Do we ever find out what is justice?

[Anonymous No.13769482]

>Want to find out what is justice
>Start reading pic related
>Starts out well enough with logical discourse
>Spirals out of control into creating a hypothetical city
When does it "get good"? I'm about 1/3 of the way through, I just wanted to know what is justice.
Not to mention the fact that a lot of his assumptions are plain wrong - although his logical method is good enough but the initial assumption for some chains of logic is plainly incorrect and not useful. Is this book actually worth reading in your opinions?

[Anonymous No.13769616]

Bump (if this works).

[Anonymous No.13769640]

>>13769482
he gets to it

[Anonymous No.13769659]

It "got good" from page no. 1. Plato is NOT for cumbrains.

[Anonymous No.13769698]

>>13769659
Fuck you bitchass nigger I am NOT a cumbrain.

[Anonymous No.13769700]

>>13769482
If I'm recalling well, I don't think Justice is explicitly defined until book 4, I think.

As for your misgivings, it's worth pointing out that the work is not a treatise, but a dialogue with Socrates as a constant narrator (so just about every passage where an interlocutor speaks has an "X said" attached). As a dialogue, one has to wade in carefully, and ask what the necessity of the order of topics is, and why Socrates speaks with certain speakers in certain ways. And, while it's common enough to dismiss the interlocutors as lay yes-men, they all contribute in key ways that reappear throughout the dialogue, and in some cases, they make crucial changes that shape the entire rest of it. Some examples:

-Polemarchus's friends-enemies distinction reappears in the initial description of the guardians as being like dogs
-Thrasymachus introduces both the idea of spiritedness, which becomes a crucial theme for the development of the guardians, and precision, which appears in the treatment of philosophy as a mathematical science and in the treatment of the forms
-Glaucon and Adeimantus both shape the inquiry that Socrates spends the rest of the dialogue trying to satisfy, namely, whether the Just man is also happy
-Glaucon makes the move away from the original city Socrates designs, calling it a city of pigs, and the result is the development of the fevered city with luxuries

Etc.

There's also the dialectical element to consider, i.e., that Socrates responds to particular characters with particular desires, interests, attitudes, and abilities. Cephalus is old and wants an easy-going conversation. Polemarchus is an heir to his father's fortune. Thrasymachus is a rhetorician noted for his talent of playing on people's emotions and a diplomat for his home city. All three are properly foreigners to Athens, two of whom live there with economic rights but limited or no voting rights, one of whom is a visitor. Glaucon and Adeimantus are Plato's brothers, and so, are from an aristocratic clan, both of whom have distinguished themselves in battle. Glaucon is fascinated by music and its mathematical elements, and Adeimantus is fascinated by poetry. Glaucon is bolder and more willing to hear out Socrates on his weirder tangents, while Adeimantus tends to voice disagreements and has more of a temper. These differences are only especially evident through careful and somewhat slow reading. This is just to say that the dialogue, not being a treatise, has some reasons for not following a strictly logical (not in any immediately evident way, anyhow) arrangement. There's an enormous rhetorical dimension to consider.

Now, maybe this all just ends u showing you that maybe Plato isn't what you're looking for, or at least not if you just want a kind of logical discovery of and defense of Justice. And really, fair enough. Select passages from Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics and Politics might be more suitable for what you're looking for.

1/2

[Anonymous No.13769709]

>>13769700
I will say that Plato seems to think that all of these disparate elements are somehow necessary for understanding Justice, i.e., its relation to the individual vs. its relation to the city, how spiritedness is involved, why mathematics is relevant, why education is important, why images and analogies are important, why music and poetry are important, etc. etc.

Keep in mind that it's really one of those books that you read and then need to re-read.

2/2

[Anonymous No.13769716]

>>13769700
Huh?

[Anonymous No.13769727]

>>13769716
Tl;dr:

-He gets to Justice
-It's a dialogue, not a modern logical treatise
-Because it's a dialogue, there's a bunch of shit to keep in mind

[Anonymous No.13769734]

>>13769727
What? Why are you posting this? You clearly didn't understand it at all. Did you take a shitty class on it? How did you get everything so tangled?

