Platos Republic Three Parts of the Soul Essay Example for Free

Platos Republic Three Parts of the Soul Essay In his book The Republic, Plato searches for justice within the individual and what makes a person just. By comparing his sense of what is just at a political level and what is just at a psychological level he proposes three virtues of the individual which will make that particular person just. The virtues are of wisdom, courage and moderation. A just man won’t differ at all from a just city in respect to the form of justice; rather hell be like the city (Republic 435b). Once Plato has found justice within the city he seeks to transfer it back into the human soul. Plato talks about the ability of a person to be indecisive about actions such as drinking when something in their soul forbids them to do so even if they desire it. This indecisiveness can be transformed into internal conflict between more than one part of the soul. One part of the soul is the rational part and the part that lusts, hungers, thirsts and gets excited is the appetitive part (439d). Plato then identifies a third part of the soul, the spirited part, which is used to create emotions. Appetite is a really big part of our souls. It contains both necessary desires, which should be indulged (such as the desire to eat enough to stay alive) and unnecessary desires, which should be limited (such as the desire to eat your entire birthday cake). Though the appetite lusts after many things, Plato says it’s money-loving, since money is required for satisfying most of these desires. It is therefore obvious to Plato that the rational part of the soul should rule, as the rulers in the city do, because they both display the virtue of wisdom and can therefore exercise foresight on behalf of the entire soul. 441e) Similarly, just as the guardians assist the rulers in maintaining justice within the city, the spirited part of the soul will use emotions in order to maintain order and harmony within the soul which is justice. These two parts of the soul will be able to control its appetitive part, which may, through its insatiable desire for money, attempt to overthrow its particular role and rule over the body and even tually the classes that it is not naturally suited to rule over (442a). Consequently, justice in the individual and justice in the city would be overturned leading to chaos and war. The rulers and guardians exist in order to control and direct the producers who are the majority of the population, as the rational and spirited parts of the soul rule the desires of the individual. Therefore a just person would be one with a spirited part of the soul that would persevere through pleasures and pains in order to carry out the rational parts intentions on what should be feared and what should not (442b). This ability is identifiable as the virtue of courage, which is evident in the guardians. Moreover, this pattern of parallel virtues between the city and the soul continues as a persons reason is most able to make decisions about what is advantageous for each part and for the whole soul when he/she has the knowledge associated with wisdom. As a result the desires should be kept in a state of moderation by the rational part of the soul so that the ruler and the ruled both agree that the rational part should rule and not engage in civil war (442c). In conclusion, justice in the individual is similar to justice within the city where a person puts himself in order, is his own friend, and harmonizes the three parts of himself like three limiting notes in a musical scale (443d). In the city, justice is obtained by the three parts of society each fulfilling their role as best they can, and displaying the same three virtues of wisdom, courage and moderation. This leads to a harmony between the parts, the best possible combination, which is described as justice by Plato both within the city and within the soul. This should be obvious as; after all, a city is made up of many individuals. The harmonious or rightly ordered soul, then, is one which practices the virtues of each part. The virtue of the appetites is moderation; the virtue of the spirit is courage; the virtue of the intellect is wisdom. Through these virtues the human soul attains a certain concord or integrity, which Plato understood as the only real happiness worthy of the name. The overall purpose of the Republic is for Plato to understand what makes people happy. He discovers this through the process of dividing the soul up and seeing how they work together. Ultimately, if you live a just life you live a life of wisdom and your rational side comes first. If you live an unjust life you live your life by honor, victory, or money. Most men and women living unjust lives have a one-track mind. They forget their other priorities and doing what’s right just so they get what they want. Just people always beat and unjust person and live a happier and fuller life. His separation of the soul is very simplistic altogether. However, his individual ideas were very complex. Plato wanted us to to think for ourselves to discover how we decide to arrange our parts of the soul.

