Blog Entry #6

1. "The true philosopher is like someone who escapes from that cave and sees real things, when he gets back, no one believes him."

I agree with Socrates. The cave represents a persons perspective on what is "normal". When someone suggests something out of the ordinary, many times that person is put down or not supported. Nowadays, if a person on the street, or even a friend, started talking seriously about how aliens were going to invade the planet, people would think they were "not normal". No one would actually think that it was going to happen. The same goes for philosophers. Many of them go beyond the ordinary and dig deeper into religion and life. Sometimes their statements and beliefs are so different from our own we do not belive a word they say. Philosophers should have tried helping others escape from the cave and not just narrating to them what they had found.

2. What is justice to Plato?

Plato belives that justice embodies the four great vitrtues, courage, wisdom, temperance, and justice. His idea came from utopian thinking.

3. What are the positive and negative elements to Plato's ideal republic?

Plato's utopian thinking has its pros and cons. His ideal republic was an aristocracy. Every profession people could get were based on their intelligence, strength, and courage. The pros of this idea were: only the most courageous, intelligent, and strong people would be able to rule the state while the people lower in skills than them would have the less important jobs. The fate of the state was in very good people's hands. The cons of this idea was that some people with innate wisdom have more experience in situations needed to be learned than the more intelligent. Decisions in political office would be needed to make, but to make a dicision people need to be educated in school and in their own experiences. For example, someone who has gotten their college degree might not know what to do in certain outside-of-school situations whereas people who have only had a 7th grade education then dropped out might know better. Intelligence, strength, and courage are not all that make up a good politician, but you also need to be "street smart".

4. What is your vision of an ideal state or republic?

In my opinion, there can never be such a thing as an ideal society. If there were one, it would be one where everyone was "colorblind"- there would be no racial or religious issues. Everyone would always be open to help others when needed. People would have different opinions but would find other ways of voicing them than rioting, protesting, and boycotting. There would be no violence and people would get along well all around the world.

5. This means that the only thing that holds us back from learning a great deal is that we will not accept things out of the ordinary. If it is not part of our everyday lives, we do not belive it exists. When someone tries to explain something they learned to someone and the person's response is, "No... of course that can't be true!" the person has just denied something that someone else belived to be true. The information taught was not in the the person's perspective of "normal" and so it was not accepted.