Analysis of Plato's The Republic
Analysis of Plato's "The Republic"
I am going to describe Plato’s theory of justice and sophist theory of justice in relation to a happy life. I will describe Plato’s theory on form and how things derive their “being” or “essence” from it and an analysis of the Allegory of the cave.
Plato says that justice, in short, is a virtue, a human excellence. His next point is that acting in accordance with excellence brings happiness. Then he ties excellence to one's function. His examples are those of the senses -- each sensory organ is excellent if it performs its function, as the eye sees, the ear hears. Therefore, the just person is a happy person is a person who performs his function. Since these are tied together, injustice can never exceed these virtues and so justice is stronger and is the good. Justice is coupled with the virtue of temperance, the harmony and self-mastery that results when all elements agree as to which should do what. Thus the rule of reason is not a tyranny but the harmonious rule of the happily unified individual and society. The Sophist shows how a proper understanding of appearance depends on an account of being and nonbeing and of the relation between particulars and Forms. I agree with Plato’s opinion on justice how all the body must come together as a whole and be just for example if all you do is see and hear bad thing then that is what you will do and act out on.
The Form is introduced as a principle explaining individual instances of being X, the very thing itself that is meant by the name X and that is the transcendent object of understanding what it is to be X. The Forms constitute a realm of unchanging being to which the world of individual changing objects is subordinate. The Form of good enjoys a unique status, responsible for the being and intelligibility of the world as a whole. Plato sees the world of being itself governed by the Form of the good, as also the source of value and the object of proper desire. The philosopher is thus pictured as in love with the Forms, that is, in love with the world as it truly is. His wish to see through the world of flux to the true principles of its being is thus basically an act of...