Hi, thanks for tuning in to ancient Greece Declassified.

Episode R2.5, The Justice Loophole.

If God is dead, then everything is permitted.

That is one of the most famous lines from the works of Fyodor Dostoevsky.

At least that's the most commonly quoted version in English.

But a more accurate and fuller translation of the original Russian text is, quote,

If there is no God and no afterlife, is everything permitted?

End quote.

It's not a declarative statement, but a question, one that torments several characters

in Dostoevsky's final and greatest novel, The Brothers Karamazov.

It's also, as you'll recall, one of the

main questions that arises in Plato's Republic. In book two of that work, Glaucon and

Edomantus challenged Socrates to explain why people should be just, and why they should behave

morally, without recourse to religious arguments, without speaking about rewards or

punishments in this life and the next. As you can see, this question of whether the fear of God is

necessary in order to motivate people to behave morally has been asked on and off for thousands of

years and is still debated today. So what kind of answer does Socrates give?

Well, the short answer is that he gives a very long answer. It will take him the next eight books

to expound in full. But he lays out the plan for his answer in book two of the Republic.

We did an in-depth summary of that book in the last episode. For today's discussion,

we are joined by Rachel Barney, Professor of Classics and Ancient Philosophy at the University

of Toronto, and Canada Research Chair in Ancient Philosophy, who specializes in the work of

...