...definitions of justice are proposed but deemed inadequate.[7] Returning debts owed, and helping friends while harming enemies are common sense definitions of justice that, Socrates shows, are inadequate in exceptional situations, and thus lack the rigidity demanded of a definition. Yet he does not completely reject them for each expresses a common sense notion of justice which Socrates will incorporate into his discussion of the just regime in books II through V. At the end of Book I, Socrates agrees with Polemarchus that justice includes helping friends, but says the just man would never do harm to anybody. Thrasymachus believes that Socrates has done the men present an injustice by saying this and attacks his character and reputation in front of the group, partly because he suspects that Socrates himself does not even believe harming enemies is unjust. Thrasymachus gives his understanding of justice and injustice as "justice is what is advantageous to the stronger, while injustice is to one's own profit and advantage".[8] Socrates finds this definition unclear and begins to question Thrasymachus. Socrates then asks whether the ruler who makes a mistake by making a law that lessens their well-being, is still a ruler according to that definition. Thrasymachus agrees that no true ruler would make such an error. This agreement allows Socrates to undermine Thrasymachus' strict definition of justice by comparing rulers to people of various professions. Thrasymachus consents to Socrates' assertion...
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...Human nature drives individuals to define the most perplexing concepts; however, understanding the true meaning refers to more than its denotation. The definition of justice proves to be a conflicting view point, dating back to Socrates’s attempted explanation in Plato’s The Republic. Within the first book, Socrates finds himself exposing the flaws behind three definitions of justice proposed by the traditionalists of Athens. Through Socrates’s ridicule of physical attributions equating to justice, he disproves these perceived virtues and conveys the necessity for a lack of physicality. Due to Celphalus’s patrician status within the ancient Athenian society, he derives his definition of justice through his high financial position. After speaking...
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...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...
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...Defining Justice How do Cephalus, Polemarchus, and Thrasymachus respectively define “justice”? On what grounds does Socrates refute them? In the first book of Plato’s Republic three possible definitions of the term “justice” are brought up by Cephalus, Polemarchus, and Thrasymachus which Socrates is able to refute. Though Socrates presents no personal opinion himself he is able to question each explanation given to him by the others. The book begins with a discussion between Socrates and Cephalus where the question of justice is initially brought up. What makes Cephalus different from the other characters is that he does not offer his own opinion but that of traditional Greek beliefs. He simply states that justice is achieved by giving back what one has taken from another and by being an honest man. Although Cephalus does not boast about his fortunes, it becomes apparent that he is very economically-oriented and he possesses a very black and white view that justice is something that can be paid off. From this Socrates then questions how that can always be right. He provides an example of if one friend took weapons from another who was mentally unstable and they demanded them back. Would it be just for the mentally stable friend to simply return them even if he knew dangerous consequences could follow because the person was legally entitled to the weapons? Cephalus agrees that this would indeed contradict his definition of justice. From this Cephalus’ son Polemarchus...
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...Question #1 Chaerephon asked the omniscient oracle if there was anyone wiser than Socrates, and the Oracle replied there was not. Socrates becomes very perplexed by the answer for he knew the Oracle could not tell a lie & he knew he had no certain wisdom or knowledge. In order to test the claim of the Oracle, Socrates began to question Athenian men whose knowledge was highly respected such as the politicians, the poets, and craftsmen. He found that the politicians who thought they were very wise, in fact knew nothing at all. The poets were incapable of explaining their works; Socrates concluded that their genius came not from wisdom but from some sort of instinct or inspiration which was in no way connected to their intellect. Furthermore, these poets seemed to think they could speak intelligently about all sorts of matters concerning which they were quite ignorant. In the craftsmen, Socrates found men who truly did have great wisdom in their craft, but invariably, they seemed to think that their expertise in one field allowed them to speak authoritatively in many other fields, about which they knew nothing. In each case, Socrates affirmed that he would rather be as he is, knowing that he knows nothing, than to be inflated by a false sense of his own wisdom. Thus, he concludes, he truly is wiser than other men because he does not think he knows what he does not know. Though many people take Socrates to be an expert in the fields of which he questions others, he denies an expertise...
