Justice In Plato's Republic Essay

In Plato’s The Trial and Death of Socrates, written in approximately 399 B.C.E., his beloved teacher and mentor, Socrates, fights for his innocence against alleged charges, all of which pertaining to atheism, in the Court of King Archon. Whilst defending himself, Socrates claims to possess “human wisdom,” (Apology, 31), and those prosecuting him to maintain “super-human wisdom” (Apology, 31), for they must retain greater knowledge than he. Despite his alleged shred of this wisdom, he only interests himself with the knowledge of the mortal. Through articulating this, Socrates expounds upon the observances in mortal life, and argues that as a human, one should not concern themselves with what lies beyond death, for there is much to explore in

Eisele in his article ‘Must Virtue Be Taught?’ he states that indeed it can because even though the main theory is that virtue is knowledge and that it may be taught, there is no one to fully comprehend and define what virtue is and share the understanding of it with others. Eisle presents an insightful new theory that Socrates knows what virtue is and how to teach it because he is the best example of it. With virtue being equivalent to excellence, Eisle argues that Socrates ‘performs excellence in his incessant questioning and questing’ (Eisle, 1987:

In Niccolo Machiavelli’s “The Morals of the Prince” and Plato’s “The Allegory of the Cave,” human nature is presented in different ways addressing the concepts of seeming and being. While Plato stresses the importance of being rather than seeming, Machiavelli reveals human nature is more successful when seeming rather than being. In Plato’s “The Allegory of the Cave,” Socrates emphasizes that the only way to separate what seems like reality and what actually is reality is to experience it in its purest form. Knowledge gained from the senses is nothing more than opinion, and to obtain real knowledge we must use philosophical reasoning.

Polemarchus’ idea of justice, “By defining a friend as one who both seems and is an honest man: while the man who seems, but is not, and honest man seems a friend, but really is not. And similarly for an enemy” (335a). What Polemarchus is trying to say is that do good for friends and harm for enemies for justice. To go more in depth into what he is saying, Polemarchus believes you must first determine who is your ally to do good by him and also determine who your enemies are thus to do “harm” by him. On receiving this point of view based on Justice Plato went further to decipher Polemarchus’ idea.

For example, Zeus was the king of the Greek gods. To appease Zeus was thus to maintain favor, fortune and prominence: To oppose him or otherwise displease him was, essentially, unthinkable…or illogical. Therefore, an appeasement of the gods was as necessary as the air to breath. However, Aristotle would present logical arguments which would demonstrate a need for those within Greece (and the ancient world) to rely more upon logic than myth, as logos was the more prominent ‘trait’ to abide by when all the layers were stripped away.

We will focus specifically on how Eryximachus’ idea of Erôs as the Good itself versus Socrates idea of Erôs as only the seeker of the Good effect their arguments integrity. We will also explore how both of these speeches are similar in their understanding of Erôs in terms of a balancing force although Eryximachus focuses on the nature of Love whereas Socrates turns to the effects of Erôs (Naugle, 2010, pp. 7-9). To arrive at the conclusion that while one personally prefer the account of Erôs given by Eryximachus, Socrates speech is more convincing due to the issues raised by equating Erôs to the Good.

Goodness plays a huge role in society and, therefore, attracts a lot of attention of various philosophers and other thinkers. Plato is not an exception; his dialogue “Euthyphro” is concentrated all around this theme. It raises the question whether goodness exists at all; but at the same time, it leaves a reader with no answer. However, through Socrates it could be understood that, whatever can be defined precisely is real, that is why he tries to get an exact definition of goodness from Euthyphro in order to know if goodness is real or it is something impermanent, which is merely claimed by human society. Euthyphro made three attempts to give the definition and prove his religious knowledge.

Socrates does not make sound arguments because although his premises are logical, they sometimes have nothing to do with the original argument. In Plato’s Euthyphro, the Euthyphro dilemma argument states whether the Gods love the pious because it is pious or it is pious because the Gods love it. In order to support this distinction, Socrates’ first premise in supporting this conclusion is the example of being carried. Socrates claims that there is a difference between something that is already in the state of being carried because it is carried or if something is carried because it is in the state of being carried.

In “Plato’s Gorgias” Socrates debates with fellow philosophers, Polus, Callicles, Chaerephon and Gorgias, of ancient Greece over rhetoric, justice, and power. During these debates, Socrates makes a claim to Polus that it is better to suffer injustices rather than to commit injustice because the positive and negative consequences that come along with committing and suffering injustices. This claim by Socrates that it is better to suffer injustice than to commit injustice is pretty easy to comprehend once all the parts are analyzed. At first, this idea seems crazy that it is actually beneficial to suffer injustice and wrong-doing.

Kimberly Cronin 30 September 2015 Professor Frazer-Simser Short Essay Plato’s “Euthyphro” The Homeric Gods are worshipped by the Greeks as being all good. Likewise, God, a single entity, is also seen as all good. The difference between these two is that whereas the Homeric gods have human emotions and desires that affect their decisions, God is all good and does not hold biases towards anyone or anything.