In the very beginning of the Republic after Socrates poses the question, what is justice? Cephalus is the first one to answer. His definition of justice is that that a man must pay back all of his debts and legal obligations and live as honest of a life as possible. Socrates did not like this definition because if you barrow the sword of a mad man and then later that man comes to you saying that he is going to kill someone and requests you to give him his weapon back by that definition of justice you would have to return the sword. But that is crazy and wrong to return the sword to the man when you know he is going to hurt someone with it.
Then Polemarchus comes in saying that Justice is honoring and being loyal to your friends and bringing
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Then behind them is a fire and another set of people with statues. The people that are chained up are only ever able to look at the statues. Because they are only ever able to look at the statues this is all they ever know, and they thing this is the most real thing. Then when they are released from the chains they are able to see the statues behind them and they realize that the statues are what make the shadows and they now think that the statues are the most real thing. Then when they go outside of the cave they see all of the plants and animals and they realize that these are even more real than the statues and that the statues were made in the image of the animals. Then the people look up at the sun and realize that the sun is the source that helps create everything on the earth. This story was told by Socrates to help describe how education is supposed to function. In the beginning of the story when the people are only able to see the statues and they think they are the only real thing they are at the imagination stage. When they are released and see that the statues create the shadows they are at the belief stage. When they see the animals outside the stage and realize these are the real forms of the statues they have reached the cognitive stage. Finally when the prisoner sees that the sun is the source for all of the life on the earth he has reached the understanding stage. This whole story just represented that when we are young we are nieve and we don’t know anything, but slowly throughout life we work our way out of the cave and become closer to the ultimate goal of
the Republic, Socrates argues that justice ought to be valued both for its own sake and for the sake of its consequences (358a1–3). His interlocutors Glaucon and Adeimantus have reported a number of arguments to the effect that the value of justice lies purely in the rewards and reputation that are the usual consequence of being seen to be just, and have asked Socrates to say what justice is and to show that justice is always intrinsically better than is acting contrary to justice when doing so would win you more non-moral goods. Glaucon presents these arguments as renewing Thrasymachus’ Book 1 position that justice is “another’s good” (358b–c, cf. 343c), which Thrasymachus had associated with the claim that the rulers in any constitution frame
In the Republic, Plato confers with other philosophers about the true definition of justice. Cephalus, Polemarchus, and Thrasymachus relay their theories on justice to Plato, when he inquires as to what justice is. Cephalus believes only speaking the truth and paying one’s debts is the correct definition of justice (The Republic, Book I). However, Plato refutes this with an example of a friend who has lost his wits and would be caused harm by repayment of a debt. This leads to Polemarchus’ view on justice, doing harm to one’s enemies and helping one’s friends.
When it comes to justice, Polemarchus believes that justice is “…helping friends and harming enemies.”. Socrates questions this point of view because according to Polemarchus’ view point, only the people who are close to him and in his circle of friends would be worthy of any kind of Justice. Polemarchus is wrong in this viewpoint because if only the people that you know who are of your similar social status and you interact with on a day to day basis are considered friends, what of those that you do not know? Or what of those who are not of your social status, that you do not interact with? Socrates questions this by asking, “Do you mean by friends those who seem to be good to an individual, or those who are, even if they don't seem to be, and similar with enemies?”.
The Republic, by Plato provides us with four different definitions of justice which are given by the four characters Cephalus, Polemarchus, Thrasymachus, and Glaucon. According to Cephalus, the definition of justice includes the laws and repaying one’s creditors. Socrates doesnot agree to the idea that of repayment of creditors as always to be a good idea. The second person to define Justice was Polymarchus, the son of Cephalus. In his opinion, justice is defined as helping your friends and harming your rivals.
The cave story symbolizes the world we live in today; moreover, as humans our everyday life is shaped on our human senses or evidence, and our life decisions are based on people we meet, government and power. The cave represents the world of ignorance, the physical world that consist of materials and normal life. The prisoners represent every human on earth; furthermore, from the day we are born into a world of ignorance, we are given so many ideas, words which are not a hundred percent true, but find a way of keeping us hostage and making us view things from just one perspective. The shadows The represents illusion of the reality, our society today has created a system of belief, cultural, and societal values that blind our eyes from the
The person who releases the prisoners has been enlightened from the bonds of a false reality. The prisoners become completely free when they are realesed from their chains, and accept what things truly are, rather than what they had perceived them to be. The journey out of the cave represents a prisoners’ unwilllingness to change and a resistance to accept new truths. The prisoners have to force themselves out of the cave into this reality.
