¶ … Plato's "Republic" -- Justice, Myth, Education
Many of the rhetorical terms used by Socrates in Plato's "Republic" might be misleading to a casual observer from contemporary American society. It is important to go over the definitions of justice, myths, and education of children, as they are used within this text, so a reader is neither confused nor mislead as to the basic tenets of this great, but autocratic Greek philosopher's core beliefs about the stratified nature of an ideal society that mirrored the human soul.
Although the title of the text refers to a "Republic," and a republican form of government as exists within our own nation is representative and has many democratic elements and institutions to support its frameworks, such as the electoral process (for better or for worse), Plato intended his work to be a critique of democratic Athenian society and institutions. He believed that it was most just that the will of the most philosophically and morally gifted should lead, rather than society should be ruled by the many. This, for Plato, was justice. Thus, his definitions of such core concepts as justice, the meaning of myth, and the forms of teaching an ideal education are quite different from the connotations such words have in our media discourse today, where republicanism is synonymous with popular democracy, justice should be blind, myths are fairy tales, and education is democratically dispersed amongst the citizenry so that 'anyone' can succeed.
Plato's republic is an autocracy of merit, lead by philosopher kings. Merit, however, is determined at birth or relatively early in life,...
Plato on Justice The Greek word which Plato uses to mean "justice" -- dike or dikaios -- is also synonymous with law and can also mean "the just"; as Allan Bloom (1991) notes, Plato uses a more specific term -- dikaiosyne -- in the Republic, which means something more like "justice, the virtue" (p. 442). Gregory Vlastos (1981) goes even further to note that, with Plato's very vocabulary for these concepts
Plato, Thomas Aquinas and Jeremy Bentham have exerted great influence over our ideas of justice and have spawned various schools of thought. This paper compares views on justice by looking at their writings on the ideal state and what constitutes moral behavior. Plato (427-327 BC) is one of the most famous philosophers of antiquity. In The Republic, Plato wrote of his concept of individual justice as an offshoot of what he
Aristotle v. Plato Compare and contrast the metaphysical position of Aristotle and Plato. Does Aristotle's work constitute a sharp break with the position laid down by his teacher? Or is the old saying true that he apple does not fall far from the tree? Although their positions are often elided, the focus of Aristotle and Plato's metaphysical emphases is quite different. Ironically, given that one of his most famous works is called
Plato: Life, Philosophies, And Influence Time Period Plato Lived in. Plato was born in 428 BC and grew up in a time of major political change in Ancient Greece. The Peloponnesian War began a few years after he was born and continued until he was twenty. Plato would have been liable to serve in the military after 407 BC and it is thought that he probably served in the final years of
Epistemological Beliefs and Organizational Leadership Epistemological Philosophies: Comparing Plato and Protagoras To understand our quest for knowledge, we often have to go back to some of the classical theories in order to get a full view of how modern theories have developed. Understanding classical philosophy is not blindly reading one philosopher and then assuming you have the knowledge of thousands of years of Greco-Roman thought. There were major differences within the philosophers
Philosophers of Ancient Greece Ancient Greece offers a plethora of great thinkers all of whom contributed greatly to understanding the mysteries of natural and unnatural phenomena. From the Pre-Socratic era to the Classical Age of thought, we come across various schools that painstakingly define the workings of the mind, soul, matter and the whole universe. This paper aims to outline the philosophical beliefs of the spearheads of Greek thought and compare
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