Oudheid en Middeleeuwen 1501-1600 1601-1700 1701-1800 1801-1900 1901-2000 2001-nu Filosofisch Sociaal en Cultureel Politiek en Economisch Technisch Stalinisme Maoïsme Neoliberalisme Socialisme Neomarxisme en Kritische theorie Complottheorieën Irrationaliteit Irrationaliteit (Bijgeloof en religie) Leugens, desinformatie, propaganda KlokkenluidersIncididunt nisi non nisi incididunt velit cillum magna commodo proident officia enim.
Gerasimos SANTAS"The present work is not a commentary or a comprehensive discussion of all the topics in the Republic – worthy projects that would be much larger. It is intended to help the reader understand the main argument of Plato’s masterwork – that we are all better off or happier leading just lives in a just society, and even better off being just (rather than unjust) persons in unjust societies. It also discusses the fundamental ideas used to build up Plato’s controversial theories of what a just society is and what a just person is ..."(xi)
"The Republic’s dialogue style serves many purposes. The oppositions to Socrates’ views are presented vividly and dramatically by persons who live their ideas. Socrates can examine persons’ lives as well as their theories. The other characters have a chance to defend their views and to raise objections to Socrates’ constructive theories. They may represent the ideas and ideals of Plato’s contemporaries, who may be closer to the reader, remarkably even the modern reader, than what Plato puts in the mouth of Socrates."(2)
"However great, the Republic is a pioneering work embedded in its own historical, philosophical and literary context. And Plato did not have the benefits of subsequent philosophy. But we do; and we can make some comparisons to competing ideas in other important authors on justice, happiness, goodness, ideals of human knowledge and their role in governing, and speculations about utopian institutions."(4)
De centrale vragen: wat is rechtvaardigheid? is rechtvaardigheid een deugd? en maakt die rechtvaardigheid ons gelukkig?
"The Republic is a great work also because it challenges us to make informed and rational choices not only between just and unjust actions or lives, but also among different kinds of just societies. The work reveals that the reach of justice is far greater and reaches deeper than we might commonly think."(6)
"The Republic proposes many revolutionary reforms of existing institutions: public and strictly planned education, complete separation of political and military power from property and wealth, the equality of women, limits to the monogamous family, public control of art and the media, and many others. But discussions of these institutions and other subjects are subordinate to the advancement of the ideals of justice, knowledge, and the good – and this is the key to understanding the unity and coherence of the work."(7)
Basisvooronderstellingen die zonder argument geaccepteerd worden:
"An important basic assumption in the Republic is Plato’s theory of functional virtue and good, the idea that a virtue is a quality that enables something to function well, and that functioning well is an essential part of the good of the thing."(9)
"A second basic assumption is what Plato takes to be the primary subject of justice. Plato, no less than Rawls, knew that the concept of justice is applied to many things: societies, persons, social and individual actions, laws, constitutions, perhaps even desires and intentions. But he chose the first two of these for his investigation into the nature and benefits of justice (Republic: 368e), and did so without argument, apparently on the further basic assumption that if he discovers what a just society is and what a just person is, he can derive the other applications from these."(9)
"A third basic assumption Plato makes without argument is the equivalent of what Rawls calls “the natural lottery” assumption: that nature distributes at birth advantages and disadvantages – such as high or low intelligence, strong or weak spirit, physical strength, beauty, health or birth defects, and so on."(10)
"Thus Plato puts normative ethics (the justice and the good of persons) and normative political philosophy (the justice and the good of city-states) on parallel tracks, supposes that we cannot understand either without the other, and finds several causal and other relations between the justice and the good of the one and the justice and the good of the other. This analogy has received plenty of attention."(10)
"The whole “moral psychology” of the Republic depends on Plato’s analysis of the human psyche. No wonder it also has received so much attention."(11)
"A third leading (and complex) idea in the Republic is Plato’s “metaphysical epistemology”: his distinction between knowledge and opinion – that knowledge is “infallible” (free of error or falsehood) while opinion can contain errors and can be true or false..."(11)
"Socrates wants greater generality that might explain the rules and their exceptions."(15).
Als het om rechtvaardigheid gaat, wil hij dus niet alleen maar voorbeelden horen waar wel of niet sprake is van rechtvaardigheid.
"Socrates’ dialogue with Thrasymachus broadens and deepens the investigation into the nature of justice. Thrasymachus’ theory of justice applies the concept to whole societies and their political institutions, not only to individuals as the previous speakers mostly did. The subject of justice is broadened to fundamental political issues as well as ethics. Further, it contains implicitly a conception of the major goods that Thrasymachus thinks make up human happiness, and a thesis about the relation of justice to happiness. It even displays a coherent and clear method for discovering what justice is. Plato has Socrates examine vigorously all these parts of Thrasymachus’ almost complete conception of justice, and Thrasymachus defends it vociferously. Let us consider it step by step."(16)
"Thrasymachus begins with an elucidation of the stronger in his initial definition: the ruling party in each form of government, whether a tyranny, a democracy, or an aristocracy. Next, he asserts a big empirical generalization: that in all forms of government the ruling party enacts laws to its own advantage."(17)
Klopt dat ook voor democratieën?
