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Metaphysical And Epistemological Issues In Plato's Republic

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PHILOSOPHY TERM PAPER-2
IIT GANDHINAGAR

NAME: RANA JAINISHKUMAR D. ROLL NO.: 13110095

NAME OF INSTRUCTOR: PROF. JAISON MANJALY

PLATO'S REPUBLIC

This book is known as greatest work of Plato in his life. Even students of politics use this book for reference in studying politics till now-days. As this book covers so many issues, this book can be studied in many different ways. But our primary main focus is on the basic metaphysical and epistemological issues. This book is divided in four parts written by Plato around 380 BC. the most comprehensive work of Plato's mature philosophical views appears in his book republic. by the way “republic” is the examination of good …show more content…

Socrates asked to Cephalus to define what is justice? As we know that Cephalus is well respected reach and elder man of the city. He tried to define justice in his way. He replied to Socrates that ' justice means living up to your legal obligations and being honest.'. it simply meant that I know the define rules so I know what others are expecting from me and honestly I have to obey those rules. Although Socrates is yet not satisfied by the argument given by Cephalus. He has some counter examples to disprove or violate the argument given by Cephalus. He gives a counter example to violate the argument of Cephalus. He consider a case of a mad man. Suppose a weapon of a mad man get lost. So it is belonging to mad man legally. If some one will going to return that weapon to mad man. That imagine what will happen? It could be possible (more probably) that mad man will going to hurt the person who behaved legally to him by returning weapon back to him or somebody …show more content…

He claimed that he has much better definition of justice. He said that in any kind of civilization one thing is common about justice and that is justice is nothing but the advantage of stronger one.
He said that just does not pay to be just. Just behavior works to the advantage of others but not to the person who behaves justly. Thrasymachus assumed that in his mind that justice is unnatural constraint on our natural desires to have more. Here is a huge point to think about that although Thrasymachus is a sophist(teacher), he is promoting the injustice. Socrates makes series of arguments against Thrasymachus's view. He makes Thrasymachus admit that his view promotes injustice as a virtue. In this view, life looks to be a competition to get more than others and whoever is most successful in the that competition has greatest virtue. So that man who got the greatest virtue can do anything whatever he want. According to Socrates justice is the key in order to reach any of the goals because it causes peoples to follow certain rules and enable them to act in common. Finally Socrates argued that since it is agreed that justice is virtue of the soul, and virtue of the soul means health of the soul, so justice is desirable because it is the health of the soul. It is obvious that if some one is not getting the justice than surely his heart got broken so justice is necessary for every one who lives in the society. After

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