Reflection Paper on "The Republic" by Plato
Assignment 1.
Reflection on: the “Republic,” by Plato.
Greek philosopher, Plato, is considered to be one of the most influential people in Western Philosophy. The fact that he was a student of Socrates and a teacher of Aristotle leaves no questions about his competence. One of his fundamental works is the “Republic”. Even though it was written in 380 BC, Plato’s and Socrates’s thoughts are still relevant in twenty first century. This paper will evaluate the quote from the “Republic” and provide a summary of a quote; provide a context from the text for the quote; and finally, it will include my own thoughts on the quote and the Socrates’s argument as a whole.
The given quote is a paragraph from the fourth book of the “Republic”. It says that a just person is a person, who has every part of his soul doing its own work. In other words, his soul should be in harmony, where the spirited part has to listen to reason and be its helper, and where the reason with a help of spirit control the appetitive part of the soul. According to Socrates, there is only one way for a person to be just, to be a friend of himself, to be wise in his actions – it is to achieve this inner harmony.
The quote is related to the dialogue between Socrates and Glaucon about “justice”. Glaucon had doubts on such questions as “what makes a person just or unjust?”; “isn’t it more beneficial to be unjust?”; “why people are willing to be just if it’s not beneficial for them?”. In order to get answers for these questions, he came to Socrates. First of all, Socrates has identified that the soul of a person is divided into three parts. The first part is “reason”, which is needed for calculation and making decisions. Socrates also called “reason” as the rational part of the soul. The opposite of the rational part is the appetitive or irrational part, with which a person lusts, hungers, thirsts and gets excited by other appetites. The last thing in the soul Socrates called the spiritual part, and
Reflection on: the “Republic,” by Plato.
Greek philosopher, Plato, is considered to be one of the most influential people in Western Philosophy. The fact that he was a student of Socrates and a teacher of Aristotle leaves no questions about his competence. One of his fundamental works is the “Republic”. Even though it was written in 380 BC, Plato’s and Socrates’s thoughts are still relevant in twenty first century. This paper will evaluate the quote from the “Republic” and provide a summary of a quote; provide a context from the text for the quote; and finally, it will include my own thoughts on the quote and the Socrates’s argument as a whole.
The given quote is a paragraph from the fourth book of the “Republic”. It says that a just person is a person, who has every part of his soul doing its own work. In other words, his soul should be in harmony, where the spirited part has to listen to reason and be its helper, and where the reason with a help of spirit control the appetitive part of the soul. According to Socrates, there is only one way for a person to be just, to be a friend of himself, to be wise in his actions – it is to achieve this inner harmony.
The quote is related to the dialogue between Socrates and Glaucon about “justice”. Glaucon had doubts on such questions as “what makes a person just or unjust?”; “isn’t it more beneficial to be unjust?”; “why people are willing to be just if it’s not beneficial for them?”. In order to get answers for these questions, he came to Socrates. First of all, Socrates has identified that the soul of a person is divided into three parts. The first part is “reason”, which is needed for calculation and making decisions. Socrates also called “reason” as the rational part of the soul. The opposite of the rational part is the appetitive or irrational part, with which a person lusts, hungers, thirsts and gets excited by other appetites. The last thing in the soul Socrates called the spiritual part, and