Category: Philosophy

In the first book of the Republic, Thrasymachus attacks Socrates' position that justice is an important good. He claims that 'injustice, if it is on a large enough scale, is stronger, freer, and more masterly than justice' (344c). In the course of arguing for this conclusion, Thrasymachus makes three central claims about justice.

1. Justice is nothing but the advantage of the stronger (338c)
2. Justice is obedience to laws (339b)
3. Justice is nothing but the advantage of another (343c).

Continue reading Thrasymachus (c. 459 – c. 400)

Harmonious order
The dependence of Tian upon human agents to put its will into practice helps account for Confucius' insistence on moral, political, social, and even religious activism. In one passage (17.19), Confucius seems to believe that, just as Tian does not speak but yet accomplishes its will for the cosmos, so too can he remain "silent" (in the sense of being out of office, perhaps) and yet effective in promoting his principles, possibly through the many disciples he trained for government service. At any rate, much of Confucius' teaching is directed toward the maintenance of three interlocking kinds of order: (1) aesthetic, (2) moral, and (3) social. The instrument for effecting and emulating all three is li (ritual propriety).

Do not look at, do not listen to, do not speak of, do not do whatever is contrary to ritual propriety. (12.1)

George Berkeley was one of the three most famous eighteenth century British Empiricists (see LOCKE, JOHN and HUME, DAVID). He is best known for his motto, esse is percipi, to be is to be perceived. He was an idealist: everything that exists is either a mind or depends for its existence upon a mind. He was an immaterialist: matter does not exist. He accepted the seemingly outrageous position that ordinary physical objects are composed solely of ideas, which are inherently mental. He wrote on vision, mathematics, Newtonian mechanics, economics, and medicine as well as philosophy. In his own time, his most often-read works concerned the medicinal value of tar-water. And in a curious sense, he was the first great American philosopher.
Continue reading George Berkeley