Comparison - Plato, Buddha, Zoroaster etc.

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As we followed the philosophical discussions and ideas that the first books of ‘The Republic’ and Plato himself offered, we were left thinking as a quest to find definitions on justice, its virtue and impact on the good life.

But unlike what we know, Plato is not the first to go into the philosophy for the search of the good life as there were philosophers at his and before his time that also based their discussion on the virtue on justice and the good life.

More specifically we had a slight encounter with Confucius, Lao Tzu, Buddha and Zoroaster, all great thinkers and minds of their time and still remain with the title in ours.

What Confucius was thinking of when discussing the ethical code of social conduct is what the human-like god T’ien (Heaven) had originally imposed on humankind. In order to become a worthy person one should develop moral habits and abide by the norms of society. Over time that person eventually reaches the highest level of development of his/her personality and acquires the supreme principle of righteousness. An ideal society according to Confucius would be the one where all individuals have reached the highest level mentioned before.
What makes his idea of the ideal society and justice closely resembles the idea of Plato about the perfect society or republic. The difference being that, Plato believes one does not just simply acquire the given virtues, but be trained in order to have them. And everyone has their own place in the republic and their role that they need to follow through completely in order to live the good life filled with justice, defining this as the perfect society even though the people don’t really have the required choice of what to do when being assigned their roles.

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On the other hand, the argument against the beliefs of Plato and Confucius is lead by Lao Tzu, famous for his work The Way of Virtue (Tao Te Ching). For him, the virtue came to be simply the way things are what they are and do what they do. They do not have the specific role in the ideal society, yet the implication on what they could do was more flexible than the one presented by Plato saying that one will be given one thing and be specifically trained and educated in it so it would lead to the greater ...

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