[Anonymous No.13769743]

>>13769482
Justice is the Good we deal in our dealings. The question is, what is Goodness? And honestly, as in Theaetetus, Socrates explicitly says to be good “is to become like God, as far as this is possible; and to become like him, is to become holy, just, and wise.“ Now what does he mean by God? Holy fuck. Definitely not the abrahamic God, is athens 300bc, and there’s is no evidence whatsoever that they knew who the Jews were. I take it to mean that Socrates loves the world. He thinks all things “aim toward the good”, so he would ascribe to a teleology of goodness, and he ascribes this awesome power to one supremacy. But it takes knowing this, hence why he gave his life to questioning the values of his society and endlessly, why he himself was so invested in the latest in all matters of natural science, arithmetic, poetry, history, it’s incredible how knowledgeable Socrates was given his portrait as a man who didn’t know anything. Again, “the truth is that God is never in any way unrighteous-he is perfect righteousness” and “ to know this is true wisdom and virtue, and ignorance of this is manifest folly and vice.” What he is saying to a muggle is that the world is good, it aims toward goodness inherently, in nature and so in man. For man to know this is his development, to practice this is his duty. The Law is a civil service, remember that

[Anonymous No.13769754]

>>13769734
I've been reading it for a decade, as well as a bunch of the scholarship on it.

But okay, what do you take issue with specifically?

[Anonymous No.13769759]

>>13769754
Ok that explains much of it. How is your Greek?

[Anonymous No.13769763]

>>13769727
This is OP now (the one replying to you was not me). Great posts anon. Yes, I understand the text's machinations as a dialogue (I think), but as you suspected I'm looking for something more along the lines of
>a kind of logical discovery of and defense of Justice
Though to be honest your well thought out post has inspired me to finish this first before moving on to another. Thanks for the good info mate.

[Anonymous No.13769772]

>>13769743
>Again, “the truth is that God is never in any way unrighteous-he is perfect righteousness” and “ to know this is true wisdom and virtue, and ignorance of this is manifest folly and vice.”
Plato seems like someone who was longing for Christ. Looks like the classical depictions of Greek gods didn't sit well with him, he was looking for someone like Jesus.

[Anonymous No.13769776]

>>13769772
Or... Jesus was looking for someone like him

[Anonymous No.13769785]

>>13769759
Not that of a classicist, but well enough that I can see what's up with the Greek of the Jowett translated excerpts quoted at >>13769743.

Mind, I studied the Republic in college and did two years of Attic Greek, so its not as if I've had no formal education. But again, what issues do you take with what I've noted?

>>13769763
Well cheers! It sounds like you might be looking for something more like Rawls, who's fine, but I'd warn that he smuggles in assumptions without realizing it. The Republic is, uh, a bit much as a work, but I think it's worth struggling with. Best of luck.

[Anonymous No.13769813]

>>13769785
I’m not the anon who disputed what you said, I was just responding to the OP. I have no formal education, the only reason I didn’t drop out of high school was to make my mom happy. I’m a manual laborer and exclusively read to impress my baby girl butterfly

[Anonymous No.13769856]

>>13769482
its each part doing its appropriate function.

>when does it get good
Seriously, why are you on /lit/?

[Anonymous No.13769964]

>>13769772
>>13769776

yes

[Anonymous No.13770078]

>>13769734
>you clearly don't understand it, I don't either which is why I won't tell you why you're wrong
Classic

[Anonymous No.13770498]

>>13769813
Honestly, manual labor is better work than academia, both in terms of pay (depending, of course) and in not turning out to be a sheltered autist. I'm not sure if it's a choice or circumstance, but I hope it works out for you.

[Anonymous No.13770559]

>>13770498
>work outside
>sweating for hours
>good pay and tips
>self directed
>make my own schedule

Yea it’s cool. Not as cool as my secret side job that is gonna be $,$$$ per week

Honestly at this point in my life I just wanna bang butterfly

[Anonymous No.13770574]

>>13770498
I would go into manual labor if I had the ability the choose my own work and work aesthetically. But given what society values at the present, it's functionalism above all else, and you're always cucked in some form or another. The NEET life is the only way out, unless you manage to become some office drone that doesn't actually have to work and is not monitored due to systematic failure.

