Justice in Ancient Greek

Epicureanism- happiness is avoiding unhappiness

  • access to healthcare

  • justice system

  • safety

  • lgbtq acceptance

  • gender equality

  • standard of living

  • access to choice

  • reduced layers of bureaucracy→increased transparency

  • work-life balance

  • wages

  • reduced military presence

Plato

  • in a line of philosophers from Greece- students of each other but do have some independence

    • Socrates

      • Socrates kinda a jerk, successful as a philosopher, didn’t write anything down himself

      • others thought of Socrates as a bad influence→charged w/ corrupting the youth and blasphemy against the gods

      • If he had escaped out of town and never come back, would have survived but he wanted to be a martyr for his cause

    • Plato

      • an Athenian (upper-crust) (429-348 BCE)

      • lifespan overlapped w/ Peloponnesian War that Sparta won

      • Sparta installed a puppet govt in Athens→had a lot of citizens killed (5% of adult male pop of Athens), including some participants in dialogue of Republic

      • would have been business oriented but wanted to be a philosopher

      • created the Academy (where academia comes from) and wrote down stuff (mainly dialogues, mainly Socrates as mc)

    • Aristotle

  • written w/ the goal of changing minds and educating

Republic

  • Plato imagines it happening in 410-411, about 7-8 yrs b/4 all these ppl killed, they don’t know how war works but Plato wrote it 30 yrs later

  • Did this dinner party happen, and if it happened, did Plato change things?

    • it’s clear that Plato wants Socrates to have said all of this

  • Socrates guides conversation instead of direct statements

  • seems to involve readers, more attachment

  • like a conversation that wanders around, maybe interesting to be part of but less fun to read

  • Plato and Socrates always strive for ‘the good’, trying to find happiness but this very quickly gets knocked down to idea of justice

    • should be at basis of ethics, which is important for happiness

Dialogues

  • Elenchus- lengthening, pulling dialogue

  • Aporia- eventual stopping point where they can’t get past a contradiction b/c Soc believed it was better to say you don’t know something than continue on pretending

    • most of 1st half of Plato’s writings end w/ this but later writings keep going