Possible fallacy at beginning of The Republic?

[Muchograndeeeaa]

I've just begun working my way through the western canon and I felt like the republic was a great place to start, though i plan on going back a bit to sophloces, and perhaps to take another look at homer...anyway, please correct me if Socrates goes on to correct himself, or if this problem has been addressed in the subsequent 2,000 years of debate concerning the dialogue, but I feel that Socrates may make a mistake at the conclusion of his debate with Cephalus, when he states:

"everyone would surely say that if one recieved weapons from a friend in his right minid who then went mad and demanded them back, one ought not return such things. The man who returned them would not be just, nor again should one be willing to tell the whole truth to a person in that condition...So this is not a defining mark of justice, to tell the truth and return what one received."
pg 5, Yale university press, 2006

My issue with this is that the agreement to return the weapons is predicated on the assumption that the weapons would be returned to the same man, but the man has obviously changed (he's gone mad since the agreement) and so to the extent that perhaps the agreement is nullified and therefore there is no notion of justice whatsoever here. IF he were to return the weapons, that would be unjust. But Socrates' conclusion does not follow from his premise, because the example doesn't work, because IF the man were still in the same state of mind as when the agreement was made, it would be incorrect to say that it wasn't justice for the second man to return his weapons.

I am exited to see whether or not socrates is capable of refuting Cephalus' vision of justice as peaceful contentment, a sort of eye for an eye thing...perhaps Polemarchus will address this problem, because he seems to have taken the reigns in the style of his father...

any reccomendations on what I must read as I work my way through the canon?

[OrphanPip]

I don't think there is really any error here. Socrates assumes that the debt exists between the madman and the man with the weapons, whether he is mad or not. We can re-word the story to say that a man gave his weapon for safekeeping to you, and then he comes at a later day to ask you to return the weapons because he needs to murder a neighbour and it has to be with that particular weapon for sentimental reasons, in general most would consider it to be just to refuse such a request despite the debt. Thus, keeping your debts is not always just.

The point of his example is not that there are conditions under which it would be just to return the weapons, but that there are conditions where it would be unjust to do so. Therefore, paying debts is not always just, so the payment of debts cannot be considered the definition of justice.

[Charles Darnay]

^This.

Throughout the dialogue, the Sophists attempt to pin down matters in black-and-white. Such-and-such is unjust in all cases. Socrates seeks to undermine this line of thinking to discover the higher truth.

[cafolini]

^This.

Throughout the dialogue, the Sophists attempt to pin down matters in black-and-white. Such-and-such is unjust in all cases. Socrates seeks to undermine this line of thinking to discover the higher truth.

Too high for the tyrant of Syracuse or his uncle Dion. Plato was commisioned to produce fake Socrates who never set foot in Athens. The production was prompted by Pericles, who thought he could invade Syracuse and establish a new empire of the Mediterranean. Socrates was precisely a sophist's, Protagorian answer to that.

[Darcy88]

Too high for the tyrant of Syracuse or his uncle Dion. Plato was commisioned to produce fake Socrates who never set foot in Athens. The production was prompted by Pericles, who thought he could invade Syracuse and establish a new empire of the Mediterranean. Socrates was precisely a sophist's, Protagorian answer to that.

The Athenian invasion of Sicily took place after Pericles's death and while alive Pericles strongly cautioned the Athenians against expanding the war. He would not himself have sent that army and fleet to Sicily.

And Socrates' life is corroborated by other sources, namely Xenophon. He was in Athens to be sure.

[cafolini]

Of course Pericles was not in Sicily. But the invasion happened because he recommended not to fight the Spartans at all and use the trirremes to create a new mediterranean empire based in Syracuse. Socrates is Plato's fictional character. Plato never set foot in Athens and neither did Socrates before the publi8shing of the Res Publica. Of course, by around 380 bc, the Romans had their hands on Greece and did quite a lot of work to infuse the Greeks with a lot of BS. Pythagoras never set foot in Greece either.
Xenophon was another one infused by the Romans.
Zeno was another one of the freaks.

[Darcy88]

No, just no Cafolini. Pericles directed the Athenians to focus on Sparta and avoid getting embroiled in any such expedition. Plato never set foot in Athens? Socrates a fictional character? Any evidence to back up these claims?

[cafolini]

Darcy. Pericles knew full well that he would lose against the Spartans. That's why he ordered the evacuation of Athens. You don't know the history. Sorry. Case closed. You have been very wild lately. Must be malnutrition. LOL

[Darcy88]

I've read Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War cover to cover three times. Pericles would have been wholeheartedly against the Athenian expedition to Sicily. And he never evacuated Athens. He evacuated most of the inhabitants of Attica into Athens. Pericles wouldn't have begun the war if he thought that defeat was a forgone conclusion. If his successors had not launched the disastrous Sicilian expedition there's a good chance Athens would have prevailed.

[Charles Darnay]

Logic and evidence? That's your technique?

[russellb]

To take the thread back to its philosophical root it occurred to me that if we take the principle 'return to your friends what they have given to you' (or words to that effect) as a moral 'rule of thumb' rather than an 'absolute' then Socrates' attempted repudiation loses its force.