[Anonymous No.13770575]

>>13769482
hell no

several thousand years later and we only found out that most of the times societies don't give a damn about justice and only care about maintaining itself.

[Anonymous No.13770619]

>>13769482
I’m not convinced Plato wrote it. Any dialogue that has Socrates as narrator and describes his thoughts and feelings is VERY suspect, honestly

[Anonymous No.13770634]

>>13770619
How so?

[Anonymous No.13770675]

>>13769698
think again, if you can

[Anonymous No.13770681]

>>13770634
If you read any of Plato’s earlier dialogs or even his later once, if you read any of his fucking dialogs the ones where it’s a dialogue... wait a sec.... Plato wrote dialogues. They’re known throughout the ancient world as dialogues. The republic is not a dialogue it’s a narration. In a narration we are in the hands of a narrator, we are dependent on believing his account for things. Dialogues we are not, we accept, from the outset, that whether it’s true or fictional, the discussion is really between these two characters, and not between characters and the narrator. I say this knowing that I am throwing Charmides under the bus too, but maybe that too is suspect. I suspect it is, especially with the gay overtones. I haven’t given it much thought but the more I think of it the more I’m convinced the only thing Plato room were dialogs

[Anonymous No.13770702]

>>13769482
Yes you do find out what justice is but it is going to take a long while.


You also should know that Plato is one of those authors that you really have to work at in order to understand.
For example: when he makes a wacky assumption (like "aren't dogs by nature philosophical?") Plato is attempting to point out something, so pay attention to when and why this assumption is brought in: notice that right before this point in the argument the two interlocutors got stuck: think about why they got stuck.

Notice also when and why a digression is made at various points, and try to think through why this digression is made here.

It helps when reading to make the assumption that Plato is smarter than you OP, and that when he says something which appears stupid or strange that there is a reason why.

Also, if interested in Justice, read pic related next: it is a more autistic take on the topic.

[Anonymous No.13770731]

>>13770681
What about Parmenides? That's all a narrative-dialogue from the perspective of Cephalus (different from the Republic). And what about Lysis, which is also a narrative-dialogue? None of those were questioned in antiquity as not being of Plato's hand. Plus we have Aristotle's comments in his various writings that reference the Republic and Parmenides, etc. pretty explicitly (he refers to the former in the Politics to seem to call it out, and the latter in the Metaphysics, referring to its Third Man argument).

Doesn't the Republic describe its own style when Socrates talks about the mixed type of poetry in Book 3? And wouldn't that be an ironic suggestion that there's something more going on when it's recalled that the mixed type of poetry is banned from the city, and so, presumably, the Republic would itself be banned too?

[Anonymous No.13770737]

>>13770702
Very good suggestions, anon.

[Anonymous No.13770745]

>>13770681
By this logic, Plato didn't wrote the Apology because its not a dialogue.

[Anonymous No.13770750]

>>13770745
Plus there's some pretty gay tones in the Symposium and Phaedrus, and those are dialogues.

[Anonymous No.13770813]

>>13770702
>It helps when reading to make the assumption that Plato is smarter than you OP
good tip mang. hat's how I started but as I read on I began to think "he may be a smart guy but he doesn't KNOW what I know" - I guess the stuff has been going over my head. I'll study the book properly once I've finished it once. did you use some sort of guide to Plato to understand it? or you think a translator's notes would be good enough usually.
>>13770681
looking at it from the other point of view, how do you know that it wasn't that Plato wrote only Socratic narrations and no dialogues? hmm? HUH!?

