In Plato's "Republic" the foundation of Polemarchus's definition of justice is mainly following in his father's footsteps with the concept of helping friends and harming enemies, moving from the individual to the collective good. In this article, I will argue that Polemarchus' definition of justice is actually a total failure against Socrates' refutation due to Polemarchus' shaky and very uncertain definition of what constitutes a friend and an enemy. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay The foundation of Polemarchus' definition of justice begins with the concept of "an eye for an eye" which echoes Cephalus's vision of his father to "tell the truth and tell the truth" giving what is actually due." To begin there are a couple of glaring problems with Cefalo's definition of justice. The first is that definitively giving what is generally due involves for all intents and purposes important exceptions whereby in the name of justice one cannot actually give back what is actually due because it simply would not be right to do so, which is certainly quite significant. You can see in this example in the book "Man takes weapon from friend when generally sane, and when he requests them back when essentially insane, one should not return such a weapon." thing." What Socrates is mostly pointing out here is that with Cephalus' definition of justice that giving back what is actually owed, he is actually pointing out how that could actually lead to quite bad outcomes which in this example could lead to upon the death of the person who committed the crime, he previously wielded the weapon if he returned it to him in style. Furthermore, at the end of this paragraph, Socrates also points out that you should definitely not tell the person the truth or more specifically the whole truth because. by doing so you would be doing more harm than good in a subtle way. Using the previous examples if someone for all intents and purposes told the person why they wouldn't actually return the weapon, that could have infuriated the person even more, which would have made the situation even worse. he whole situation, which is quite significant and is not justice. When he starts talking to Socrates after Cephalus leaves to perform his sacrifices is when Polemarchus generally says the same definition but according to Simonides it is actually to be believed that Socrates refutes with the same argument, which is quite significant. This is where the definition of doing good to friends and doing harm to enemies comes up with “Since it supposes that friends definitely owe it to friends for the most part to do something particularly good and nothing bad” and right here it is literally said “Justice is generally doing good to friends and harm to enemies.” This concept is generally very difficult in all respects because it also has some of the same basic problems as before with this definition of justice that come up in this definition of justice is the concept of appearance vs reality and who is truly a friend and who is truly an enemy, which is quite significant. You can never truly know who is actually a friend and who is. an enemy unless it actually passes some sort of test which for the most part isn't really a test, it's just definitely your basic subjective view of who's really good and who's bad, which is quite a problemsignificant that you will never be able to solve. So someone might seem like a friend but in reality that person might actually be an enemy and vice versa where someone might appear downright bad but actually be really, really good in a really important way. Going back to the first example, the person's point of view could basically be to return the weapon even if not in their right mind it is unfair, but that real person to whom the weapon originally belonged it is unfair not to return the weapon since it is actually theirs , which shows the problem of justice since according to some it will always be unfair and it is a subjective matter of individualistic vision. Socrates points this out here "But it is not true that human beings actually make mistakes in this regard, so that in reality many actually seem good, even if they are essentially not and vice versa" who with Polemarchus therefore agrees that people certainly they really make mistakes about who specifically is good enough and who specifically is bad. This definition that Polemarchus essentially showed is that it is a common good for the entire community for the unjust to be punished and for the just to help a friend which Polemarchus basically took Cephalus' definition of justice which helps the individual, which means basically telling the truth and giving what is due and in particular has moved it to the other side of justice which is for the common good of the entire community. Polemarchus' definition therefore changes slightly in the following pages to "people who seem good, and are, are basically friends while those who basically seem good but aren't are in all respects bad and in reality the same goes for bad ones ". This comes with the same problem as before: how could you actually tell for the most part who is essentially who? There is no precise way to say this and once again the concept of appearance vs reality in general is still a problem to which there is no answer yet to say who is who. Furthermore, this new extended definition would surely imply that Polemarchus thinks that truly good men who might actually be especially good in all respects might be bad, and that bad men who are actually bad might specifically be seen as friends. This would potentially lead to a righteous man potentially harming or hurting other decidedly good men who actually did nothing wrong and when you're essentially harming people who by all rights don't deserve it, that's not justice. Socrates also refutes this idea with analogies to harming animals and how when a dog is actually harmed, whether it is better or worse, which in particular is quite significant. To which Polemarchus mostly replies that the dog gets worse by virtue, which is quite significant. This implies that when a particular human being is harmed, he does not actually become more just, but on the contrary, he mostly becomes even more unjust, which Socrates mostly says here: “We should not particularly assert the same kind of human being? human beings, my comrade, who when essentially harmed, become truly worse in terms of actually human virtue.” Socrates then goes on to essentially ask whether justice is fundamentally part of human virtue, which Polemarchus agrees that justice for all intents and purposes is apart of human virtue in some sense. So this would basically mean that harming someone will only make unjust men even worse, as Socrates' analogies point out. With this agreement Polemarchus goes on to say that it fundamentally makes man.