
CIA: Yes, I suppose so.
SOCRATES: And it would be immoral to allow an unskilled man to captain a ship?
CIA: Certainly! The crew would surely drown!
SOCRATES: Then it follows that the controller of the craft should be he who is most skilled in the virtue of piloting. The pilot. It would be immoral to deviate from this. Much as we must be Governed by those who are skilled in the virtue of wisdom and protected by those skilled in the virtue of loyalty.
CIA: Yes Socrates, however I must question you in regards to loyalty
SOCRATES: Certainly.
CIA: This man before us appears to be particularly skilled in the virtue of loyalty despite being a mercenary.
SOCRATES: Who is the better doctor, he who is skilled in virtue of medicine; the treatment of bodily afflictions, balancing of humors, and so forth; or he who is the more convincing doctor?
CIA: The first, of course.
SOCRATES: but to one unskilled in the virtue of medicine, would he not believe the more convincing doctor to be the one most expert in the virtue of medicine, when he is in fact, unskilled in the virtue of medicine?
CIA: Yes, I suppose they would.
SOCRATES: And, my dear CIA, are you expert in the virtue of loyalty?
CIA: I must admit I am not.
SOCRATES: Then you cannot be sure if he is skilled in the virtue of loyalty or whether he is the most convincing.
THIRD PRISONER: Yes Socrates I agree. Perhaps CIA, he is instead wondering why you would shoot a man before throwing him out of a plane?
CIA: A clever fellow indeed. Who are you?
THIRD PRISONER: We are nothing. We are the dirt beneath your feet. And no one cared who I was until I put on the mask. [CIA, wary, approaches the Third Prisoner - pulls off his hood, revealing a dark mask with a breathing apparatus. The eyes behind it are cold. Still. This is Bane.]
THIRD PRISONER: Who we are does not matter. What matters is our plan.