Plato's Republic And Justice
Justice is ultimately an unknowable concept, if we accept Plato's ideas of 'form' or the essential nature of concepts. In the Republic, Plato presents several intelligent and well-thought-out discussions about the nature of justice. He refutes the arguments that justice is simply rewarding friends, or asserting the interests of the strong. He ultimately concludes that the goal of life is the pursuit of what is just, and that a just life makes man happy. However, if we accept Plato's ideal of the 'form', or essential nature of a concept, it is thereby impossible to truly understand the concept of justice. The best that we, or even the brilliant and inquisitive Plato can attempt, is to achieve a clear representation of the ideal or 'form' of justice.
In Plato's Republic, he provides a challenging discussion of the nature of justice and injustice. In Book One, Socrates contemplates the nature of justice with the aging Cephalus, Polemarchus who is Cephalus' son, and Threasymachus, a sophist. By Book Two, Plato's brothers challenge Socrates to convince them of some of his ideas about justice, namely that an unjust life filled with wealth, power, and fame is no preferable to a just life without these things. In this book, Plato's brothers consider...
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’s Republic: A Definition of Justice According to Plato, “justice is the excellence of the soul, and injustice the defect of the soul” (20). Another definition of it, however, is that justice is “the repayment of a debt” (4). This is a rather narrow definition of justice, and it is one that Socrates unpacks—but it to can get to the heart of the underlying meaning. The just man is one who
This is Aristotle's launching pad for his discussion of politics. To him, ethics and politics are matters of rational judgment, stemming from the natural inclinations of individual humans. This notion is reflected in Aristotle's analysis of the constitutional doctrines of some 158 cities. Essentially, he recognized that every state -- necessarily city states -- exist in unique sets of circumstances that act upon the universal forms of ethics in ways
Plato's theory of Being and Becoming, and its relations to the forms, is rooted in the dichotomy between being and not-being. Prior to Socrates the Sophists, from Parminedes to Gorgias, had argued that because it was impossible by definition for Nothing to exist, it was impossible to describe or vocalize a negative state, and therefore also impossible to utter falsehood. "And now arises the greatest difficulty of all. If
Plato's Republic There is some truth to the idea that certain appetites are difficult to control. As animals, we seek things like food and sex, as these are among our most basest needs. As humans, we may seek some of these things to excess, and indulge in them readily when they are available. There is a case to be made that our desire for recreation (alcohol, drugs, leisure time) can also
Justice in the Republic In Book II of The Republic, Plato attempts to define and describe the role of justice in society by having his characters argue for two different approaches to the topic. While Socrates asserts that justice is good and desirable both in itself and because of the ends it creates, Glaucon rejects this assertion by pointing out that justice is nothing more than coercion. The debate is particularly
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