A Fallacy in Plato's Republic

Dados Bibliográficos

ID10697409
AutoresDavid Sachs (autor correspondente)
Ano1963
Volume72
Fascículo2
Páginas141
Data de publicação1963-04-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoThe Philosophical Review (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0031-8108 • E-ISSN: 1558-1470
EditoraJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/2183101
OpenAlexW2318656575
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas69
Referências citadas2

R ECENT writers on the Republic tend to refrain from detailed discussion of the argument about justice and happiness, the main argument of the work.1 In the last decades there have been few assessments of Plato's conclusions about the relationship of justice and happiness, namely that just men are happier than any men who are unjust, and that the more unjust a man is, the more wretched he will be. Equally rare have been attempts to examine critically the argument by which Plato reached those conclusions.2 In this paper I make such an attempt. My aim is to show that Plato's conclusions are irrelevant to what he sets out-and purports-to establish. The fallacy of irrelevance that, in my judgment, wrecks the Republic's main argument is due to the lack of connection between two conceptions of justice that Plato employs. I begin with an account of the two conceptions. While discussing them, I try to correct some errors and possible confusions about Plato's argument and his understanding of it. In particular, I try to show that Plato consistently viewed his defense of justice as one made solely in terms of justice's effects. I then examine the fallacy in detail. At the end, I briefly speculate about why Plato proceeded as he did

Analytic philosophy · Contemporary philosophy · Economics · Epistemology · Fallacy · General interest · Positive economics · Classical Philosophy and Thought · Philosophical Ethics and Theory · Philosophy