|
The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Republic by Plato: person. But the judge ought to have had no similar experience of evil; he
is to be a good man who, having passed his youth in innocence, became
acquainted late in life with the vices of others. And therefore, according
to Plato, a judge should not be young, just as a young man according to
Aristotle is not fit to be a hearer of moral philosophy. The bad, on the
other hand, have a knowledge of vice, but no knowledge of virtue. It may
be doubted, however, whether this train of reflection is well founded. In
a remarkable passage of the Laws it is acknowledged that the evil may form
a correct estimate of the good. The union of gentleness and courage in
Book ii. at first seemed to be a paradox, yet was afterwards ascertained to
be a truth. And Plato might also have found that the intuition of evil may
The Republic |
