Once the foundations of the Republic are built and glued we can see that justice in the city is not only good but willingly practiced. Later Socrates aims at describing justice in the individual. He intentionally mirrors the creation of the city by saying that justice in the person is built on foundations of education of the body and mind. However, Socrates fails to provide me with enough evidence to believe that justice is better than injustice in the individual for all matters.
Plato's Republic centers on a simple question: is it always better to be just than unjust? The puzzles in Book One prepare for this question, and Glaucon and Adeimantus make it explicit at the beginning of Book Two. To answer the question, Socrates takes a long way around, sketching an account of a good city on the grounds that a good city would be just and that defining justice as a virtue of a city would help to define justice as a virtue of a human being. Socrates is finally close to answering the question after he characterizes justice as a personal virtue at the end of Book Four, but he is interrupted and challenged to defend some of the more controversial features of the good city he has sketched. In Books Five through Seven, he addresses this challenge, arguing (in effect) that the just city and the just human being as he has sketched them are in fact good and are in principle possible.
All opinions were very different; Aristotle's being more of an open minded approach towards demorcracy (not completely dismissing the idea of it), Pericles' being in total agreement with it, and Plato being sarcastic and exceptionally opposed. In Pericles' "Funeral Oration", he speaks strongly in favor of a democratic nation and talks bout how and why that's important. He specifically mentions that personal freedoms are allowed because of their democratic way of life, but also conveys the point that while the people were free to live for themselves, they chose to live for one another as a whole as well, and all hoped to better the city as a positively functioning society. Throughout the address he praises Athenians, their military, and explains to the people how their system of government was to responsible for their success and that it set them apart from other nations. His belief in Democracy was understandable and is still held in a similar way today by many people.
In this essay I will discuss four different classifications of justice that are proposed by Socrates’ interlocutors, Cephalus, Polemarchus, and Thrasymachus, as well as his rebuttal to each of their proclamations. A final section of this paper will be dedicated to how Polermachus’s outlook on justice, which is doing good to one’s friends and harm to one’s enemies, can most effectively be defended against Socrates’s response that it is unjust to harm anyone. This is because of Socrates’s inadequate dismissal of Polemarchus’s claim. Socrates offers an unclear definition of what causing harm is. Therefore, it can be presumed that specific types of harm such as constructive criticism and disciplinary punishment are deemed unjust when they actually can be efficient instruments in the formation of a just human being.
By creating a system where everyone abides by the same laws and rules, then there can be no threat of a tyrant. Dewey can only agree with Rorty on this topic. For Dewey, the best form of a government is one that corresponds well with human nature. This type of government is a Democracy. Rorty sees democracy as a common search for justice.
Their basic altitudes towards the democracy and nonviolence conflict with each other. King’s own account of his philosophy of nonviolence indicated the extent to which he was influenced by Thoreau’s theoretical framework for thinking about civil disobedience and political obligation. Thoreau has confidence in democracy and the belief of unifying individuals of the society to realize it. However, Nietzsche overtly objected to democratic politics, with thinking that love, freedom and democracy are all the results of recognizing the right. Although democratic practices were on the way in the capitalist countries, he asserted that democratic politics possessed no advancement.
The three postulates namely freedom, God and Immortality though can’t be theoretically proven, is incorporated into the already coherent and meaningful ethical structure of Kant to give more practicability to his ethical theory taking into account the fact that man is not a purely rational being but a creature haunted by inclinations. Freedom, God and Immortality, the three postulates are not theoretical dogmas but are presuppositions having necessary practical reference. The introduction of postulate in Kant’s philosophy can be considered as an attempt to limit the theoretical and extend the practical so as to make them stand together. God as postulate by Kant is not the God of religion. This postulate of God has origin in one’s own reason which would necessarily mean that submitting to will of God is submitting to one’s own reason.
In the perfect society, Plato believes that it is necessary for rulers to occasionally refrain from telling the whole truth. He explains why it is in the best interest of the governing class to lie to its working classes in order to maintain the structure of power. First, he discusses his reasoning behind The Guardian class. His system of rulers is based on individual ability, unlike most ruling systems where the people in charge become so based off of family history and financial status (in The Republic, Guardians are not specifically wealthy or poor, as he believes either circumstance would render them unable to accomplish their work). Plato's society is one built around excellence and formed under an aristocratic class that thrives off of the necessity to be as first-rate as possible.
Aristotle talks about this a lot in his piece, Politics. Aristotle says in this paragraph that, “The democratic conception of justice is the enjoyment of arithmetical equality, and not the enjoyment of proportionate equality on the basis of desert.” (QUOTE)What Aristotle is basically saying is that everyone is the same and that their voting powers should be the same too. We see in this quote that Aristotle means that everyone is created equal and that no one should have the authority to have more than everyone else, politically or socially. Another man, Thucydides, also talks about the equality for all humans. In his piece, The funeral Oration of Pericles, he says, ‘the law secures equal justice to all alike” (8).
This is what we shall elaborate on more and also provide other contrasting opinions. Discussion It cannot be said with more assertiveness that both these philosophers were adamant about their findings and did not budge or get influenced by other philosophers. They believed what they wanted and strongly provided reasoning for it. Aristotle belief was primarily based in the historical justifications, whereas, Kant provided modern reasoning for the entire purpose of ethics; human good. In my opinion, maybe belonging from Generation X, I believe that Kant's theory was far more comprehensible in these times because he described the concept of Good in a very universal tone and