Plato and His Predecessors
Plato and His Predecessors
This chapter explores how the nature/convention distinction is taken up by Plato and many of his Sophistic predecessors. It argues that the philosophically most fundamental motivation of Plato's Republic is to reply to a staple proposition of fifth-century Greek thought, a proposition propounded by many of Plato's Sophistic predecessors: that there is a distinction between nature and convention, phusis and nomos, and that nomos, convention, human law, cannot be derived from nature and even contradicts nature. The chapter first considers the historical importance of Sophism as well as Sophistic universalism before discussing Socrates' response to the Sophists, particularly Glaucon, and Plato's arguments against a contractarian account of justice. It also examines the concepts of authoritarianism, totalitarianism, and the lower class, along with Aristotle's rejection of the Sophist opposition between nature and convention.
Keywords: nature, convention, Plato, Republic, Sophism, Socrates, justice, authoritarianism, totalitarianism, Aristotle
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