How Does Socrates Define Justice
Anne Jastrzebski
WR150: The Ethics of Disenchantment
Multi-Source Essay
More than Defining Justice: The Republic’s Push to Modify its Readers’ Way of Thinking
At first glance, Plato’s The Republic seems a tedious exercise in trying to follow one man’s irrational effort to construct a city when he was tasked simply with explaining a single word. However, the republic created by Socrates throughout the duration of the dialogue and the points that come from it are not as unnecessary or superfluous as they initially seem. The Republic is clearly a specifically worded dialogue about philosophy, but not necessarily only for philosophers. The seemingly excessive examples throughout the text are in fact a blueprint allowing for the general public to understand and assume Plato’s logic, ultimately bringing them not just to Socrates’ conclusion about justice as a …show more content…
However, although this strategy prevents his peers from delivering a better argument than he can, it also allows Socrates to go quite a while without presenting his own definition of justice. Although this may lead the reader to think the philosopher simply cannot define justice, it quickly becomes clear Socrates was just biding his time before launching into the lengthy process of creating an entire hypothetical city, despite the fact that his peers have charged him only with defining justice in a man. In deciding to create a world that is, as Diskin Clay describes, “the product of an imagination that moves towards daydreaming” (Clay 19), Socrates chooses a path to defining justice that seems inefficient and excessively thorough. However for a philosopher, to whom the answer is often less important than the process by which it is reached, this indirect process may be the best way to outline
WR150: The Ethics of Disenchantment
Multi-Source Essay
More than Defining Justice: The Republic’s Push to Modify its Readers’ Way of Thinking
At first glance, Plato’s The Republic seems a tedious exercise in trying to follow one man’s irrational effort to construct a city when he was tasked simply with explaining a single word. However, the republic created by Socrates throughout the duration of the dialogue and the points that come from it are not as unnecessary or superfluous as they initially seem. The Republic is clearly a specifically worded dialogue about philosophy, but not necessarily only for philosophers. The seemingly excessive examples throughout the text are in fact a blueprint allowing for the general public to understand and assume Plato’s logic, ultimately bringing them not just to Socrates’ conclusion about justice as a …show more content…
However, although this strategy prevents his peers from delivering a better argument than he can, it also allows Socrates to go quite a while without presenting his own definition of justice. Although this may lead the reader to think the philosopher simply cannot define justice, it quickly becomes clear Socrates was just biding his time before launching into the lengthy process of creating an entire hypothetical city, despite the fact that his peers have charged him only with defining justice in a man. In deciding to create a world that is, as Diskin Clay describes, “the product of an imagination that moves towards daydreaming” (Clay 19), Socrates chooses a path to defining justice that seems inefficient and excessively thorough. However for a philosopher, to whom the answer is often less important than the process by which it is reached, this indirect process may be the best way to outline