[Anonymous No.13770848]

>>13770731
You bring up good points but it doesn’t refute what I said only makes me really reconsider those dialogues all the more.
You see I have a kind of theory about Plato. I feel like he is kind of taking revenge against Athens for killing Socrates, obviously, but, and not so obvious, specifically the playwright Aristophanes, for the Clouds, which depicts Socrates as a lout. The dialogues of Plato, and I mean dialogues in the strictest sense, always seemed like plays but very violently opposed to the tradition, as does the topic of philosophy which it tarrys with and the protagonist in them who is also questioning traditional ideas and attitudes. Everything is very subversive. Even the way he starts like, just throwing you in, or how there’s no real conclusions, it’s all very wtf. Also how epic it is, and yet very quaint and humble, like saying there is nothing more epic than discussing the nature of being good and smart, and no one more epic than socrates, and you fucking killed him you absolute retards. Like I imagine Aristophanes feeling really shitty about the clouds after what happened. We known Athens regretted it and they made a sculpture of Socrates they put in the middle of the agora. I think Plato’s dialogues are a big middle finger, to everything, but specifically to Aristophanes and the people who took to his mind of ideas about Socrates being a retard. Plato’s dialogues are very clear to draw Socrates as a living God amongst men, specifically in playwright form. So the narrations seem odd in this tradition I seee, they don’t follow. I question it is all, but I won’t lie, I am more certain than not that a lot of writings attributed to Plato are not his but came out of the Academy he founded. There’s no way to be sure. Also that weird detail in, I think it’s the statesman and sophist, where there’s Socrates, but also another man named Socrates. Plato seems more like Beckett than Aristotle to me. They are very weird

[Anonymous No.13770886]

>>13770745
It’s a speech

[Anonymous No.13770894]

Good is that which evil fears and justice is when you make those fears reality.

[Anonymous No.13770909]

>>13770894
Nice!

[Anonymous No.13770926]

>>13770813
Different anon than you're responding to, but I agree with their rundown. Even if it turns out that at the end of the day Plato is wrong about some things, it's pretty helpful as a rule of thumb to treat an older author like him as if he had complete control of his text, and was perhaps already aware of some of your objections. Especially with passages that we'd be inclined to dismiss pretty quickly as poorly reasoned, it helps to pay a little more attention to who he's talking to, what the situation is between them, etc. to see if that explains it better (an example from another dialogue: in the Meno, the title character gets so frustrated with Socrates that they toss out an argument about whether anything can be taught at all, and he seems about ready to dip out. Earlier in the dialogue, it's kinda mentioned offhand that he was busy observing the Eleusian mysteries the day before, and Socrates seems to use his interest in that to learn him back into the conversation with a particularly mystical sounding version of recollection; eventually Socrates drops the account, and the conversation basically continues until it's Socrates who decides he's done with the whole thing).

I put this up in another thread, but if you'd like some resources on the Republic, here's a bunch of pdfs of all sorts of things: Commentaries, philological studies of the Greek text, some shorter essays about particular subjects, debates on how to read Plato, and some lectures. Probably the most accessible thing to look at is Leo Strauss's 50s lecture course, which is pretty clear, has some good student questions and objections, and is a good embodiment of the kind of charitable reading the anon above and I seem to share. Even if you think his explanations are ludicrous, he stays pretty close to the text, and offers some good historical context.

[Anonymous No.13770935]

>>13770926
Fuck, forgot the link:

https://mega.nz/#!aJQClKzJ!kRL9N_7wM1Rc8pGfdCnijeiyaJdq4Z8AICk4NLiY7mA

[Anonymous No.13770980]

>>13770813
>did you use some sort of guide to Plato to understand it?

Well the more Plato you read, the more you will begin to get a sense of what he is about: he has certain ideas and arguments that he repeats in different forms; so the more Plato you read the easier it will become. Before I read Republic I had read about ten of his other dialogues, so I felt like I had a sense of how the conversations would typically go. I also take extensive marginal notes, and attempt to summarize all of his arguments in my own words: this is incredibly helpful when he gets to the more complicated topics.

And I really forced myself to not go forward until I thought I understood what he was talking about: this was particularly helpful when (for example) he had the passage talking about the difference between, on the one hand a larger particular thing and and a smaller particular thing (I.E. a larger house and a smaller house, or a larger man and a smaller man et cetera) and the difference between the larger and the smaller itself. It took about an hour to puzzle over what he meant by that section, but after it clicked it helped me to understand that by "form" he seems to be thinking about certain types of relationships: the theory of forms became a whole lot clearer.

