what was the purpose of the house of wisdom
House of Wisdom The House of Wisdom (Arabic: بيت الحكمة‎; Bayt al-Hikma) refers either to a major Abbasid public academy and intellectual center in Baghdad or to a large private library belonging to the Abbasid Caliphs during the Islamic Golden Age.[1][2] The House of Wisdom is the subject of an active dispute over its functions and existence as a formal academy, an issue complicated by a lack of physical evidence following the collapse of the Abbasid Caliphate and a reliance on corroboration of literary sources to construct a narrative. The House of Wisdom was founded either as a library for the collections of the Caliph Harun al-Rashid in the late 8th century and later turned into a public academy during the reign of Al-Ma'mun or was a private collection created by Al-Mansur (reign 754–775) to house rare books and collections of poetry in both Arabic and Persian.[1][3] Regardless, the House of Wisdom existed as a part of the major Translation Movement taking place during the Abbasid Era, translating works from Greek and Syriac to Arabic, but it is unlikely that The House of Wisdom existed as the sole center of such work, as major translation efforts arose in Cairo and Damascus even earlier than the proposed establishment of the House of Wisdom.[4] This translation movement lent momentum to a great deal of original research occurring in the Islamicate world, which had access to texts from Greek, Persian and Indian sources, as opposed to the "Bookshelf Thesis" that reduces the contributions of Islamicate scholars to mere translation and preservation of Greek texts.[4]
Republic (Plato) For over two and a half millennia, scholars have differed on the aptness of the city-soul analogy Socrates uses to find justice in Books II through V. The Republic is a dramatic dialogue, not a treatise. Socrates' definition of justice is never unconditionally stated, only versions of justice within each city are "found" and evaluated in Books II through Book V. Socrates constantly refers the definition of justice back to the conditions of the city for which it is created. He builds a series of myths, or noble lies, to make the cities appear just, and these conditions moderate life within the communities. The "earth born" myth makes all men believe that they are born from the earth and have predestined natures within their veins. Accordingly, Socrates defines justice as "working at that which he is naturally best suited", and "to do one's own business and not to be a busybody" (433aâ€“433b) and goes on to say that justice sustains and perfects the other three cardinal virtues: Temperance, Wisdom, and Courage, and that justice is the cause and condition of their existence. Socrates does not include justice as a virtue within the city, suggesting that justice does not exist within the human soul either, rather it is the result of a "well ordered" soul. A result of this conception of justice separates people into three types; that of the soldier, that of the producer, and that of a ruler. If a ruler can create just laws, and if the warriors can carry out the orders of the rulers, and if the producers can obey this authority, then a society will be just.