Adoption And The Republic: How Would Plato View Abortion?

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“Abortion and The Republic: How Would Plato View Abortion?” The debate of whether abortion is right or wrong, ethical or unethical, just or unjust has been around for a long time, and it is going to be around for as long as people have a voice. There will always be people on both sides of the fence saying it should be legal or if it should be illegal. The discussion of The Republic has also been around for centuries. The topic of abortion can fit into parts of The Republic, and that is what this essay is going to do. Plato’s words have a much deeper meaning than what is on the surface, therefore he must have be opinionated on the topic of abortion. Throughout Plato’s Republic, we learn many ideas that Plato and Socrates have. One idea Plato has is that in a just city, every citizen must have a certain job. The city should not be made of men who are jacks of all trades, “Who would do a finer job, one man practicing many arts, or one man one art?” “One man, one art,” he said. Plato believes that this should be the case for many reasons. One reason he believes this, is that it would make the city much more efficient, and help the city out as a whole. It would allow the people to focus on one particular activity and master it rather than trying to do many jobs. Based on this idea, one could assume that Plato would be for abortion if the …show more content…

Socrates states that you should never be unjust, and that the unjust life is much worse than the just life.Based on this, one can conclude that you should strive to live a just life. One topic that Socrates states is unjust is getting pregnant after a certain age. In Book V, Socrates says “Then, if a man who is older than this, or younger, engages in reproduction for commonwealth, we shall say it’s a fault neither holy nor just.” This shows that Socrates believes that some pregnancies are unjust, which you could conclude that he is not opposed to

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