PLATO (THE REPUBLIC) Its the concept of utopian state. The republic is in the form of a dialogue where in an answer to a question about wealth Plato asks what was justice? Ethical problem. Listen, then, says the angry Sophist, 1 proclaim that might is right, and justice is the interest of the stronger • • • • The different forms of government· make laws, democratic, aristocratic, or autocratic, with a view to their respective interests; and these laws, so made by them to serve their interests, they deliver to their subjects as justice, and punish as unjust anyone who transgresses them. • • • I am speaking of injustice on a large scale; and my meaning will be most clearly seen in autocracy, which by fraud and force takes away the property of others, not retail but wholesale. Now when a man has taken away the money of the citizens and made slaves of them, then, instead of swindler and thief he is called happy and blessed by all. For injustice is censured because those who censure it are afraid of suffering, and not from any scruple they might have of doing injustice themselves. . He who would truly live ought to allow his desires to wax to the uttermost; but when they have grown to their greatest he should have courage and intelligence to minister to them, and to satisfy all his longings. And this I affirm to be natural justice and nobility. But the many who cannot do this and therefore they blame such persons, because they are ashamed of their own inability, which they desire to conceal and hence they call intemperance base....They enslave the nobler natures, and they praise justice only because they are cowards. This justice is a morality not for men but for foot-men (oudegar androsalland rapodoutwos);it is a slave-morality, not a hero morality;the real virtues of a man are courage(andreia)and intelligence (pforowesis).
Posted on: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 14:20:30 +0000
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