Reality: Influenced by an Individual’s Perception and Interpretation E

Reality: Influenced by an Individual’s Perception and Interpretation When the term reality is mentioned, many questions arise regarding what reality is and what is real originate also. Unfortunately, many of these questions are yet to be answered since determining reality and what is real are left to each individual’s imagination - for one to determine reality as he or she sees fit. A dictionary may provide a definition for the word reality, but things that constitute reality may never be entirely defined because it is one of those things that is almost completely based on an individual’s perception and interpretation. A dictionary may also provide a definition for the word perception and the word interpretation, but many individuals perceive and interpret many things very differently. With the vast variation of people, thoughts, and beliefs in our world, how should society determine the boundaries of reality? On the other hand, is it even possible to set specific limits when considering reality? The movie chosen, as a springboard into the forthcoming philosophical discussion, was â€Å"Dark City†, A Mystery Clock Production by New Line Cinema directed by Alex Proyas. The movie raised many interesting questions and produced many engaging comments. At the very beginning of the movie, you hear the voice of Dr. Schreber, played by Kieffer Sutherland. He begins by saying, â€Å"They [the â€Å"Strangers†] had mastered the ultimate technology, the ability to alter physical reality by will alone.†i[1] If the â€Å"Strangers† are altering reality, the people of the city will never truly know what is real and what is artificial. Consequently, the city in which they live is all artificial and made up. We as viewers can see this, but ... ...ed and are likely to continue to remain unanswered for many years to come. It is highly doubtful the term reality will ever be entirely and unrestrictedly measurable. Notes: i[1] Dr. Daniel P. Schreber in â€Å"Dark City† – the movie. ii[2] Detective Walenski in â€Å"Dark City† – the movie. iii[3] Woolley, Benjamin. â€Å"Virtual Worlds†. P 5. iv[4] Woolley, Benjamin. â€Å"Virtual Worlds†. P 9. v[5] Ludlow, Peter. â€Å"High Noon on the Electronic Frontier†. P 24. vi[6] Collins Gem Dictionary and Thesaurus. P 450. vii[7] Collins Gem Dictionary and Thesaurus. P 335. viii[8] www.philosophypages.com/dy/ix3.htm#real – the definition of reality. ix[9] Woolley, Benjamin. â€Å"Virtual Worlds†. P 213. x[10] Woolley, Benjamin. â€Å"Virtual Worlds†. P 3. xi[11] Woolley, Benjamin. â€Å"Virtual Worlds†. P 5. xii[12] Woolley, Benjamin. â€Å"Virtual Worlds†. P 3.

