Complete Works
Page 115
After saying these things, Crito, and making a few other brief remarks, we separated. Now figure out a way to join us in attending their classes, [c] since they claim to be able to instruct anyone who is willing to pay, and say that neither age nor lack of ability prevents anyone whatsoever from learning their wisdom easily. And, what is specially relevant for you to hear, they say that their art is in no way a hindrance to the making of money.
CRITO: Well, Socrates, I am indeed a person who loves listening and who would be glad to learn something; but all the same I am afraid that I also am not one of Euthydemus’ sort. Instead I am one of those you [d] mentioned who would rather be refuted by arguments of this kind than use them to refute. Now it seems ridiculous to me to give you advice, but I want to tell you what I heard. When I was taking a walk one of the men who was leaving your discussion came up to me (someone who has a high opinion of himself for wisdom and is one of those clever people who write speeches for the law courts) and he said, Crito, aren’t you a disciple of these wise men? Heavens no, I said—there was such a crowd that I was unable to hear, even though I stood quite close. And yet, he said, it was worth hearing. What was it? I asked. You would have heard men [e] conversing who are the wisest of the present day in this kind of argument. And I said, what did they show you? Nothing else, said he, than the sort of thing one can hear from such people at any time—chattering and making a worthless fuss about matters of no consequence. (These are his approximate words.) But surely, I said, philosophy is a charming thing. Charming, my innocent friend? he said—why it is of no value whatsoever! And if [305] you had been present, I think you would have been embarrassed on your friend’s account, he acted so strangely in his willingness to put himself at the disposal of men who care nothing about what they say, but just snatch at every word. And these men, as I was just saying, are among the most influential people of the present day. But the fact is, Crito, he said, that both the activity itself and the men who engage in it are worthless and [b] ridiculous. Now as far as I am concerned, Socrates, the man is wrong to criticize the activity and so is anyone else who does so. But to be willing to argue with such people in front of a large crowd does seem to me worthy of reproach.
SOCRATES: Crito, men like these are very strange. Still, I don’t yet know what to say in return. What sort of man was this who came up and attacked philosophy? Was he one of those clever persons who contend in the law courts, an orator? Or was he one of those who equip such men for battle, a writer of the speeches which the orators use?
[c] CRITO: He was certainly not an orator, no indeed. Nor do I think he has ever appeared in court. But they say he understands the business—very much so—and that he is a clever man and can compose clever speeches.
SOCRATES: Now I understand—it was about this sort of person that I was just going to speak myself. These are the persons, Crito, whom Prodicus describes as occupying the no-man’s-land between the philosopher and the statesman. They think that they are the wisest of men, and that they not only are but also seem to be so in the eyes of a great many, so that [d] no one else keeps them from enjoying universal esteem except the followers of philosophy. Therefore, they think that if they place these persons in the position of appearing to be worth nothing, then victory in the contest for the reputation of wisdom will be indisputably and immediately theirs, and in the eyes of all. They think they really are the wisest, and whenever they are cut short in private conversation, they attribute this to Euthydemus and his crew. They regard themselves as very wise, and reasonably so, since they think they are not only pretty well up in philosophy but also [e] in politics. Yes, their conceit of wisdom is quite natural because they think they have as much of each as they need; and, keeping clear of both risk and conflict, they reap the fruits of wisdom.
CRITO: And so, Socrates, do you think there is anything in what they say? For surely it can’t be denied that their argument has a certain plausibility.
[306] SOCRATES: Plausibility is just what it does have, Crito, rather than truth. It is no easy matter to persuade them that a man or anything else which is between two things and partakes of both is worse than one and better than the other in the case where one of the things is good and the other evil; and that in the case where it partakes of two distinct goods, it is worse than either of them with respect to the end for which each of the two (of which it is composed) is useful. It is only in the case where the [b] thing in the middle partakes of two distinct evils that it is better than either of those of which it has a share. Now if philosophy is a good, and so is the activity of a statesman (and each has a different end), and those partaking of both are in between, then these men are talking nonsense, since they are inferior to both. If one is good and the other bad, then they are better than the practitioners of the latter and worse than those of the former; while if both are bad, there is some truth in what they say, but [c] otherwise none at all. I don’t suppose they would agree that both [philosophy and politics] are bad, nor that one is bad and the other good. The fact of the matter is that, while partaking of both, they are inferior to both with respect to the object for which either politics or philosophy is of value; and that whereas they are actually in the third place, they want to be regarded as being in the first. However, we ought to forgive them their ambition and not feel angry, although we still ought to see these men for what they are. After all, we ought to admire every man who says anything sensible, and who labors bravely in its pursuit. [d]
CRITO: All the same, Socrates, as I keep telling you, I am in doubt about what I ought to do with my sons. The younger one is still quite small, but Critobulus is at an age when he needs someone who will do him good. Now whenever I am in your company your presence has the effect of leading me to think it madness to have taken such pains about my children in various other ways, such as marrying to make sure that they would be [e] of noble birth on the mother’s side, and making money so that they would be as well off as possible, and then to give no thought to their education. But on the other hand, whenever I take a look at any of those persons who set up to educate men, I am amazed; and every last one of them strikes me as utterly grotesque, to speak frankly between ourselves. So [307] the result is that I cannot see how I am to persuade the boy to take up philosophy.