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...Socrates is accused of being “an investigator of all things below the earth” (Apology, pg. 47, 18b). This means that he studies the science behind everything. Socrates is accused of “not acknowledging the gods” (Apology, pg.50, 23d). The people of Athens things that Socrates does not believe in the gods, that he studies the science of everything around him. Socrates went to Piraeus for a festival. When he was there, he said a prayer and watched the procession. Then Socrates “hurry[ed]” back to his own town (Republic, bk.1, pg. 75, 327b). When Socrates hurried back it seemed like he did not care for the god, Bendis, in which the city was acknowledging as a god (Mark, lecture of 2/2/17). He seems like he is doing it to show that he does acknowledge Bendis but inside he does not believe in him. Socrates does not think the gods are helpful in trying to find what justice is. He says that he “won’t accept from Homer… the foolish mistakes he makes about the gods” (Republic, bk.2, pg.107, 379c). Since the Odyssey was like the Bible, in where Odysseus is like the god of the story, Socrates is saying let’s not praise them because they are the ones who make good and bad people. When people do good or bad things,...
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...conditions in Athens. This book is focused on the conception of justice and what it is to be just. This theory has been presented differently by each of the characters in the book, which are Cephalus, Polymarchus, Thrasymachus, and Glaucon. However, Socrates is the one who is given a challenge: to prove that justice is good and desirable. The book starts off with Cephalus giving his own conception of justice, which he believes to be “justice is nothing more than honoring legal obligations and being honest”. However, Socrate’s counterexample is “returning a weapon to a madman”. You owe the madman a weapon therefor you are being just and giving him back what he owns, yet this would also be considered an unjust act because you are landing back a weapon to a crazy man that might lead to him taking one’s life away. Polymarchus , Cephalus’ son then takes over with another idea of justice “justice means you owe a friend’s help and your enemies harm”. Polymarchus and his father share a similarity on their suggestions. Socrates, on the other hand reveals another counterexample and points out that sometimes we often are mistaken about who we call friends and who we call enemies because “we are not always friends with the most virtous individuals , nor are our enemies the scum of our society.” This all leads to Thrasymachus getting angry and jumping into this conversation with his own idea of justice. According to this man “justice is the advantage of the weak”. He believes that it does not...
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...Thrasymachus claims that justice is “what is advantageous for the stronger” (338c). The “stronger” can be likened to a ruler. In his view, if rulers say that their laws are just, then it is so, because their power makes it such. The amount of suffering inflicted upon the weaker does not change this, because in any case, it is those who are strongest who establish the meaning of justice. According to Thrasymachus, being unjust is more profitable than being just. By saying this, he is not abandoning his initial claim that justice is “what is advantageous for the stronger” (338c), rather, he is distinguishing injustice as being something which is “advantageous for oneself” (344c). If stealing is committed by a commoner it is unjust, yet still...
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...In Plato’s “The Republic” Book II, a philosopher by the name of Glaucon is introduced. He believes that the value of justice needs to be examined further. He does not agree with what Socrates’ defines as justice. Socrates believes that justice is a worthy goal as both an end and as a means to an end. Glaucon offers to play the devil's advocate to Socrates’ view of justice by saying that justice has no intrinsic value and only the consequences matter. Glaucon uses Thrasymachus’ argument, from Book I, as the basis for his first point. Thrasymachus believed that anything ‘good’ could be separated into three categories. The first represented anything that was a “good we like for its own sake (Plato 33)”. The second category represents things that are good based...
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...of justice is and how it relates to us in the real world. My personal impression of justice was doing what was expected of you by society and suffering the consequences for committing injustice. But this issue is far more complex than as we found out in reading The Republic Of Plato. In the republic, Plato speaks though his teacher Socrates and sets out to try and find the answers to two questions; what is justice and why should we be just? Looking at the Republic as a work on justice, we first have to ask ourselves why does justice have to be defended. Thrasymachus makes it clear that justices is not considered to be universally beneficial. For as long as their has been ethical thought, there has been people who have this idea that it is better to look after ones own interest then to follow rules of right and wrong. The Greeks concept of justices came from poets that would link ideas and thoughts into stories relating to the gods. In their eyes Zeus rewarded those who are good and punishes those who are bad. Not many agreed with this idea because they could see unjust men flourishing and people of Athens. Leading the controversial argument on justice were people called Sophists and their idea of justice, as we discussed in class, was we should be unjust if it is beneficial. In the Republic on page 15 Thrasymachus gives his opinion on justices stating, “I say that the just is nothing other than the advantage of the stronger”. What exactly does Thrasymachus mean by justice is nothing...
