Happiness and Function in Plato’s \u3cem\u3eRepublic\u3c/em\u3e

Editor\u27s note: After blind peer review, this paper was selected for reading at the University of Dayton\u27s 10th annual Philosophy Colloquium, held Feb. 27-28, 1981. The casual reader of the Republic may not notice that the primary purpose of the whole dialogue is to discuss happiness rather than virtue; more precisely the purpose is to discuss what consequences various conceptions of justice or manners of life have for our understanding of what happiness is. This purpose is explicitly stated in Book V just prior to the introduction of the philosopher-king at 472c: Our purpose was, with these models (of justice and injustice) before us, to see how they turned out as regards happiness and its opposite. In this paper I wish to challenge an orthodoxy of Platonic scholarship regarding happiness. The orthodoxy is that in the Republic what Plato means by happiness is either psychic harmony or something sufficiently caused by psychic harmony. Against this view I will argue rather that Plato views happiness as being sufficiently caused by one\u27s fulfilling one\u27s social function, that Plato is viewing happiness as something quite close to what we would call job satisfaction, or a sense of our realizing ourselves through our work. I shall argue (section I) that this view of happiness is stated in the opening two pages of Book IV (419a-421d), and that it is restated in the discussion of pleasure in Book IX (585d-586e). These passages are the only passages in the dialogue where happiness is introduced as a subject of analysis (419a, 576d-e). I will draw some political consequences of Plato\u27s view of happiness (section II) and show how the view bears on the structure and purpose of the dialogue (section III)

(Review) Critical legal positivism by Kaarlo Tuori

Kaarlo Tuori, professor of law, judge, and counsellor to the Constitutional Committee of the Finnish Parliament, has embarked on an ambitious project. He aims to build on the positivism of Kelsen and Hart, but to discover a normative justification of law which goes beyond their limited validity claims. This is the ‘critical’ element which he adds to ‘legal positivism’. Kelsen’s basic norm and Hart’s rule of recognition are irreducible underlying principles. The arbitrary nature of such principles is intellectually suspect, while their internal self referentiality renders them morally sterile. The law is the law — because we recognise it as such or because it is founded on the basic norm — and as such it is valid. This leads to a lack of critical purchase, which is the fundamental drawback of positivism when confronted by natural law or other ethically based theories. Classical mid-twentieth century positivism offers no ethical foundation outside the declared law from which we may criticise unjust laws

Authorised Performances: The Procedural Sources of Judicial Authority

Media criticism of the courts, or perceptions of a declining \u27public confidence\u27 in the judiciary have led to concems over law\u27s authority. There has been dcbate on concems over \u27judicial activism\u27 in North and South America, Europe and Australia. In Australia this has been played out in political criticism of the judges of the High Court, while other courts have come in for criticism from sections of the media for being too lenient in sentencing and generally being \u27soft on crime\u27. Judicial concern over these criticisms has been expressed in extra-curial responses by High Court judges and in several recent conferences focussing on public perceptions and media representations of the judiciary. Two of these conferences were organised by judicial bodies and all were well attended by judges. Judicial concern over limits and challenges to judicial authority has also been apparent in a number of cases addressing judicial powers

CWATSETS: Weights, Cardinalities, and Generalizations

This report provides an upper bound on the average weight of an element in a cwatset and discusses the ratio of the cardinality of a cwatset to the cardinality of the group containing the cwatset. The concept of a generalized cwatset is also introduced

Authorised Performances: The Procedural Sources of Judicial Authority

Media criticism of the courts, or perceptions of a declining \u27public confidence\u27 in the judiciary have led to concems over law\u27s authority. There has been dcbate on concems over \u27judicial activism\u27 in North and South America, Europe and Australia. In Australia this has been played out in political criticism of the judges of the High Court, while other courts have come in for criticism from sections of the media for being too lenient in sentencing and generally being \u27soft on crime\u27. Judicial concern over these criticisms has been expressed in extra-curial responses by High Court judges and in several recent conferences focussing on public perceptions and media representations of the judiciary. Two of these conferences were organised by judicial bodies and all were well attended by judges. Judicial concern over limits and challenges to judicial authority has also been apparent in a number of cases addressing judicial powers

What Plato\u27s Demiurge Does

The paper argues that the project of Plato’s craftsman-like god is directed to an epistemological end rather than an aesthetic one. The Demiurge is chiefly bent on improving the world’s intelligibility rather than its looks. Specifically, the paper argues that what the Demiurge does is to introduce standards or measures into the phenomenal realm by imaging as best he can the nature of Forms where Forms are construed as standards or measures. The two most spectacular examples of Demiurgic crafting on this model are: 1) his crafting the rational world-soul, which serves both as an object of human cognition, and more importantly as the model for the uniform rotation of human souls which makes them rational, and 2) his creation of time, which is viewed as a giant clock — the standard or measure of time — which Plato believes makes science possible