SOCRATES: My dear Crito, don’t you realize that in every pursuit most of the practitioners are paltry and of no account whereas the serious men are few and beyond price? For instance, doesn’t gymnastics strike you as a fine thing? And money making and rhetoric and the art of the general?
CRITO: Yes, of course they do.
SOCRATES: Well then, in each of these cases don’t you notice that the [b] majority give a laughable performance of their respective tasks?
CRITO: Yes indeed—you are speaking the exact truth.
SOCRATES: And just because this is so, do you intend to run away from all these pursuits and entrust your son to none of them?
CRITO: No, this would not be reasonable, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Then don’t do what you ought not to, Crito, but pay no attention to the practitioners of philosophy, whether good or bad. Rather give serious consideration to the thing itself: if it seems to you negligible, [c] then turn everyone from it, not just your sons. But if it seems to you to be what I think it is, then take heart, pursue it, practice it, both you and yours, as the proverb says.
1. Clinias: see below, 273a–b.
2. The pancration (lit., “all-round fighting”) was a combination of wrestling and boxing.
3. Omitting noun echōn at b8.
4. Reading hōste kai einai at b6.
5. That is, try it on the dog or on a guinea pig.
6. Medea persuaded the daughters of Pelias to cut up their father and boil him in a cauldron, telling them that in this way they would renew his youth.
7. Marsyas, a satyr, challenged Apollo to a musical contest. Apollo, having won the contest, flayed his opponent alive. Cf. Herodotus, vii.26.
8. Reading akouōmen nun ei a
t e5.
9. Accepting the addition of
10. As the father of Zeus whom Zeus dethroned, Cronus is a symbol of the out-of-date.
11. Removing the brackets in c3 and accepting the emendation of g’ou for tōi.
12. In Odyssey iv.456 ff. Proteus, a sea deity, refuses to assume his proper shape until he has transformed himself into a lion, a dragon, a panther, an enormous pig, into water, and into a tree.
13. At 280d, although the point made was more general.
14. The reference is probably to Seven Against Thebes, 2.
15. Writing Oukoun with acute accent on the first syllable rather than circumflex on the second in d4.
16. Removing the brackets in a1.
17. Cf. 281d–e.
18. The expression was proverbial for any sort of vain repetition.
19. For the first two, see 292a and 292d–e. The Heavenly Twins (Dioscuri) were regarded as protectors of seamen.
20. Reading panta legeis at d3.
21. A plant with both poisonous and medicinal properties, a proverbial treatment for mental disorders.
22. Briareus was a hundred-handed monster who aided Zeus against the Titans. Geryon was a three-headed or three-bodied monster whose cattle were stolen by Heracles.
23. The Scythians’ habit of using the gilded skulls of their enemies as cups is described by Herodotus, iv.65.
24. The Greek phrase translated “capable of sight” here can be understood as either active (capable of seeing) or passive (capable of being seen). The argument to follow exploits this ambiguity.
25. Reading horan auta in that order at a6.
26. The “speaking of the silent” here, like the “silence of the speaking” just below, must be heard as ambiguous between “speaking done by the silent” and “speaking about silent things.” The argument to follow exploits this ambiguity.
27. The Greek here is ambiguous between “it’s proper for a cook to cut up and skin” and “it’s proper to cut up and skin a cook.” This English must be heard as having the same two readings.
28. The Greek word translated “ancestral” here and in the following was applied in different parts of the Greek world to the specific divinities worshipped there as “hereditary” protectors, the “fathers” of the people. But it also had a different application to Zeus in particular, as protector of the rights of ancestors. The argument to follow exploits this ambiguity.