"So too in democracies, Thrasymachus might argue, the majorities made up of the poor legislate to their own advantage and against the rich. Perhaps we can begin to see here the importance of a large middle class for the stability and even the justice of modern representative democracies."(18)
[Hier verschijnt zo waar een eigen politieke opvatting van Santas.]
"But the fact still remains that no evidence gathered from actual investigation of ancient states is offered by Thrasymachus for his generalization that in all states the rulers legislate for their own advantage. Aristotle apparently did such an empirical study of some 158 different ancient constitutions and apparently found that in some cases Thrasymachus’ result does indeed obtain, and called such constitutions “deviant” or “perverted.” But he disagreed with Thrasymachus’ generalization that all constitutions have this common feature of aiming at the advantage of the ruling party; and he certainly disagreed with Thrasymachus’ positivist assumption since he argued that none of the deviant constitutions are just. Plato himself foreshadows Aristotle’s conclusion in the Laws (Book IV, 714–15 and Book III, 697)."(18-19)
"... it would be incorrect to claim that the positive laws of society completely determine what is just."(19)
"Socrates draws the conclusion that the function of ruling is not to promote the interest of the rulers (except incidentally as in the case of the pilot) but of those the rulers have charge over, the ruled."(22)
"... even if Thrasymachus’ generalization turned out to be true of merely de facto rulers, it still would not follow that justice is the advantage of the stronger, but at most that what merely de facto rulers think is their advantage and so at most what they think justice is. And why would anyone suppose that justice is identical with what such rulers think justice is? After all they are fallible about means to ends, like the rest of us. And their subjects are bound to think differently on what justice is, since such rulers’ justice is systemically contrary to their, the subjects’, interest."(22)
"Socrates opens up some logical space between positive law and justice – we can’t, and don’t want to, suppose that laws are always just, no matter what ends laws are supposed to serve. (...) By opening up some logical space between justice and positive laws Plato was able to dispute the justice of many existing positive laws even if they were universally present in all societies. And this opened the way for his more open-minded investigation of justice in the rest of the work.
It is also important to see clearly what has remained unchallenged by Socrates’ refutations: the empirical generalization that actual rulers make laws to their own advantage. Even it is not always true, but true only too often (as Aristotle confirmed), it poses a recurring political problem: how to guard against abuses that result from the combination of self-interest (natural to all human beings) and political power. Plato’s rigidly controlled educational programs, and his radical proposals of a complete divorce of political power from private property and even private family in his ideal city, show that he was acutely aware of this fundamental political problem still to be solved.[mijn nadruk]"(23-24)
Trasymachus verdedigt dan
"... how much more profitable it is to be unjust rather than just."(24)
"Within Thrasymachus’ view we must always keep in mind that unjust conduct by a citizen can be nothing but conduct contrary to the positive laws of his country, and just conduct nothing but conduct consistent with the existing positive laws. This is a direct implication of his legal positivist assumption."(26)
"But Thrasymachus’ praise of injustice and his great admiration of the complete injustice of tyrants shift the dialogue to the other great issue of the Republic, the benefits and evils of justice and injustice."(27)
"Now it is no surprise to hear Thrasymachus say that the life of injustice is more profitable than the life of justice, especially injustice on a large scale and provided one gets away with it."(27)
Een van de argumenten van Socrates leidt tot de stelling:
"So justice is stronger than injustice, in the sense that it is an enabling power, whereas injustice is a disabling quality."(29)
"But this still leaves open the question whether justice can apply to the relations among parts of the self within an individual, as Socrates now supposes, or only to relations among individuals, as Thrasymachus and most of us assume."(30)
"Having argued that justice is a virtue and that it is something stronger than injustice, Socrates finally argues more directly that the just man is happy, the unjust miserable (352e–354b). To do so, he introduces fundamental new ideas that play a large role in the later constructive parts of the dialogue."(30)
"Thrasymachus reluctantly admits that justice is the virtue of the soul, injustice its vice. And from the abstract theory and these premises Socrates concludes that the just soul will manage, deliberate, and live well, the unjust one badly; and the soul that lives well is happy and the one that lives badly unhappy."(31)
Socrates is zelf ontevreden met de argumentatie, want moet men dan niet eerst weten wat rechtvaardigheid is?
[Wordt vervolgd]