A man being executed for simply having different beliefs from his society is quite shocking in this current time period, though the Trial of Socrates depicts just that. In analyzing the Apology and Crito it is important to applaud and recognize how Plato’s use of rhetorical devices depict the law system of Athens in a negative light. In the Crito, Socrates states that he is choosing to die because he does not want to undermine the laws of Athens by fleeing, since he believes that the laws are just even if his sentence is not. Nevertheless, through using ethos to establish Socrates’ moral authority in the Apology and Crito, Plato leads his reader to draw the opposite conclusion about the Athenian judicial system. Leading the reader to question
In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave the people think that their entire reality is the shadows that they see on the walls of the cave. Plato explores the truth and criticizes that humanity does not question what is real. Plato explores that the human understanding and accepting of what is real is difficult and
Socrates bases this view of justice on the worth of living a good life. “And is life worth living for us with that part of us corrupted by unjust actions” (47e) If we corrupt our soul with injustice, our life would not be worth living, therefore one must never commit an injustice. “When one has come to an agreement that is just with someone, one should fulfill it.”(49e) It is this agreement with the Laws that Socrates would be violating, if he were to
This owes to the fact that Cephalus believed that “ 'justice consists in speaking the truth and paying one 's debt.” Consequently, Polemarchus concurred with Cephalus’ argument, but added a little ingredient to Cephalus’ meaning of justice. According to Polemarchus, “justice is doing good to friends and harm to enemies.” It is critical that Thrasymachus defined justice as the “interest for the stronger.” Nonetheless, Plato disagreed with opinions from
Finally, Socrates claims that the unjust man is ignorant, weak and bad. Socrates argument is effective in the way that he does not shatter Thrasymachus’ argument without reason, he is given many examples that change his way of thinking. Thrasymachus is told to put his ‘set in stone’ ideas under different situations, and once he does, he can clearly see that he should not have been so stubborn, as soon as he does so, he can see that his arguments aren’t suited to all situations. By the end of the argument, Thrasymachus isn’t so much debating the definition of justice, as he is defining the required traits to be a ruler of
Considering how the Piraeus, Athens’ port area, contains individuals hailing from various locations, it would that such a place would be where Socrates encounters different definitions of justice. In Book One of Plato’s The Republic, Socrates challenges Cephalus’ belief that justice is simply being honest and paying back the dues that one owes to the gods and to his fellow men. By providing examples of where it would be unjust to repay one’s debts, Socrates refutes Cephalus’ definition of justice. In these scenarios, paying back those debts would pose a risk of harm to innocent people, which would be unjust since justice does not involve harming others.
In the Republic, Thrasymachus has rather compelling definition of justice. He says that it is “...nothing other than the advantage of the stronger.” From this definition Thrasymachus constructs a corollary: the stronger use injustice so injustice itself is more powerful than justice. Is justice simply whatever the current rulers decide it should be, whether in a democratic, tyrannical or oligarchical system? Or is there something more to it, as Socrates argues?
Socrates never comes to a true and complete answer to any of his questions. His goal is to inspire others to pursue higher thought so that they might become better people with a better society. In The Republic Socrates follows this pattern and by the end has yet to come to an understanding on what exactly justice is. Instead he has some overall assumptions on the subject. He believes that justice is for the benefit of all peoples and that a good ruler is the one that seeks the betterment for the people without the goal of monetary gain.
Socrates discusses old age with Cephalus, and this eventually leads to the first core topic of “Republic”. What justice is. Just like in Plato’s earlier works, a Socratic dialogue is introduced and Socrates proceeds to ask these questions to the group of friends he was conversing with. He ultimately refuses every suggestion his friends offered due to the fact that each suggestion had some sort of contradiction. For example, when Cephalus gave his definition for what justice is, which was that justice essentially means living up to your legal obligations and being honest, Socrates defeats this definition by pointing out that if this is the true definition of justice, then if for some reason one was holding the weapon of a madman, that it would be unjust to not give the madman his weapon, even if it puts people around him at risk, which of course wouldn’t be the case.