/lit/ - Literature

>>16683913
If the thread is still up in the morning I might give an answer. But honestly this just looks like your homework desu and I have no desire to do that for you.

A passage from Mandeville comes to mind.
>[…]
>The Root of Evil, Avarice,
>That damn’d ill-natur’d baneful Vice,
>Was Slave to Prodigality,
>(K.) That noble Sin;
>(L.) whilst Luxury Employ’d a Million of the Poor,
>(M.) And odious Pride a Million more:
>(N.)Envy itself, and Vanity,
>Were Ministers of Industry;
>Their darling Folly, Fickleness,
>In Diet, Furniture and Dress,
>That strange ridic’lous Vice, was made
>The very Wheel that turn’d the Trade
>[…]
>(K.) That Noble Sin —— ——: Page 10. Line 12.
>[…]
>When I speak thus honourably of this Vice, and treat it with so much Tenderness and good Manners as I do, I have the same thing at Heart that made me give so many Ill Names to the Reverse of it, viz. the Interest of the Publick; for as the Avaricious does no good to himself, and is injurious to all the World besides, except his Heir, so the Prodigal is a Blessing to the whole Society, and injures no body but himself. It is true, that as most of the first are Knaves, so the latter are all Fools; yet they are delicious Morsels for the Publick to feast on. […] Was it not for Prodigality, nothing could make us amends for the Rapine and Extortion of Avarice in Power. When a Covetous Statesman is gone, who spent his whole Life infat’ning himself with the Spoils of the Nation, and had by pinching and plundering heap’d up an immense Treasure, it ought to fill every good Member of the Society with Joy, to behold the uncommon Profuseness of his Son. This is refunding to the Publick what was robb’d from it. Resuming of Grants is a barbarous way of stripping, and it is ignoble to ruin a Man faster than he does it himself, when he sets about it in such good earnest. […] Therefore let him alone, or praise him, call him Publick-spirited Lord, nobly bountiful and magnificently generous, and in a few Years he’ll suffer himself to be stript his own way. As long as the Nation has its own back again, we ought not to quarrel with the manner in which the Plunder is repay’d.

>>16374608
It is pretty different. I have a post about the relation between Plato's metaphysics and the Republic here >>16371341
I think the core difference is that Plato seems to want the Republic to reflect the Form of the Good in quite a holistic and structural manner. There's a part in Cratylus i believe where Plato describes a bed and the painting of a bed as analogous to how the Forms are; every particular is an imperfect reflection of the perfect universal form that exists in the platonic realm. Plato's Republic follows a similar pattern, in that the city is meant to be a reflection of the form of the good. This is why i think Plato defines Justice as a just arrangement of the city where all things are in order. But in reality, he speaks very little about the good for any individual member, and the few times he does talk about it is always in reference to the maintenance of a particular character befitting that class. Everyone is simply a part of the justice which is the whole city, arranged in the image of justice by the philosopher king who knows the form of the good. Of course, the republic is at least somewhat allegorical, so it is difficult to draw the line on what we're to take literally.
Aristotle on the other hand is much more concerned with the realisation virtue within the individuals, and society only really exists to facilitate that. His republic exist as a product of the final form of human beings as political animals (which is their teleology). What defines a ideal and corrupt form is whether its citizens are working in the interest of all (which is the development of the virtues in all) or working in a self-interested fashion at the expense of others. Remember when he was talking about common property (in response to Plato's guardian class)? he argues (if i'm remembering correctly) that every citizen should be a landholder on the basis that household management is a key domain that an individual can practice virtues. Slavery is also supported on this basis as he mentions that manual labour degrades the character of the individual and precludes them from political participation, so the slaves should do the labour and leave the citizens to participate in the higher virtues. If we look at his ideal state, we see that there are no classes: everyone who is a citizen participates in public life and the matters of the state, first as a soldier and later as a councilman. As a soldier he has the opportunity to develop all the major virtues that he will then apply when he becomes a councilman. His normative argument for why this is the ideal state is essentially that it allows the most people to participate in public matters, which allows the most people to practice the full range of the virtues. For Aristotle, there was no platonic justice that the state reflected; the virtue of the state was simply the virtue of its citizens.
Anyway, i'm heading to bed. I'll try to reply to anything in the morning if the thread is still up.