Plato's Debt: Justice and Nature in Early Greek Philosophy

This paper examines the relationship between justice and nature in key figures in early Greek philosophy in order to understand the idea of nature that grounds Plato's account of justice. Tracing the idea of justice through Anaximander, Heraclitus, and Parmenides, I show that each figure uses j...

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Détails bibliographiques
Auteur principal: Habash, Justin (Auteur)
Type de support: Électronique Article
Langue:Anglais
Vérifier la disponibilité: HBZ Gateway
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Interlibrary Loan:Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany)
Publié: [2016]
Dans: Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association
Année: 2016, Volume: 90, Pages: 97-108
RelBib Classification:NBD Création
NCA Éthique
VA Philosophie
Accès en ligne: Volltext (Verlag)
Volltext (doi)
Description
Résumé:This paper examines the relationship between justice and nature in key figures in early Greek philosophy in order to understand the idea of nature that grounds Plato's account of justice. Tracing the idea of justice through Anaximander, Heraclitus, and Parmenides, I show that each figure uses justice in unique and innovative ways to explain different concepts of nature. Among the Presocratics then, justice is a heuristic for grasping the newly emerging and evolving concept of nature. It is in turn this evolving concept of nature that ushers in the transformation of justice from the conventional Hesiodic notion of “legal settlement” or “paying one's debts” to Plato's philosophical account of justice based on nature. The transformation is marked by the development of several key epistemological criteria and teleological facets in the earliest concepts of nature. As such, Plato's account of justice in the Republic is deeply indebted to Presocratic conceptions of justice and nature.
ISSN:2153-7925
Contient:Enthalten in: American Catholic Philosophical Association, Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.5840/acpaproc2017111366