Michel Foucault and John Locke

The private realm, with family life as its foundation, has a significant place in western culture, which has its roots in the notion of pater familias or family head that formulates the family life as a unique kingdom in Roman law. The private sphere that includes the family life and means a realm outside the public sphere began to be used only in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This concept initially referred to the realm outside the dynamic or active social life. This idea of the private sphere outside of the public life and of the center of the private activities have forced some political thinkers to take part in theoretical discussions regarding the separation of the public and private spheres. According to Locke, as the foundation of political authority, the social contract emerges outside the family life. Accordingly, the private realm can be defined as the realm of women, symbolized by sentimentality, compassion, love, sympathy and generosity. Contrary to this, the public sphere is the realm of men, dominated by rationality, mutual exchange and observation in every aspect of social life. Despite inspiring the emergence of a state, Locke's understanding of the public sphere continues to live on with different social elements that have their own dynamism. For Locke, therefore, the public sphere has two dimensions: â€Å"political† and â€Å"social.† The objective of the defined political sphere is to protect the freedom of the public along with its life and property rights. This is demonstrated in the Second Treaties of Government, in which Locke offers three different realms: the â€Å"private sphere† of women, the â€Å"public sphere† of men in general and the â€Å"political sphere† of state servants such as members of the police, military and judiciary. Contrary to Locke, Foucault focuses primarily on the notion of the public sphere merged with political authority. In this regard, â€Å"General Will† dominates public life as the product of men who have gone beyond family life. Such an understanding sharply differentiates Rousseau from Locke. In any case, it was Foucault who laid the foundation for a notion of a transcendental state that overshadows the public life dominated by free men. In Foucault's view, men who make up the differentiating public life outside of family life become the objects of civil society in a transcendental state. This transcendental state, he further argues, first combines all unique aspects and elements of different societal groups within its metaphysical container and then enforces its own ideology in order to claim control over them. In sum, as opposed to Locke, for Hegel and Rousseau there are two opposing spheres: a private realm belonging to women, children and the disabled, and a public life belonging to men who are united to the state structure with compassion and affection. It is thus evident that their conception of the public sphere is intimately connected to the political authority. In his Rà ©umà © des cours, those summaries published for all the prestigious Collà ¨ge de France lectures, the chapter entitled â€Å"Il faut dà ©fendre la socià ©tà ©Ã¢â‚¬  (â€Å"Society must be defended†) makes passing reference to race. Foucault was concerned with how war came to be an analytic tool of historical knowledge and of social relations at large. Moreover, the issue of racism in the lectures seems ancillary and oddly displaced. This is not a prelude to an argument that we have all missed the â€Å"real† Foucault, and that the key to a genealogy of racism is waiting for us in his taped lectures rather than in published form. Both texts are concerned with the emergence of an alternative discourse to that of sovereign right, to â€Å"a discourse of the war of races† that Foucault will identify as the first â€Å"contre-histoire† (counter-history) to a unitary conception of power represented in a historical discourse that served the sovereign state. Racism emerges as one of several possible domains in which technologies of sexuality are worked out and displayed. In the lectures, state racism is not an effect but a tactic in the internal fission of society into binary oppositions, a means of creating â€Å"biologized† internal enemies, against whom society must defend itself. On the issues of race and colonialism, we can notice several contradictory impulses in Foucault's work: a focus on racism and an elision of it, a historiography so locked in Europe and its discursive formations that colonial genocide and narratives about it could only be derivative of the internal dynamics of European states. The studied absence of the impact of colonial culture on Foucault's bourgeois order did more than constrain his mapping of the discourses of sexuality. In the end, Foucault confined his vision to a specific range of racisms, a range that students of colonial history who might choose to follow his genealogical methods would be prompted to reject. English political and social thought in the seventeenth century is characterized by the idea of possessive individualism. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries it became an underlying and unifying assumption. Its â€Å"possessive† quality is found in the condition of the individual as essentially the proprietor of his (or presumably her) own person or capacities, owing nothing to society for them. Thus for theorists such as John Locke, the individual â€Å"pre-figures† society, and society will be happy and secure to the extent that individuals are happy and secure. Not only does the individual own his or her own capacities, but, more crucially, each is morally and legally responsible for himself or herself. Freedom from dependence on others means freedom from relations with others except those relations entered into voluntarily out of self-interest. Human society is simply a series of market relations between self-interested subjects. For Foucault it is guided by an â€Å"invisible hand.† For John Locke society is a â€Å"joint stock company† of which individuals are shareholders. Paradoxically, while the impact of individualism was dominant in relation to the social, political, educational, and scientific ideas of the late nineteenth, early twentieth century, this period actually marked a major extension of the State's authority over every aspect of the individual's life and to every corner of society. The problems of urbanization, population increases, immigration, war, and a major concern with eugenics gave rise to more regulation and control, leading to the State's encouragement of various forms of social research. Locke argues that since absolute monarchs claim the right to be â€Å"Judges in their own Cases,† because absolute monarchy is based on the assumption that no individual on earth has a right to challenge the legitimacy of the will of an absolute monarch, it is irrational because of the rational prohibition against any man being a judge in his own case. Moreover, since an absolute monarch claims the right to absolute power and control over all his subjects, it is irrational because any attempt to exert absolute power and control by one person over another violates the rational precepts of the law of nature and establishes a state of war between individuals. As such, an absolute monarch is held by Locke to be in a state of war with his subjects, and since civil government is established to prevent a state of war, absolute monarchy provides no â€Å"remedy for the Inconveniences of the state of nature,† for it is but a continuation of a state of war. In this manner, Locke presents us with his criticism of the rational and moral legitimacy of absolute monarchy, and thereby establishes the principle that a necessary condition of legitimate government is that it be limited in the permissible exercise of political power and authority. Limited government, that is, becomes the legitimate alternative to any form of absolute government. Furthermore, it is also possible to understand that, for Locke, the law of nature establishes the legitimate limitation on government, in the sense that the exercise of political power and authority is only legitimate if it protects the natural rights of individuals to â€Å"Life, Health, Liberty, or Possessions.† At this point, Locke introduces the idea of consent, by claiming that since individuals are, â€Å"by nature, all free, equal and independent, no one can be put out of this Estate and subjected to the Political Power of another, without his own Consent.† Accordingly, it logically follows that the transformation from a nonpolitical existence to a political one can only legitimately be accomplished by the individual consent of each individual in the state of nature. Does this particular use of the idea of consent constitute anything more than formal conformity to the methodological requirements of contractarian thought, or does it have a more substantive status within the context of Locke's political thought? In relation to the issue of subjectivity, Foucault rejects identity-based politics rooted in the notion of an historical, pre-discursive â€Å"I.† For Foucault â€Å"identities† are â€Å"self representations† or â€Å"fixations† that are neither fixed nor stable. The subject is not a â€Å"thing† outside of culture, and there is no pure â€Å"state of nature† to ground history either. The subject is not a substantive entity at all but rather a process of signification with an open system of discursive possibilities. The self is a regulated but not determined set of practices and possibilities. Conclusion Asserts Foucault, â€Å"If the genealogist refuses to extend his faith in metaphysics, if he listens to history, he finds that there is ‘something altogether different' behind things; not a timeless and essential secret, but the secret that they have no essence or that their essence was fabricated in a piecemeal fashion from alien forms.† Contrary to what John Locke would contend about power, unity (whether of consciousness proper or the continuity of personal experience) is not the essence of subjectivity. Unity is a mask for an interplay of anonymous forces and historical accidents that permits us to identify subjects, to identify ourselves, as specific human beings. Unity-identity-is imposed on subjects as the mask of their fabrication. Subjectivity is the carceral and incarcerating expression of this imposition, of the limitations drawn around us by discourses of truth and practices of individualization; but seen through the â€Å"differential knowledge† of genealogy, the identity of subjectivity collapses. RESOURCES John Locke â€Å"Second Treaties of Government,† Two Treaties of Government, ed. Peter Laslett (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), chapter VII. Foucault M. (1997k). â€Å"Society must be defended†. In M. Foucault, Ethics, Subjectivity and Truth: The Essential Works (Ed. P. Rabinow, trans. R. Hurley) (pp. 5966). Allen Lane, London: Penguin Press.   

