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How Did Socrates Influence The Republic

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Socrates is an influential character in The Republic. He is probably most influential in this one than any other. He says interesting things that make even the most scholarly people think. He believes in things that are controversial to what everyone believed in his time, and what a lot of people believe now. What he says makes sense and makes he or she rethink about what they believe. This is one of the main reasons he gets a death sentence because he asked scholars questions that they couldn’t answer and they were frustrated. They believed, and were well known, for being the smartest people, but Socrates proved them wrong by asking them questions they couldn’t answer. Many of the questions Socrates wanted to know, but no one could answer …show more content…

This quote shows that he was a philosopher and smarter than the other scholars because he knew what he didn’t know. He was aware of the things that he hadn’t figured out yet. This is what made him a philosopher. Also, Socrates had an interesting view on human nature. He believed that people were more apt to be the person that picks the money off the floor after watching someone drop it, then to be the person who picks the money off the floor and gives it back to the person that dropped it. He believes that justice plays a part in this. Socrates says that being a just person is what people do because they know that there are going to be consequences. It is easier to be unjust and deceive people, but if the person thinks there is a chance they will be caught, then they will do the right thing. Socrates is an intriguing character in The Republic because of his interesting views on human nature, justice, and …show more content…

Human nature is an interesting thing. It is something that we can not control. Many of the decisions that we made in our lives weren’t actually freely chosen they were because of influences that were put on us. There are two spectrums when it comes to human nature, the one side is that it is human nature for us to be bad and evil towards people, the other side is that we are good and just human beings. Which side of this is true. Socrates says that it is the left side or the side where we are evil towards one another and the side where we make bad decisions because we are selfish. A researcher named Max Maxwell wrote an essay about what Socrates believed human nature was. He said that Socrates believed that humans didn’t intentionally do wrong, they did wrong unknowingly because, “Humans have a powerful instinct for benefiting themselves” (Maxwell). This quote shows that Socrates believes that humans do wrong because they believe that it will benefit themselves. He believes that humans are born selfish and they can’t help it, no matter their environment, it is the way it is. Socrates says that when people are selfish they have bad friends. In his words, “Many a man who is ignorant of human nature has friends who are bad friends, and in that case he ought to do harm to them.” He says this because he believes that if a man has not a perspective on good human nature then they can’t

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