Though it is only briefly discussed in Book 3 of the republic, Plato broaches a topic that is extremely controversial even to this day. In the medical training of the Guardians, Plato advocates for euthanasia. The Guardians should only be trained to deal with curable diseases and people with incurable mental diseases should be killed.
In our own society, the debate over whether euthanasia is ethical still persists to this day. For one, its interesting that we discuss some of the same social problems that the Greeks did thousands of years ago, but thatch not really what I want to examine. In Plato hypothetical city, euthanasia actually makes a lot of sense. Almost everything is centered around the good of the state and people with these diseases are certainly an nonproductive drain on the cities time and resources. I think the reason our society has never fully shifted in favor of this policy, and may never do so, is that our society is based on individual freedoms instead of the good of the state like Plato's. I would be curious to see if any euthanasia advocates have ever thought about trying to use the Republic to further their arguments.
Would make an interesting paper.
ReplyDelete