Platos Argument For A Just Life :: essays research papers

Platos Argument For A Just LifePlatos argument for the benefits of a just life is intrinsi shouty linked to hisdefinition of costly and its congener to peoples requires. He begins by showingthat when the objective of a desire is elementary (e.g. quenching a aridness), thedesire must(prenominal) be correspondingly simple. Since thirst is a simple desire, themans objective must also be simple and should we assign an adjective to hisobjective, we would falsely complicate it. In addition, Plato believes that wewould be poorly erring if we assign a value of good to an desire.In unwashed use, the adjective good would denote something that is good inrelation to others of its kind. We support in a present good if it containscharacteristics that we look for in a drink (e.g. pleasantness or taste). Platotakes this a step further and states that something that is good must not onlybe good in relation to others just it must be wholly good. Thus a drink cannotbe truly good if evil re sults from it. This poses an interesting question forPlatos readers namely, since no unmatched wants bad things to happen to them, why dopeople engage in self-destructive activities? The answer lies in the fact thatthe only think that we desire to drink is that we anticipate the result of ourthirst being quenched. Our appetites see no further consequences than theimmediate fulfillment of our desires they do not contemplate the results of theactions we take to fulfill our desires.For this reason, Plato believes that we must separate the soul found on how itreacts to desires. in that location must be a part of the soul, Plato reasons, thatcontemplates the windup result of our actions and makes decisions based on a higherreasoning than desire. So we see devil distinct parts of the soul. The first issaid to be appetite (which desires without reason) and reason (which considersthe consequences). Reason may thus work against anything that is not for thetotal good of the man. Plato h olds that if the desire were truly for a gooddrink, reason would never fight back it. Our usage of the word good, however, hascome to denote an expectation of usefulness to our finding although this may berelative to the end result that we experience from the object. For example, wecall a knife good because it is sharp and cuts well but if the end result isthat we cut ourselves, we would say that the knife would have been better if it