Plato On Justice Essay Research Paper Plato

Plato On Justice Essay, Research Paper

Plato (428-347 BC) The Greek philosopher Plato was among the most important and

creative thinkers of the ancient world. His work set forth most of the important

problems and concepts of Western philosophy, psychology, logic, and politics,

and his influence has remained profound from ancient to modern times. Plato was

born in Athens in 428 BC. Both his parents were of distinguished Athenian

families, and his stepfather, an associate of Pericles, was an active

participant in the political and cultural life of Periclean Athens. Plato seems

as a young man to have been destined for an aristocratic political career. The

excesses of Athenian political life, however, both under the oligarchical rule

(404-403) of the so-called Thirty Tyrants and under the restored democracy, seem

to have led him to give up these ambitions. In particular, the execution (399)

of Socrates had a profound effect on his plans. The older philosopher was a

close friend of Plato’s family, and Plato’s writings attest to Socrates’ great

influence on him. After Socrates’ death Plato retired from active Athenian life

and traveled widely for a number of years. In 388 BC he journeyed to Italy and

Sicily, where he became the friend of Dionysius the Elder, ruler of Syracuse,

and his brother-in-law Dion. The following year he returned to Athens, where he

founded the Academy, an institution devoted to research and instruction in

philosophy and the sciences. Most of his life thereafter was spent in teaching

and guiding the activities of the Academy. When Dionysius died (367), Dion

invited Plato to return to Syracuse to undertake the philosophical education of

the new ruler, Dionysius the Younger. Plato went, perhaps with the hope of

founding the rule of a philosopher-king as envisioned in his work the Republic.

The visit, however, ended (366) in failure. In 361, Plato went to Syracuse

again. This visit proved even more disastrous, and he returned (360) to the

Academy. Plato died in 347 BC. Plato’s published writings, of which apparently

all are preserved, consist of some 26 dramatic dialogues on philosophical and

related themes. The precise chronological ordering of the dialogues remains

unclear, but stylistic and thematic considerations suggest a rough division into

three periods. The earliest dialogues, begun after 399 BC, are seen by many

scholars as memorials to the life and teaching of Socrates. Three of them, the

Euthyphro, Apology, and Crito, describe Socrates’ conduct immediately before,

during, and after his trial. The early writings include a series of short

dialogues that end with no clear and definitive solution to the problems raised.

Characteristically, Plato has Socrates ask questions of the form "What is

X." and insist that he wants not examples or instances of X but what it is

to be X, the essential nature, or Form, of X. In the Charmides the discussion

concerns the question "What is temperance..; in the Laches, "What is

courage.. in the Euthyphro, "What is holiness." The first book of

the Republic may originally have been such a dialogue, devoted to the question

"What is justice." Socrates holds that an understanding of the

essential nature in each case is of primary importance, but he does not claim

himself to have any such understanding. A formal mode of cross-examination

called elenchus, in which the answers to questions put by Socrates are shown to

result in a contradiction of the answerer’s original statement, reveals the

ignorance of the answerer as well. Typically, these answerers are self-professed

experts (the title characters of the Gorgias and Protagoras, for example, were

leading Sophists; thus their inability to provide a definition is particularly

noteworthy. In the Apology, Socrates describes his mission as one of exposing

this ignorance, an exposure he takes to be a necessary preliminary to true

wisdom. Although the dialogues appear to end in ignorance, the dialectical

structure of each work is such that a complex and subtle understanding of the

concept emerges. The dialogues of the middle period were begun after the

founding of the Academy. Here more openly positive doctrines begin to emerge in

the discourse of Socrates. The dialogues of this period include what is widely

thought to be Plato’s greatest work, the Republic. Beginning with a discussion

on the nature of justice, the dialogue articulates a vision of an ideal

political community and the education appropriate to the rulers of such a

community. Justice is revealed to be a principle of each thing performing the

function most appropriate to its nature, a principle of the proper adjudication

of activity and being. In political terms, this principle is embodied in a

society in which citizens perform the tasks for which they are best suited; in

the individ

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