Up@dawn 2.0

Friday, April 21, 2017

Post by Carl Windham,Plato's:The Republic, First Installment

This is Carl (C.J.) Windham posting from Kylan Striblings account because I could not get my Blogger to function correctly.

In book The Republic, by Plato, Plato talks as his teacher and famous philosopher Socrates. Socrates is out to answer two questions through the book and those are as follows: What is justice? Why should we be just? Socrates asks the audience and readers the question, “What is justice?”. Plato talks about how Socrates has many answers and theories about the answer to that question yet niether Plato nor Socrates answers the question. They both basically beat around the bush and ask how others would answer the question from different viewpoints. Plato's The Republic is broken into many different books. 9 to be exact but I've only been talking about book one because it stood out the most to me. As this book continues on Plato speak on how Socrates talks about aporia which is "a deadlock, where no further progress is possible and the interlocutors feel less sure of their beliefs than they had at the start of the conversation" as explained by a refutable online source. This was nothing but another word for what Plato and Socrates were looking to define justice as. Many other philosophers were even mentioned in Plato's, The Republic. Characters like Thrasymachus, the Sophist, Cephalus and Polemarchus were introduced as they have their insight to the famous Plato and Socrates on what they feel the definition of Justice was in their eyes. Conclusions such as giving your friends help and enemies the worst of the wrath that you owe to them came to be. Thus shaping our many definitions we hold today of the word "Justice". Plato and Socrates continue to search through many men for a true definition they believe to be suitable for the word "Justice", finally being able to come to conclusions. Socrates believes people were using the word justice in the wrongly accused context and the wrong way. He felt people use justice as a form of free violence against the ones you call enemies who shouldn't even be your enemies in the first place. Justice causes unreasonable hostility in his opinion. Plato continues to talk about some more of Socrates beliefs on justice, saying we are not always friends with the most virtuous of individuals, nor do they do the nicest of things for or to us. Surrounding ourselves with those type of people, we set ourselves up for the negative things to happen. He feels for us to get results we want so we don't have to resort to "Justice", we must have positive things surrounding us to receive positive actions and give the same to others. Then there is no justice and no reason to want to give justice to others. Sometimes it can't be avoided, it is only then that justice may take its course. Even then we shouldn't go out and do anything about it, we should let the world do its course. Much like the saying what goes around comes around. Justice is what you wish to make it in Platos and Socrates eyes. Platos Republic was a book I'd recommend most to read if they have any interest in anything relating to payback and the way people should actually treat one another. All and all a great book.

1 comment:

  1. "refutable online source" - I hope you mean reputable... but you need to link to the source, so we can decide for ourselves how reputable they are. Or refutable.

    "Justice causes unreasonable hostility" - ???

    "Much like the saying what goes around comes around." Sure.

    "Justice is what you wish to make it in Platos and Socrates eyes" - ???

    "any interest in anything relating to payback" - nvm

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