Plato Intro And Challenge

Question 1

Moral complacency

Answer 1

Right and wrong is obvious
It isn’t worth worrying about
We’re not seriously going to change how we live

Question 2

Socrate’s overall objection to it

Answer 2

Common sense focuses on external characteristics: what agents do
Answer requires focus on internal characteristics: what agents are

Question 3

Central q. of republic

Answer 3

How should we live?

Question 4

Plato agrees with common sense in that

Answer 4

There is a way that we should live

Question 5

Plato focuses on justice is a virtue which is

Answer 5

An excellence that an agent may or may not have

Question 6

Thrasymachus’ definition of justice

Answer 6

It is nothing more than the advantage of the strong

Question 7

Thrasymachus’ challenge

Answer 7

The life of the injustice is better than the life of the justice
We should live unjustly (this should is a prudential should not a moral should)

Question 8

Socrates response

Answer 8

Wants to avoid moral complacency and moral skepticism but without a positive account of justice and its benefits there is no good answer to T’s challenge

Question 9

The ring of gyges story

Answer 9

A man finds a ring which makes him invisible and uses it to seduce the queen and murder the King so that he himself became King

Question 10

What is the ring of gyges meant to show

Answer 10

Glaucon’s worry is that anyone with the ring and its power would act unjustly and they’d be foolish not to and so supporting T’s idea that common sense accepts that it’s in our best interest to act unjust

Question 11

Plato’s response

Answer 11

The republic: to show that being morally good is also being prudentially good