MEASURE FOR MEASURE AND PLATO
Plato and Measure for Measure--adapted from a critical perspective to The Republic:
Of course when we have knowledge we may find that some of the beliefs accepted are in fact false. [Isabella believes that Claudio is dead.] But we do not begin by trying to doubt the truth of particular beliefs.. Take a particular belief, e.g. that this particular action is just. For Plato, the trouble with this is not that is is not true. It is true. [Examples: Angelo's views on justice; the Duke's decision to "lie".] It is not that particulars are never just or that they have the quality that the Form has only in some drastically second-rate way. Rather the problem is that not only is it true that action is just, but unfortunately something else is true too, namely that it is also unjust (from some point of view). [Consider the points of view of Angelo, Claudio and Isabella in the temptation scene.] The person who simply thought that it was just was not wrong as far as he or she went, but was missing something--something that might not be at all obvious [What do Angelo and Isabella miss] ...What matters is not to reject any truth in the beliefs we have, to go round trying to convince ourselves that this is not really a just action. Rather what is required is imaginative widening of one's horizons [how does the play accomplish this?] ... to take in contexts in which even this action could be considered unjust, and to see that besides the unsatisfactory ascription of justice to particular actions there is also the possibility that there might be something that is unqualifiedly just, freed from all the contexts and limitations inevitable with an action's justice--the Form of justice, the only thing that is really and unqualifiedly is just. [Is there any character who sees this.]
Other Platonic concepts that apply:
1. the noble lie
2. the form of justice
3. the tri-part functions of the soul and the state.
PLATO:
"What about the man who recognizes the existence of beautiful things but does not believe in beauty itself.. Is he awake or merely dreaming Isn't dreaming
simply the confusion between the resemblance and the reality which it resembles..."