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Just State In Plato ;a Critical Exposition
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He was best known for his
statement that “man is the measure of all things, of the things that
are, that they are, and of the things that are not, that they are notâ€3.
For him, knowledge is limited to our various perceptions and these
perceptions differ with each other. He maintained that moral judgments
are relative. He was willing to admit that the idea of Justice or law
reflects a general desire in each culture for a moral order among all
people. Nevertheless, he denied that there was any uniform law of nature
pertaining to human behaviour that all peoples everywhere could
discover. Though, he distinguished between nature and custom or
convention and said that law and moral rules are based, not upon nature,
but upon convention, thereby taking a conservative position that the
state makes the laws and that these laws should be accepted by everyone
because they are as good as and that can be made.
Hence, for the
interest of a peaceful and orderly society, people should respect and
uphold the customs, Laws and moral rules their tradition has carefully
nurtured. One should not set his private judgment against the law of the
state so that Justice may prevail.
1.6.1.2 Thrasymachus (Late 5th century)
He
was a man who asserts that injustice is to be preferred to the life of
Justice. He did not look upon injustice as a defect of character. On the
contrary, he said, “Justice is pursued by simpletons and leads to
weaknessâ€4. For him, people should pursue their own interest
aggressively in a virtually unlimited form of self- assertion.
He
regards justice as the interest of the stronger and believed that might
is right, for laws are made by the ruling party for its own interest.
Hence, he defined law as what is right and is the same in all states
with the same meaning as the interest of the party established in
power. Stumpf affirms that, “what is right is the same everywhere, the
interest of the stronger partyâ€5. That is the reduction of morality to
power, an inevitable logical consequence of the progressive radicalism
of the sophists, which led them to a nihilistic attitude toward truth
and ethics.
1.6.2 Socrates (470-399BC)
He was the first great
moral philosopher among the Greeks. Though he wrote nothing, his life
and teaching made much impression on his disciples who penned down all
about his philosophy and life. He was a man of confounding self-
discipline and strong character who lived and died in accordance with
his moral principles. Omoregbe states that:
He told the people of
Athens that his mission was to do the greatest good to everyone of them,
to persuade everyone among you that he must look into himself and seek
virtue and wisdom before he looks to his private interests....6
Seeking
for the truth helps them to live a good life and knowledge is a means
to this moral life. Then, virtue and good actions flow from knowledge,
while wrongdoing is the result of ignorance. The goal of life is
happiness, and the only path that leads to it is virtue. To sum it up,
he was a man of great discipline (justice). He placed justice under the
highest kind of virtue. Hence, Justice is a prerequisite for happiness
and it culminates into love.
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