Friday, January 23, 2015

What Justice

What is justice? There really isn’t a true definition of what justice is. Many people may say that justice is being fair to everyone and having equality around the world as a whole. The Internet definition for justice is the state of being equal. After hearing a lot of different answers to this question in previous class days it would be interesting to compare them to previous philosophers. There were a couple previous philosophers that answered this question and gave their opinion just like we did in class. Cephalus said that “Justice amounts to paying people what they owed and properly discharging one’s obligations.” Another man named Polemarchus said that “Justice is doing good to one’s friends, and harm to one’s enemies.” By this he is simply saying that we should be kind to our friends but treat our enemies just as bad as they treat us, in order to have justice. If you think about it, that doesn’t make you anymore just than it does your enemy. At the end of the day, you’re going to be doing something harmful to someone else that is being unjust which makes you unjust just like them. You could say that’s why we have a life rule that says treat others like you would want to be treated. Nobody had a statement about justice like the one that Thrasymachus had. He said that justice is “the advantage of the strongest.” In our case, the strongest would be the government. The government has a lot of power and makes most decisions that affect our lives either negatively or positively. Whatever happens in this country will end up in the hands of the government if it gets that major. Once it gets to the hands of the “strongest”, then most likely the decision made with benefit the “strongest”. That’s a hard statement to disagree with but it can be argued against.

1 comment:

  1. I believe that we as humans, will always shift "justice" to our benefit. Such is our ambition, that with the slightest taste of power or rank, we want to multiply that power and become stronger at all cost. We believe that justice is supposed to revolve around our morals or theories. That justice is somehow linked with that power we attain and that those with the greatest power should be the privileged ones to judge everyone else and decide (based on their beliefs) whether or not their crime or case is worthy of grace or deserves punishment. Let me reiterate that we are humans, meaning we were created by another supernatural being, interesting how the world was created and how we were created by the same being, yet we want to control and run the world our way and not the way he commands. Justice should not be left to the powerful, Justice should be left to the supernatural, omnipotent being. Interesting how if our own father, referring to God, can forgive our sins daily and accept us with all our malevolent thoughts and actions, how is that that we humans cannot do the same? how is is that we believe that if someone did us wrong, they should be done wrong as well, because only then would it be "fair". the truth is, it's not that we act out of fairness, instead we act out of anger and evil. Easily enough, this is understandable precisely because we are naturally born into sin and are product of sin, it's only natural that we will come into this world in an unholy way and believe the world should be run our way and our way only. Everyone believes it should be run their way though, so then who's way is the "correct" way? Who's way is the "just" one? A bunch of twisted-hearted people wanting to run the world, is there any TRUE justice that will come out of us, the sinners?

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