29. Ion was the son of Apollo by Creusa. (Cf. Euripides, Ion 61–75.)
30. Omitting to sophon at a1.
31. Olympian I.1.
PROTAGORAS
Translated by Stanley Lombardo and Karen Bell.
This is the dramatic masterpiece among Plato’s ‘Socratic’ dialogues. It depicts Socrates debating the great sophist Protagoras, with Hippias and Prodicus, two other very famous sophists, in active attendance. An excited flock of students and admirers looks on. Plato gives us deep and sympathetic portraits of both his principal speakers—and neither comes off unscathed.
A sophist is an educator. Protagoras offers to teach young men ‘sound deliberation’ and the ‘art of citizenship’—in other words, as Socrates puts it, human ‘virtue’, what makes someone an outstandingly good person. But can this really be taught? Is virtue—as it ought to be if it can be taught—an expertise, a rationally based way of understanding, deliberating about and deciding things for the best? Socrates doubts that virtue can be taught at all, and all the more that Protagoras can teach it. Protagoras is committed to holding that it can be—by him—and he expounds an extremely attractive myth about the original establishment of human societies to show how there is room for him to do it. But he is also deeply cautious in the practice of his educator’s art—almost his first words in the dialogue are a long oration on the importance to a sophist of caution as he offers himself publicly as the teacher of a city’s youth. Can he then be bold enough to answer Socrates’ questions about human virtue in such a way as to articulate an account that will sustain his claims to teach it? In the protracted dialectical exchange that follows, Protagoras distinguishes several virtues, all parts of that human virtue that he teaches, and insists, against Socrates’ urging, that not all of these (in particular, not courage) are to be thought of as knowledge or wisdom. That, after all, is the popular view of the matter—so, in his caution, Protagoras sticks with that, or tries to, to the bitter end, resisting as long as he can Socrates’ elaborate efforts to show that courage, too, like the rest of virtue, is nothing but wisdom. But if Protagoras is right, how can virtue in general, and courage in particular, be the sort of rationally based expertise that it has to be if it can be taught? It appears that Protagoras would have done better to follow his own convictions about virtue—that all of it is teachable—riding roughshod over popular opinion where necessary to show how all the parts of human virtue are wisdom or knowledge. In fact, Socrates shows himself to be much more an ally of Protagoras on the question of the nature of human virtue than at first appears. He is deeply committed, more deeply indeed than Protagoras, to Protagoras’ initial claim that virtue is a rationally based expertise at deliberation and decision. But how, then, can he have been right to doubt whether virtue is teachable? Aren’t all rationally based expertises acquired by teaching? (In reflecting on this question, readers will want to consult also the Meno.)
Thus both speakers get their comeuppance—Socrates for denying that virtue is teachable, Protagoras for denying that it is wisdom. The whole matter has to be rethought. At the end, we are sent back to the beginning, to go over the old ground once more, as Socrates himself has just done in retelling the events of the day to his unnamed friend and to us readers. One thing has been established, though—precisely what Socrates set out to discover in accompanying his friend Hippocrates to Callias’ house to confront Protagoras: even if virtue can be taught, no one should entrust himself to Protagoras to learn it, since he does not even have a coherent view of what it is.
This Socrates, like that of Gorgias, has more substantial theoretical commitments than the Socrates of other ‘Socratic’ dialogues. He does not limit himself to examining the opinions of others, but argues, as something he is committed to, however revisably, that all virtue is one, namely a single knowledge, that acting against one’s own convictions—’weakness of will’—is impossible, and that our ‘salvation in life’ depends upon an ‘art of measurement’ that will overcome the power of appearance and get us to act rightly always. The dialogue invites us to ponder these theses, to work out for ourselves Socrates’ reasons for holding to them—and to question whether he is right to do so.
J.M.C.
FRIEND: Where have you just come from, Socrates? No, don’t tell me. [309] It’s pretty obvious that you’ve been hunting the ripe and ready Alcibiades.1 Well, I saw him just the other day, and he is certainly still a beautiful man—and just between the two of us, ‘man’ is the proper word, Socrates: his beard is already filling out.
SOCRATES: Well, what of it? I thought you were an admirer of Homer, [b] who says that youth is most charming when the beard is first blooming2—which is just the stage Alcibiades is at.
FRIEND: So what’s up? Were you just with him? And how is the young man disposed towards you?
SOCRATES: Pretty well, I think, especially today, since he rallied to my side and said a great many things to support me.3 You’re right, of course: I was just with him. But there’s something really strange I want to tell you about. Although we were together, I didn’t pay him any mind; in fact, I forgot all about him most of the time.