Hi, could someone please help me understand this line from The Republic?
"But if you admit that I am right in this, then I shall maintain that you have implied the principle for which we have been all along contending. Pg. 63, at the bottom.
Arpita
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Arpita,
ReplyDeleteYou definitely must look to the context.
"Because if I am not mistaken, we shall have to say that about men poets and storytellers are guilty of making the gravest misstatements when they tell us that wicked men are often happy, and the good miserable; and that injustice is profitable when undetected, but that justice is a man's own loss and another's gain-these things we shall forbid them to utter, and command them-to sing and say the opposite..
To be sure we shall, he replied. But if you admit that I am right in this, then I shall maintain that you have implied the principle for which we have been all along contending. I grant the truth of your inference.
That such things are or are not to be said about men is a question which we can not determine until we have discovered what justice is, and how naturally advantageous to the possessor, whether he seem to be just or not"
If I remember correctly, the ultimate goal of the Republic is to determine (with a Socratic definition) what justice is. Therefore I am pretty sure that "the principle" Socrates is referring to in this quote is "what justice is." Socrates is saying that if Adeimantus agrees with the previous paragraph that poets should not say this and that about justice and unjust men and such, then Adeimantus is implicitly giving a definition of justice. This is because how can a man make judgments about claims of just/injust/wicked/good men unless the man knows what justice/injustice/bad/good are? They have not YET given definitions to these things (e.g. justice) and thus Socrates thinks that they cannot defend the claims in the previous paragraph YET.
Does this help?
Let me know if I have only confused you more.
Taylor
no, that really helped. i kept staring at it, and didn't get anywhere. thank you =]
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