Justice has always been an interesting topic for philosophers and also for ordinary people. Justice can be defined briefly as “the fairness in the way that people are treated” (Collins Cobuild, p. 910). Plato and Aristotle, two leading figures of ancient Greek civilization, were earliest philosophers who thought about justice and developed theories about the sublime aspects of being just. This assignment is an attempt to prove that pursuing a life of justice would make living more worthwhile than being unjust or a combination of just and unjust life. In order to reach this point, I am going to explain the concept of justice and its superior aspects from the perspective of both Plato and Aristotle by taking help from their famous works “The Republic” and “The Nicomachean Ethics”. I will also give place to counter arguments and their rebuttals. I will make my own comments at the final part of the assignment.
Plato (427 BC-347 BC) was one of the earlier and most important philosophers of the world and is also known as the founder of “The Academy”. Plato’s most famous work is “The Republic” in which he tries to draw the qualities of a just individual and a just state by explaining the sublime nature of justice. In the first two books of The Republic, dialogues between different characters focus on different meanings of justice. During the conversation two conventional definitions of justice (“giving a man’s due” and “doing good to your friends, harm to your enemies”) are refuted brilliantly by Socrates and finally take the form of “doing good to your friends if they are good and doing harm to your enemies if they are bad” (Plato, p. 13). In the following parts of Book one, Thrasymachus appears with all his anger towards Socrates. Thrasymachus defines justice or what is right as “what is the interest of the stronger party” (Plato, p. 19) and rejects previous definitions.