Nina Monroe :: essays research papers

Nina Monroe 16 April 2002 Philosophy Ethics 6. What arguments are offered by Plato and Aristotle that the just biography is happier that the unjust one? Do you find these convincing? Why or why not? The Happy Life So dont merely give us a theoretical argument that rightness is stronger than iniquity, but tell us what individually itself does, because of its own powers, to someone who possesses it, and that makes in arbiter bad and justice good.1 In this quote from Platos land, Adeimantus challenges Socrates to shew that justice is good in itself, and ultimately, to prove that the just heart is the happiest sustenance for a human being. Both Plato and Aristotle, two of antiquitys not bad(p) philosophers, concern themselves with the issue of human happiness. Neither thinker considers fate to be the definitive factor for achieving happiness. Rather, Plato and Aristotle argue that our actions and thoughts play a significant aim in creating a happy life. This argument, as pres ented in Platos Republic and Aristotles Nicomachean Ethics, also asserts that a life in accordance with justice is the happy, or good, life. Thus, tracing each philosophers theory of the happy life necessitates a discussion of their definitions of justice. Here too, the two philosophers show a great degree of agreement. Although the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle contain major differences in their fundamental principles, both thinkers exhaust similar stances on the relationship between justice and happiness. Plato, through various Socratic dialogues, chooses to present his definition of justice in the context of a just soil, later applying it to the case of a human. In the just state described by Socrates, each individual performs a certain affaire within society.2 It is in this principle of proper functioning of each part, from which Plato derives a definition of justice. It should not come as a surprise, therefore, that Plato was highly overcritical of Athenian democracy , which encouraged its citizens to try many different professions throughout each of their lives. Plato found that a certain element of conflict or uplift arises from conditions that promote various parts of a system to meddle with the another(prenominal) parts. Platos notion of justice clearly echoes his overall theory of a highest good, or the good in itself. The highest good is constituted by something whole above the sensible world, and understood only within the realm of intelligibility. The truths of the translucent realm are ordered and unchanging.