Complete Works

by Plato, Cooper, John M. , Hutchinson, D. S.

  CLINIAS: In some ways I think we are, but certainly not in others.

  ATHENIAN: I expect this is where I sound implausible: suppose a man were to enjoy health and wealth and permanent absolute power—and, if [e] you like, I’ll give him enormous strength and courage as well, and exempt him from death and all the other ‘evils’, as people call them. But suppose he had in him nothing but injustice and insolence. It is obvious, I maintain, that his life is wretchedly unhappy.

  CLINIAS: True, that’s precisely where you fail to convince.

  ATHENIAN: Very well, then, How should we put it now? If a man is [662] brave, strong, handsome, and rich, and enjoys a life-long freedom to do just what he wants to, don’t you think—if he is unjust and insolent—that his life will inevitably be a disgrace? Perhaps at any rate you’d allow the term ‘disgrace’?

  CLINIAS: Certainly.

  ATHENIAN: Will you go further, and say he will live ‘badly’?9

  CLINIAS: No, we’d not be so ready to admit that.

  ATHENIAN: What about going further still, and saying he will live ‘unpleasantly and unprofitably’?

  CLINIAS: How could we possibly be prepared to go as far as that?

  ATHENIAN: ‘How’? My friend, it looks as if it would be a miracle if we [b] ever harmonized on this point: at the moment your tune and mine are scarcely in the same key. To me, these conclusions are inescapably true—in fact, my dear Clinias, rather more true and obvious than that Crete is an island. If I were a lawgiver, I should try to compel the authors and every inhabitant of the state to take this line; and if anybody in the land [c] said that there are men who live a pleasant life in spite of being scoundrels, or that while this or that is useful and profitable, something else is more just, I should impose pretty nearly the extreme penalty. There are many other things I should persuade my citizens to say, which would flatly contradict what Cretans and Spartans maintain nowadays, apparently—to say nothing of the rest of the world. Zeus and Apollo! Just you imagine, my fine fellows, asking these gods who inspired your laws, ‘Is the life of [d] supreme justice also the life that gives most pleasure? Or are there two kinds of life, one being “the supremely just,” the other “the most pleasurable”?’

  Suppose they replied ‘There are two.’ If we knew the right question to ask, we might perhaps pursue the point: ‘Which category of men should we call the most blessed by heaven? Those who live the supremely just life, or the most pleasurable?’ If they said ‘Those who live the most pleasurable life’, then that would be, for them, a curious thing to say. However, I am unwilling to associate the gods with such a statement; I prefer to think of it in connection with forefathers and lawgivers. So let’s suppose [e] those first questions have been put to a forefather and lawgiver, and that he has replied that the man who lives the life of greatest pleasure enjoys the greatest happiness. This is what I’d say then: ‘Father, didn’t you want me to receive as many of the blessings of heaven as I could? Yet in spite of that you never tired of telling me to order my life as justly as possible’. In taking up that kind of position our forefather or lawgiver will, I think, appear in rather an odd light: it will look as if he cannot speak without contradicting himself. However, if he declared that the life of supreme justice was the most blessed, I imagine that everybody who heard him would want to know what splendid benefit, superior to pleasure, was to be found in this kind of life. What was there in it that deserved the [663] commendation of the law? Surely, any benefit a just man got out of it would be inseparable from pleasure? Look: are we to suppose that fame and praise from gods and men are fine and good, but unpleasant (and vice versa in the case of notoriety)? (‘My dear legislator,’ we’d say, ‘of course not’.) Or, if you neither injure another nor are injured yourself by someone else, is that unpleasant, in spite of being fine and good? Is the opposite pleasant, but disgraceful and wicked?

  CLINIAS: Certainly not.

  ATHENIAN: So the argument that does not drive a wedge between ‘pleasant’ [b] on the one hand and ‘just’ and ‘fine’ and ‘good’ on the other, even if it achieves nothing else, will do something to persuade a man to live a just and pious life. This means that any teaching which denies the truth of all this is, from the lawgiver’s standpoint, a complete disgrace and his worst enemy. (Nobody would willingly agree to do something which would not bring him more pleasure than pain.)

  Looking at a thing from a distance makes nearly everyone feel dizzy, especially children; but the lawgiver will alter that for us, and lift the fog [c] that clouds our judgment: somehow or other—by habituation, praise, or argument—he will persuade us that our ideas of justice and injustice are like pictures drawn in perspective. Injustice looks pleasant to the enemy of justice,10 because he regards it from his own personal standpoint, which is unjust and evil; justice, on the other hand, looks unpleasant to him. But from the standpoint of the just man the view gained of justice and injustice is always the opposite.

  CLINIAS: So it seems.

  ATHENIAN: And which of these judgments are we to say has a better claim to be the correct one? The judgment of the worse soul or the better?

  [d] CLINIAS: That of the better, certainly.

  ATHENIAN: Then it is equally certain that the unjust life is not only more shocking and disgraceful, but also in fact less pleasant, than the just and holy.

  CLINIAS: On this argument, my friends, it certainly looks like it.

