POLS 250 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Polemarchus, Cephalus, Thrasymachus
4 Dec 2017
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Socrates: ask basic questions like what is justice?" subject the possible answers to a rigorous and logical analysis. Is plato recording socrates or is the character of socrates used to expand plato"s ideas: for our case, socrates is plato"s ideas, leader of intellectual revolution. The republic: main characters, socrates (represents plato"s position, cephalus (dialogue takes place in his house, polemarchus ( son of cephalus, thrasymachus ( influential sophist) Goal to show he is smarter than socrates: glaucon (plato"s older brother) What is justice: answer #1, cephalus: justice is telling the truth and returning anything we borrowed. Business view": socrates: example of borrowing a weapon, refutes #1. Only works if people are infallible but humans are flawed: answer #4. Therefore, they can make laws that are not in their interests: thrasymachus: more trickey! Just as a skilled craftsman never makes a mistake so a skilled ruler never makes a mistake.