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...The “Gadfly of Athens Socrates is conceivably one of the most famous and popular philosophers throughout history and was the teacher of Greek philosopher Plato who later taught Aristotle. Socrates was born between the years of 470/469 BCE in Athens, Greece. Socrates was extremely aficionado of “the examined life” which is a person such as Socrates who continually attempts to achieve virtue or righteousness through reflective contemplation by questioning habits and devotion to truth. Socrates spent most of his life questioning and criticizing Athenian politics turning truth...
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...The use of force by those who are permitted to command power can be handled in ways that can either help or harm society as a whole. The ways in which force is dictated directly correlates to the problem of violence within society among the works of Sophocles’ Antigone, Plato’s Republic and Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War. Creon from Sophocles’ Antigone, Thrasymachus from Plato’s Republic and the Melian Dialogue from Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War all illustrate how force can be used for personal gain. The characters involved in these three works evidently reveal that those who are awarded with the utmost power may not always be the people who deserve the right to make decisions. Creon, from Sophocles’ Antigone, is a prime...
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...In the opening books of Plato’s The Republic, Thrasymachus and Glaucon argue that justice, as it is traditionally conceived, is merely the advantage of the stronger over the weaker, that rulers simply rule for their own benefit and that people only act justly for its consequences. Despite Socrates’ opposing view on the meaning of justice, the events depicted in Jonathan Kozol’s Amazing Grace support the views of Thrasymachus and Glaucon. In Book I, Thrasymachus begins his argument by defining traditional justice. “…As I have said from the beginning, the just is the advantage of the stronger, and the unjust is what is profitable and advantageous for oneself” (Plato, 344c). Here, Thrasymachus introduces his first point, that the unjust man will always be better off than the just man. He then defends this claim with three key examples. Thrasymachus states that in contracts between a just and unjust man the unjust man will always come up with more, in tax systems the unjust man will pay less taxes and receive higher distributions, and finally the just man will “incur the ill will of his relatives and his acquaintances when he is unwilling to serve them against what is just” (Plato, 343e). Unconfined by the rules of justice, unjust men are able to act selfishly and for their own benefit rather than acting for the good of others. This point of view is exemplified in the actions and resulting fortunes of Mrs. Washington in Amazing Grace. Mrs. Washington is the epitome of just. Living...
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...of nature was very different from that used by traditional natural law theorists. They saw natural law as the basic moral precepts that every civilized nation acknowledged. Many equated Natural Law with the Ten Commandments. Self preservation will decrease the interest to search for peace. Natural law command is suppose to be designed to search for peace and personal security. | | | Glaucon believes that justice is good solely as means but not in itself. Glaucon wants Socrates to prove to him how it can be good both as means and in itself. Glaucon says that no one is willingly just, but rather compelled to act justly caused by nature, while they try to better themselves, ultimately saying that the life of the unjust is also better. Glaucon’s argument contains three parts; justice being good in itself, purely as means, the third dealing with its goodness for both reasons. Glaucon says that justice is a mean between doing what is best; which is doing injustice without paying the penalty and suffering injustice without being able to avenge oneself. Therefore, justice is not cared for because it is good, however, it is honored due to a want of vigor in doing injustice. He makes a second point on why people are unwillingly just, saying that the only reason the just are just is because they follow the rules and are afraid of being caught. However, if such a person were invisible and free to do whatever he or she wished, then they too would...
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...In Book II of the Plato’s Republic, Glaucon and Adeimantus challenge Socrates’ claim that justice belongs in the class of goods which are valued for their own sake as well as for the sake of what comes from them (Rep. 357 b- 358 a). Unconvinced by Socrates’ refutation of Thrasymachus, Glaucon renews Thrasymachus’ argument that the life of the unjust person is better than that of the just person. As part of his case, Glaucon states what he claims most people consider the nature of justice to be and what its origins are. He proceeds to present a version of the social contract theory: They say that to do injustice is naturally good and to suffer injustice bad, but that the badness of suffering it so far exceeds the goodness of doing it that those who have done and suffered injustice and tasted both, but who lack the power to do it and avoid suffering it, decide that it is profitable to come to an agreement with each other neither to do injustice nor to suffer it. As a result, they begin to make laws and covenants, and what the law commands they call lawful and just. This, they say, is the origin and essence of justice. It is intermediate between the best and the worst. The best is to do injustice without paying the penalty; the worst is to suffer it without being able to take revenge. Justice is a mean between these two extremes. People value it not because it is a good but because they are too weak to do injustice with impunity. Someone who has the power to do this...
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