Justice as Fairness

teacher, Plato attempts to define justice and explain why being just is rewarding. Republic ends with the myth of Er, a story about a man who travels to the afterlife then returns to tell what he saw. The myth of Er fits into the rest of Republic because it supports the assertion that being just is beneficial and that being just or unjust is a choice; however, it appears different than the rest of the book because the myth introduces a different reason why justice is advantageous, and it has a…

disapproves of. (440b) And for the same reason as in the state, when the three parts; reason, spirit, and appetite are minding their own business, practice their own purpose, and not interfering with each other, justice is in an individual is achieved. (442d) To sum up, justice in the state and justice in the individual are the same, since they require the same virtues to…

1963. When questioned of their imprisonment, Plato and King, Jr. are both determined to maintain justice despite the injustices charged against them, but for Plato, justice means upholding the law at all costs since one should do no wrong, whereas King is concerned with reforming the law, therefore doing wrong could make a “right”. To both King and Socrates, a portion of injustice in law damages justice as a whole. When Crito attempts to persuade Socrates…

Justice is the word that keeps death penalty at its cue, wandering for a truth and what true justice can bring; right for the wrong and right for the right. Are the government officials the ones with the right solutions? Are we the one’s to validate true justice? I think not and I believe you know this already. Death penalty does not constitute a cruel or unusual punishment, actually it serves what some look as justice; the satisfaction of one’s need to abate death or harm that was imposed by…

The Movement for Black Lives Platform: Economic Justice One of the six demands for the Movement for Black Lives platform is economic justice, which is the equal distribution of benefits. According to Bunch, efforts to achieve this platform include readjusting tax codes and redistribution of wealth, establishing federal and state job programs, providing renewed land, clean air, ensuring clean water and housing, the end of unjust control of resources, allowing the right for workers to organize…

Plato In The Republic, Plato acts as a scribe and recounts a particular evening that his teach Socrates had spent with his fellow Greeks, discussing various political topics. In the book, Plato outlines what Socrates’ thought justice was, and what a perfectly just city (the “city of speech”) would be like. One of the foundational principles in Plato’s just city is specialization. Each person does what they are best at, and don’t meddle in another’s affairs. By specializing, society is divided…

In the two plays Antigone and Trifles we see the characters in each approach laws and justice quite differently. Both plays center on a death, and in each there are two sides seeking justice after the death. I feel the plays present one group of characters who seek lawful justice and an opposing set of characters that want justice based on their opinion. In the first play, Trifles, a man has been murdered by strangulation and the primary suspect is his wife. The person who found and reported…

Robert Nozick, an American philosopher born in the 1960s, explores the concept of distributive justice through a minimalist state in his work, Anarchy, State, and Utopia. A minimal state refers to a state that obtains the least amount of power possible without becoming an anarchy. Throughout Anarchy, State, and Utopia, Nozick argues that the minimal state is the only state that can be justified and will not violate people’s rights. By exploring various theories and principles such as the…

minorities at a much rate than whites. Even though the law was not written to target minorities, the fact that it is used much more often to justify killings of minorities shows that it is unjust. In our study of incarceration rates and the criminal justice system we learned that this law is not alone in its disproportionate effects on minorities and people of low economic status. Other examples of this are: “war on drugs,” and “the three strikes rule.” One part of the movie that gave me hope…

In Republic, Plato sets out to tackle the topic of justice—the definition of it itself and how it manifests in every day life. In Book II of Republic, Socrates says that in order to understand justice in a single person, he will try to examine justice in a whole city. Though it seems unusual, his arguments—which precede Book II and carry him through to Book IV—are strengthened enough that one can conclude he is in fact, correct to understand Justice in this way. At the beginning of Book II,…