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Punishment and Plato’s ideal State

Punishment and Plato’s ideal State POLIS The Journal of the Society for Greek Political Thought www.imprint-academic.com/polis R. F. Stalley Introduction In the Gorgias Socrates links his central claim that it is better to suffer acts of injustice than to do them (472e­475e) to the equally surprising claim that it is better for us if we are punished for our misdeeds than if we go unpunished (475e­477e).1 He supports this latter claim by arguing that, just as we take the sick person to the doctor to be cured of his illness, so we take the wicked person to the judge to be cured of his wickedness (477e­479c).2 Punishment is thus seen as a means of curing the criminal in much the same way that medical treatment cures the sick. This account offers what is, in many ways, an attractive solution to the problem of punishment, but it also gives rise to some very obvious difficulties: a) It seems to fly in the face of obvious fact. It looks fairly clear that punishments, at least as applied in existing societies, do not `cure' the criminals on whom they are inflicted. Indeed it is sometimes said that punishment tends to intensify the criminal's resentment against society http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Polis: The Journal for Ancient Greek Political Thought Brill

Punishment and Plato’s ideal State

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Publisher
Brill
Copyright
Copyright 1999 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands
ISSN
0142-257x
eISSN
2051-2996
DOI
10.1163/20512996-90000014
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

POLIS The Journal of the Society for Greek Political Thought www.imprint-academic.com/polis R. F. Stalley Introduction In the Gorgias Socrates links his central claim that it is better to suffer acts of injustice than to do them (472e­475e) to the equally surprising claim that it is better for us if we are punished for our misdeeds than if we go unpunished (475e­477e).1 He supports this latter claim by arguing that, just as we take the sick person to the doctor to be cured of his illness, so we take the wicked person to the judge to be cured of his wickedness (477e­479c).2 Punishment is thus seen as a means of curing the criminal in much the same way that medical treatment cures the sick. This account offers what is, in many ways, an attractive solution to the problem of punishment, but it also gives rise to some very obvious difficulties: a) It seems to fly in the face of obvious fact. It looks fairly clear that punishments, at least as applied in existing societies, do not `cure' the criminals on whom they are inflicted. Indeed it is sometimes said that punishment tends to intensify the criminal's resentment against society

Journal

Polis: The Journal for Ancient Greek Political ThoughtBrill

Published: Jan 1, 1999

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