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Justice In Aeschylus Agamemnon And Plato's Republic

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Identifying the concept of justice, and what it means to be just, is a significant theme in the Ancient Greek works of both Aeschylus’ Agamemnon and Plato’s Republic. Aeschylus chooses to explore the theme of justice by creating spiteful characters such as Clytemnestra and Aegisthus who seek a form of retribution for misdeeds done to them in the past by murdering Clytemnestra’s husband, Agamemnon. Alternatively, Plato utilizes elenchus, in which the characters such as Socrates, Glaucon, Cephalus, Polemarchus, Adeimantus, and Thrasymachus attempt to elicit the truth about justice through a question and answer dialogue. Ultimately, Agamemnon never offers an explicit definition of justice. Similarly, the discussion of justice in the Republic ends in aporia, with the characters unable to decide on an exact elucidation of the concept. Therefore, I will not be so bold as to attempt to define it here. However, when one comparatively examines the talk about justice in both texts, each appears to make an implicit conclusion about the concepts …show more content…

Socrates reasons that “when dogs are harmed, they become worse in the virtue that makes dogs good,” (11) to which his companions agree. That is to say, dogs lose part of what makes them good dogs when people harm them. Socrates then applies this notion to humans, suggesting “that when [humans] are harmed they become worse in human virtue,” (11) or less good humans. Since justice is a human virtue, or something that makes humans good, “people who are harmed must become more unjust” (11). Finally, Socrates reasons, because just people are good and it is only the function of the opposite of goodness to cause harm, “it is never just to harm anyone” (11). Thus, if revenge involves harming those who had inflicted harm originally, it follows that revenge must not be just and cannot be the same as

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