Plato On Justice Essays (1846 words) - Socratic Dialogues

Plato On Justice 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