O desfecho aporético do livro I da República de Platão

Abstract

This paper aims at analyzing the discussions about "justice" in Book I of Plato's Republic, in order to verify, in the dialectical movement of the dialogue between Socrates and his interlocutors, the mimetic and sophistic aspects of the definitions of "justice" proposed by Polemarchus and Thrasymachus. The intention is to identify possible relations between their definitions of "justice" and the moral and political value crisis typical of late 5th cent. BC Athens, after the Peloponnesian War. From these analyses, the conclusion of this paper focuses on the aporetic outcome that closes book I.