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The Role Of Polemarchus 'Justice In Socrates'

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When it comes to justice, Polemarchus believes that justice is “…helping friends and harming enemies.”. Socrates questions this point of view because according to Polemarchus’ view point, only the people who are close to him and in his circle of friends would be worthy of any kind of Justice. Polemarchus is wrong in this viewpoint because if only the people that you know who are of your similar social status and you interact with on a day to day basis are considered friends, what of those that you do not know? Or what of those who are not of your social status, that you do not interact with? Socrates questions this by asking, “Do you mean by friends those who seem to be good to an individual, or those who are, even if they don't seem to be, and similar with enemies?”. …show more content…

Polemarchus responds by saying, “that the men one believe to be good, one loves, while those he considers bad one hates.” This is the problem with Polemarchus’ view of justice. He could easily be wrong about who is “good” and who is “bad” and you will end up treating someone who has done nothing wrong unjustly. Dividing a country into classes where each person must be loyal to ones own class would never lead to true justice because the different classes would only be loyal to their particular class. The ruling class would benefit more from this because they are in fact the higher

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