Ancient Political Thinkers - Socrates/Aristotle/Republic, Politics - Essay Example

tant exploration of the nature of justice in which he incorporates the proposal, criticism, and rejection of several inadequate definitions of the concept. When Cephalus explains justice as telling the truth and repaying one’s debts, Socrates points out various circumstances in which this definition does not work. It is important to recognize that Socrates’ explanation of justice covers the just person as well as the just City State and it refers to the harmonious relationship between people and states of opposing ideas.

Through Socrates’ arguments concerning justice, Plato offers a convincing definition of justice, i.e. the having and doing of what is one’s own. According to Socrates, “one man should practice one thing only, the thing to which his nature was best adapted; now justice is this principle or part of it… Further … justice was doing one’s own business and not being a busybody…Then to do one’s own business in a certain way may be assumed to be justice.” (Plato, 126) Therefore, the final concept of ‘justice’ that Socrates explains in the Republic corresponds to the definition of justice by Plato, i.e. the having and doing of what is one’s own, and it refers to harmonious relationship between people and states.

In his philosophical piece The Republic, Plato makes a serious criticism against the poets through the various discussions by his protagonist Socrates, who wants to drive the poets out of the ‘beautiful city’. All through his discussions in The Republic, Socrates obviously associates the poets with the unessential and according to him the poets are unnecessary if the city is to be healthy. Thus, Socrates clearly maintains that the poets are beyond the ‘essential minimum’ and they are fundamental to the origin of the diseased, luxurious city of pigs.

In both book 3 and book 10 of The Republic, Socrates offers convincing evidences about why he bans poets from the ‘beautiful city’ and he maintains that “there