望女成凤

虎摸

四哥亲身安慰你 = =这是四哥刚刚做的听力节选……
OK, if we are going to discuss goodness and justice, what makes an individual good or a society just, or virtuous? Then we need to start with ancient Greece. So we will start with Plato. Plato’s philosophy. Now some of you may have studied Plato’s philosophy in some other course. So this might be easy. Ok, at the risk of boring you let me give you just an overview of Plato’s ethical theory. Plato says the soul has, and by soul, he simply means that which animates the body, gives a life. Anyway he says that the soul has 3 separate parts called faculties. We shall come back to. He believed that goodness in an individual was to be found when the 3 parts of the soul worked together. When they won't in conflict but existed in harmony. A good or just person will have a soul in which that 3 faculties work well together. So how does he arrive at that analysis. Well he starts out in his very famous work, The Republic. He starts out by saying it’s very difficult to get a grass bund individual soul looks like. So to get some ideas what the individual human soul is like, he says we should study the structure of society. What kinds of people, and activities, every society has to have. He argues that every society has to have 3 groups of people, workers, soldiers, and leaders. And each has a sort of defining characteristic. Every society has to have workers like farmers, or people who work in factories, producing all the things that we need for every day life. And according to Plato, the key feature of workers is that they are focused on their own desires or appetites, interested in satisfying the needs of the body. So workers are associated with desire. OK, now if you live in a society that has a good amount of wealth, good agriculture, good industry, other societies are probably going to try to take it. So you need classes of soldiers who were supposed to protect the state from external threats. Well these soldiers, well, they are going to be in danger situations quite frequently. So you need people with a lot of high spirit and emotional type of individual. Emotion is what characterizes this group. And then, Plato says, the third group you need is leaders. Their main role will be to think rationally, to use their reason or intellect to make decisions. As decision makers leaders determine what the state is to do. How the affairs of the citizens are to be run. Plato then asks himself, OK, the soon we’ve got to such a society with these 3 groups. When will the society be a good, a just society. Well you can only have a good society when its 3 parts are working well together, each doing its proper thing. And Plato believes this can only happen if workers and soldiers learn moderation or self-control. But why? Why do workers and soldiers have to learn self-control? Well how can a society flourish if the workers and soldiers don’t control their desires and emotions. Plato thinks that if they aren’t under control workers will sleep too much and play too much. So they are not going to get their jobs done. And soldiers need to channel their high spiritedness in a certain direction precisely by being courageous. But you are not going to get that automatically. You need to teach them this kind of moderation. So you need an educational system that first of all we will train the leaders. So that they will make good decisions. So they will know what’s whys. Then make leaders responsible. Turn over to them the educational other groups. And through education build a society so that the workers and soldiers learn to use their intellect to control their desires and emotions. If you had all of that then for Plato you’d have a good or just society. Now take that picture that social political picture and apply to the individual person. You remember about the soul? That it consists 3 separate parts or faculties? Can you guess what they are? Desires, emotions, and intellect. The character associated with the 3 groups of society. And can you guess how Plato defines a good or just person? Well, it’s parallel to how we characterize a good or just society. The 3 parts have to be in harmony. In each of us our desires and emotions often get the better of us. And leaders to do foolish things. They are in conflict with the intellect. So to get them to all work together to coexistent harmony every person needs to be shaped in the same way that we’ve shaped society through the educational system. Individuals must be educated to use their intellect to control their emotions and desires. That’s harmony in the soul.