Retributive justice

In many societies, including our own, we labeled the meaning of the word “justice” for the sole purpose of preserving social order and the political stability for the good of many instead of the few. However, what we believe to be just and unjust in regards to what Plato’s Republic explains about what is actually just and unjust are inadvertently blurred from a somewhat (if not unintended biased) social perspective; therefore, this topic has produce a generational conflict. These concepts of…

Anybody Will Do Punishing criminals has always been a major part of what is considered justice, as the saying goes an eye for an eye. People naturally lean towards that extremely crude form of justice, and so they care about nothing else besides the fact that they get someone’s eye. In The Crucible by Arthur Miller and “Trial by Fire” by David Grann, extreme actions are taken over the deaths of children. People are accused of causing the deaths, yet none are at fault. They are all killed…

work, but rather took a few concepts and applied them to successfully live a complete life. He believed that if you were a man of truth and justice, you were saved from all ruins, sin, and destruction. In addition, he claimed that just brought self-satisfaction of good moral character in which you acknowledged the idea of limited truth. Plato was so high on justice and truth he said, “Unjust things are worse than killing.” (Apology 30d) Rather than arguing in which killing another human being is…

While explaining the core idea behind legal positivism, Fuller wrote, “The common objectives of all system of [legal] positivism is to preserve a distinction between the law that is and the law that should be or is trying to be.” This distinction between what is and what should be is the foundational idea separating law in the form of constitution and morality based on the distinction between good and bad. By creating a boundary between law and morality, the legal positivists thus try to…

In the Republic, Thrasymachus defines justice as the advantage of the stronger. Socrates refutes this argument by proving that the stronger do not always make decisions to their advantage, that the stronger should not be making decisions that advantage them and that justice is more beneficial to the individual than injustice. In analyzing Thrasymachus’ definition of justice, there are aspects that need to be considered. Firstly, Thrasymachus talks about a group of people – the…

In Plato’s The Republic, he posits that the perfect city will be virtually homogenous, and that there can be no division in the citizens of the city if it is to succeed. Aristotle, on the other hand, claims in his Politics that the perfect city will be as distant from that of Plato’s as possible, and instead will have a variety of different people within it. As Aristotle’s argument evolves, however, he determines that the citizens of a city should still be similar in a variety of ways and that…

In Peter Singer’s argument, the reader is forced to analyze the morality of their day-to-day lives. Singer’s ethical argument challenges ordinary consumers to change their unnoticeable immoral routines of disregarding charitable donations. He argues there is no moral difference between a man letting a child drown so his shoes are not ruined and someone buying luxury items instead of donating that money to a relief agency. In this paper, I will clarify any relevant terminology, elucidate Singers…

Care Ethics is a combination of virtue and role ethics that promotes the importance of relationships, especially those that are interpersonal, that give guidance to living a moral life. In Care Ethics, a moral person is one who gives care to those that are dependent because caregiving involves some sort of sacrifice. There has to be a balance so that it does not interfere with self-care. For example, Gilligan says that a “moral person is one who helps others; goodness is service, meeting one’s…

character of the city-state and just man. Socrates and Plato conduct a position on justice and attributes it to the effects on one’s happiness for those who live in a “city-state.” Plato focuses on two questions, “what is justice” and “what is the relation of justice to happiness?” Socrates answers these two questions by relating it back to the individual's soul and a city’s political community. One must want justice for all to create any political laws for a state to run by. Without man…

Justice is very important in society and there are many different things that go into the idea of justice.There isn’t one simple thing that makes justice work, it takes a variety of different concepts to not only form a system for justice, but put it into action. While there are many examples of societies where rules are established and behavior and judgements are measured against those rules, there is still injustice. We, as humanity, need to continue to be aware of this and work to make the…