I Choose to Learn

Over the past few weeks, my mind has been spinning over the topics we have discussed in this class. I guess I never really have had the ideals of justice, injustice, and truth planted into my head the way that this class has achieved thus far. What I have had the most trouble grasping is the idea of what is good and was is not; what is just and what is unjust. 

I grew up in a quiet town, small, everybody knew everybody. My parents taught me what is right and what is wrong– what I assumed was just and what was unjust. The more I think about it though, maybe right and wrong do not directly correlate to just and unjust. We first must think what doing right and wrong actually means.  Are they a skill? Are doing the right thing and purposefully acting wrongfully actions? If this is true, then Polemarchus’s thoughts on justice do correlate– although justice as a skill looks useless or dangerous at times. I suppose that doing the right/wrong thing would appear that way as well if following this ideal. 

Doing good things and being morally correct are both positive things in most any situation. So we can assume that being good means just that: being good. I know that is a horrible definition, but that is how our brain work. We relate what we are learning to what we already know. There is no accurate answer to the question of if justice and injustice do directly correlate to that of the right and the wrong; but, in “Madison Philosophy” (as mentioned in class before) they do. What is good and what is bad; what is fair and what is fallacious; what is just and what is unjust– all are direct responses of each other. 

I chose to address this subject because I feel that our society as a whole ignores what we do not know. I am making the conscious decision to NOT ignore what I do not know, but to address the topic philosophically. The human mind has a hunger for learning and growing and expanding; philosophy can feed that desire.