What is it about?
Socrates makes a lengthy argument in the Republic about the superiority of practicing justice over injustice. His interlocutors are persuaded, but should they be? Many scholars have suggested that Socrates' argument fails, and that thus, his interlocutors should not be convinced by his reasoning. But I show in the paper, that these criticisms fail. Seeing how they fail involves understanding the central place of explanations in the Republic; what they are, what they are meant to achieve, and how they are to be understood in the broader metaphysical scheme laid out in the text.
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Why is it important?
Ethics today is not in great shape. A common approach from both introductory ethics courses, to high level philosphical research in ethics, is to reduce ethics to a justification of conventional morality. Rational argument and deduction serve only, in this scheme, to prop up convention. This article should hopefully do something to put conventional morality in its place, and prevent it from running roughshod over all of ethical reasoning.
Perspectives
This article had a very long gestation period of about 5 years. I ruminated on these ideas over that period of time, and my ideas changed, and grew, and changed again as I continued to work, and receive feedback from others in my field. The result is, I hope, a window into a deeper understanding of Plato's ideas.
Sean Skedzielewski
Rowan University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Justice and the Supposed Fallacy of Irrelevance in Plato’s Republic, Polis The Journal for Ancient Greek and Roman Political Thought, May 2020, Brill,
DOI: 10.1163/20512996-12340277.
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