Greece Day 5 Blog Entry

1) I agree with Socrates' words: "Wisdom begins in wonder." The reason I agree with this is because it is impossible to obtain knowledge without seeking it. For example, one can be forced into memorizing facts regarding a topic, yet in my opinion and in Socrates', they will not have become any wiser. To become wise one must remember the information they have learned. If one is forced into learning something, they will not remember it for the rest of their lives. I believe the best way to obtain knowledge is to seek it.

2) In Plato's book "The Republic" justice is defined as being whatever the almighty and smart ruler decides.

3) One positive element of Plato's republic is that only the "smart" are rulers. I believe an important element to a functioning republic is having good intelligent leaders who can pronounce nuclear correctly:-). This is the case in Plato's republic because no other people are given the chance to become rulers unless they are deemed smart. This leads me to my next point which is a negative aspect to Plato's republic. I believe it is a bad decision to deem people intelligent or stupid and then assign them to an according job. I think more factors should be taken into account when determining a job for someone. For example, I believe the person's background should be taken into account. If they grew up not going to school due to finances but they were very smart, yet they seemed stupid to the person deciding what they should do, then the state would be missing out on a bright mind.

4) My idea for an ideal state or republic would involve many city-states. Each city-state would rule under whatever governing system they wanted to, whether it be a capitalistic, a socialistic society, a social-democracy or other. The reason this would be ideal is because I realize each person has their own individual idea of what kind if society they want to be apart of. Since each city-state would be governed in different ways, people could choose to live in which ever one they wanted to be apart of.

5) What the Allegory of the Cave means when it says the only thing standing in the way of knowledge is our insistence that the visual universe is reality is that our perception of reality is what reality is. Plato argued that every has their own individual reality and that things may be perceived differently by two different such as colors. He says that there is no reality and that our insistence of saying there really is a reality is standing in the way of obtaining true knowledge.