I also had about fifteen months of Greek, which helped a little.

[Anonymous No.13770985]

>>13770926
>>13770935
wow thanks for the link.
>Earlier in the dialogue, it's kinda mentioned offhand that he was busy observing the Eleusian mysteries the day before, and Socrates seems to use his interest in that to learn him back into the conversation with a particularly mystical sounding version of recollection; eventually Socrates drops the account, and the conversation basically continues until it's Socrates who decides he's done with the whole thing).
This is what I find strange. it seems a bit convoluted for Plato to write this up, why would he even make that little 'detour' occur? or as a poster alluded to in ITT, is it just to make Socrates seem cool? to my brainlet mind it seems more as if Socrates *really* had these conversations and actually recounted them to Plato with incredible detail.

[Anonymous No.13771111]

>>13770985
Well, one suggestion that it's by Plato's hand and is a work of art, is that he sometimes throws his name in as a pun. In the Meno, he appears as the kind of fish that numbs Meno into aporia, and in the Phaedrus, Socrates and the title character sit underneath a tree that puns on Plato's name. The latter dialogue, being about speeches for long sections, also has Socrates dismiss writing while we are given the suggestion that Plato disagrees, and so the Socratic critique of writing is contained in a written work.

For the broader issue of why, it can be an awfully muddy subject. The Phaedrus itself helps with a suggestion; Socrates critiques writing, but then he talks a little about how to get around such issues with a written text. He speaks of how a speech can be like an animal with a head, a torso, limbs, etc., and then goes on to discuss what he calls "logographic necessity", and gives an example of a text with no logographic necessity (a short 4 line poem where it doesn't matter what order the lines are read in), and then treats a speech he and Phaedrus have already looked at a little bit. So, one idea is that in order to defend against the weaknesses of written speech, the text needs to be written with either a certain structural order (the text as an animal with parts) or temporal order (the text as being driven from the first page to the last with a kind of necessity). So that's a possibility.

Another is that it's implied in various dialogues that there's a hierarchy of human types, to be distinguished by better lives versus lesser ones, and that with some interlocutors what we may be seeing is a kind of human type that careful attention rewards understanding of. So, to go back to Meno, historically, he was a real sonofabitch, who sold out a bunch of his own Greek allies to the Persians. So there's some ironical resonance in the dialogue with his name, wherein the main themes are Virtue and whether it's teachable. But Socrates also refers to how tyrannical (in a kind of half-serious jesting manner) Meno is as an interlocutor, and how spoiled and bullying his manner of conversation is. So the roundabout way of keeping him in the conversation may be a Platonic hint about the motivations and desires of such a person. Obviously, this makes it much harder work for a reader.

The other possibility is that Plato is a skeptic of the ancient variety who's throwing ideas at the wall in each dialogue, trying to see what holds up and what doesn't, mixing up the circumstances and types of people involved to better understand certain things.

But it's all hard to say, since he never comes out and just says what he's doing. If one accepts the 7th letter as genuine (and there's a lot of debate over it, though stylometry tests usually suggest it fits in well with "late" dialogues), then he seems to think that being explicit about the most important things is pointless if people who can't understand them are simply given them.

[Anonymous No.13771131]

>>13769743
>What he is saying to a muggle is that the world is good, it aims toward goodness inherently, in nature and so in man. For man to know this is his development, to practice this is his duty.
Meanwhile, faggots can get married as governments force us to respect trannnies and say its normal. If that wasn't bad enough, most people prefer to live their lives drowning in social media, political spectacles, and netflix than mastering themselves and pursue wisdom. It's amusing watching leftists trying to sanitize Plato.

[Anonymous No.13771418]

>>13770980
What translations do you reccomend? How often do you look at the Greek?

[Anonymous No.13772361]

>>13771131
What's an unsanitized Plato look like?

[Anonymous No.13772384]

>>13772361
greek

[Anonymous No.13773032]

>>13769743
Why doesn't he just say that then in the Republic?

[Anonymous No.13773212]

>>13772384
unironically this