Sample Essay “Police Brutality Globally”

According to the Bureau of Justice, there were nearly 5 thousand people killed by the police between 2003 and 2009 globally. While most cases have been registered in poorer parts of the world, police misconduct and police brutality are universal problems known to the developed countries as well. Apart from the 2014 Ferguson shooting in the US, there were incidents in Canada, Israel, Pakistan, Venezuela, and a number of other countries over the last few years, in which people were outraged by the brutality of their law enforcers. The statistics shows that police officers tend to overuse their privileges all over the world, and the most common forms of misconduct range from violence to sexual harassment, rape and even murder. Let us take Finland, one of the prominent EU members. In this country, where the total number of police officers is less than 8,000, a few dozen cases of excessive use of force happen every year. The most brutal cases of the recent years involved racial or ethnic issues. What is most shocking, the officers who were found guilty were subject to disproportionally light punishment measures. We might observe the similar situation In South Africa, where the number of police brutality cases rose by more than 300%. The saddest part is that, in 2011-2012, only 1% of all cases against the police resulted in prosecutions, while the rest were dismissed. In May 2015, a case in which a colored man was beaten by the police caused mass demonstrations in the streets of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Several thousands of Ethiopians and their supporters protested against the racial prejudice towards the African-Israelis. The police responded with tear gas, stun grenades, and water cannons. Similar protests that followed a number of race-related police brutality cases took place in Canada. One of the incidents involved last year’s murder of Sammy Yatim in Toronto. While the police officer who shot Mr. Yatim was found and charged, the problem of police violence is not new to Canadians, especially when it comes to racial differences. There have been regular protests since 2010, during which numbers of people have been arrested. In the late 2013, after the student protests in Ukraine were cleared by the brutal police force, several hundred thousand people went out in the streets in outrage. Just like in Venezuela and Lehore, Pakistan, the nation-wide manifestation turned into bloodshed as the police used force against the citizens. Apart from tear gas, water cannons, and stun grenades, there were cases in which lethal weapons were used against the protestors. As we might see from these few examples, the problem is not new, and it is not something that exists only in less developed parts of the world, including the US and Europe. Human rights activists and global change lobbyists believe that the very problem of police brutality cannot be resolved until the entire law enforcement system is restructured and reformed locally. Only the proper training of the new-generation officers can change the police’s attitude to their authority and privileges, and re-establish trust among the population. While mass protests can attract attention to this issue, the actions must be facilitated and taken on the governmental level. References Adams, Kenneth, Geoffrey P. Alpert, Roger G. Dunham, Joel H. Garner, Lawrence A. Greenfield, Mark A. Henriquez, Patrick A. Langan, Christopher D. Maxwell, and Steven K. Smith. Use of Force by Police: Overview of National and Local Data, Research Report, 1999. Garner, Joel, John Buchanan, Tom Schade, and John Hepburn. Understanding the Use of Force by and Against the Police, Research in Brief, 1996. Kelling, George L. Crime Control, the Police and Culture Wars: Broken Windows and Cultural Pluralism, NIJ Perspectives on Crime and Justice Lecture Series, 1997 Kelling, George L. â€Å"Broken Windows† and Police Discretion, Research Report, 1999. Haider, Murtaza.  Police Brutality is a Global Phenomenon, Huffington Post, August 20, 2014 McCauley, Lauren. Protests Go Global as Ethiopians March Against Police Brutality in Tel Aviv, Common Dreams, May 03, 2015 Smith, David. South Africa Reports of Police Brutality More than Tripled in the Last Decade, the Guardian, August 22, 2013