  ATHENIAN: But just suppose that the truth had been different from what the argument has now shown it to be, and that a lawgiver, even a mediocre one, had been sufficiently bold, in the interests of the young, to tell them a lie. Could he have told a more useful lie than this, or one more effective [e] in making everyone practice justice in everything they do, willingly and without pressure?

  CLINIAS: Truth is a fine thing, and it is sure to prevail, but to persuade men of it certainly seems no easy task.

  ATHENIAN: Yes, but what about that fairy story about the Sidonian?11 That was well-nigh incredible, but it was easy enough to convince men of it, and of thousands of other similar stories.

  CLINIAS: What sort of stories?

  ATHENIAN: The sowing of the teeth and the birth of armed men from [664] them. This remarkable example shows the legislator that the souls of the young can be persuaded of anything; he has only to try. The only thing he must consider and discover is what conviction would do the state most good; in that connection, he must think up every possible device to ensure that as far as possible the entire community preserves in its songs and stories and doctrines an absolute and lifelong unanimity. But if you see the matter in any other light, have no hesitation in disputing my view.

  CLINIAS: No, I don’t think either of us would be able to dispute that. [b]

  ATHENIAN: Then it will be up to me to introduce the next point. I maintain that our choruses—all three of them—should charm the souls of the children while still young and tender, and uphold all the admirable doctrines we have already formulated, and any we may formulate in the future. We must insist, as the central point of these doctrines, that the gods say the best life does in fact bring most pleasure. If we do that, we shall be telling [c] the plain truth, and we shall convince those whom we have to convince more effectively than if we advanced any other doctrine.

  CLINIAS: Yes, one has to agree with what you say.

  ATHENIAN: To start with, it will be only right and proper if the children’s chorus (which will be dedicated to the Muses) comes on first to sing these doctrines with all its might and main before the entire city. Second will come the chorus of those under thirty, which will call upon Apollo Paean12 to bear witness that what they say is true, and pray that he will vouchsafe [d] to convince the young. Thirdly, there must be the songs of those between thirty and sixty. That leaves the men who are older than this, who are, of course, no longer up to singing; but they will be inspired to tell stories in which the same characters will appear.

  CLINIAS: You mention these three choruses, sir: what are
they? We are not very clear what you mean to say about them.

  ATHENIAN: But the greater part of the discussion we have had so far has been precisely for their sake!

  CLINIAS: We still haven’t seen the point. Could you try to elucidate [e] still further?

  ATHENIAN: If we remember, we said at the beginning of our discussion13 that all young things, being fiery and mettlesome by nature, are unable to keep their bodies or their tongues still—they are always making uncoordinated noises and jumping about. No other animal, we said, ever develops a sense of order in either respect; man alone has a natural ability to [665] do this. Order in movement is called ‘rhythm’, and order in the vocal sounds—the combination of high and low notes—is called ‘harmony’; and the union of the two is called ‘a performance by a chorus’. We said that the gods took pity on us and gave us Apollo and the Muses as companions and leaders of our choruses; and if we can cast our minds back, we said that their third gift to us was Dionysus.

  CLINIAS: Yes, of course we remember.

  ATHENIAN: Well, we’ve mentioned the choruses of Apollo and the Muses; the remaining one, the third, must be identified as belonging to Dionysus. [b]

  CLINIAS: What! You had better explain yourself: a chorus of elderly men dedicated to Dionysus sounds a weird and wonderful idea, at any rate at first hearing. Are men of more than thirty and even fifty, up to sixty, really going to dance in honor of Dionysus?

  ATHENIAN: You are absolutely right—to show how this could be reasonable in practice does need, I think, some explanation.

  CLINIAS: It certainly does.

  ATHENIAN: Are we agreed on the conclusions we have reached so far?

  [c] CLINIAS: Conclusions about what?

  ATHENIAN: About this—that every man and child, free-man and slave, male and female—in fact, the whole state—is in duty bound never to stop repeating to each other the charms14 we have described. Somehow or other, we must see that these charms constantly change their form; at all costs they must be continually varied, so that the performers always long to sing the songs, and find perpetual pleasure in them.

  CLINIAS: Agreed: that’s exactly the arrangement we want.

  [d] ATHENIAN: This last chorus is the noblest element in our state; it carries more conviction than any other group, because of the age and discernment of its members. Where, then, should it sing its splendid songs, if it is to do most good? Surely we are not going to be silly enough to leave this question undecided? After all, this chorus may well prove to be consummate masters of the noblest and most useful songs.

  CLINIAS: No; if that’s really the way the argument is going, we certainly can’t leave this undecided.

  ATHENIAN: So what would be a suitable method of procedure? See if this will do.

  CLINIAS: What, then?

  [e] ATHENIAN: As he grows old, a man becomes apprehensive about singing; it gives him less pleasure, and if it should happen that he cannot avoid it, it causes him an embarrassment which grows with the increasingly sober tastes of his advancing years. Isn’t that so?

  CLINIAS: Indeed it is.

  ATHENIAN: So naturally he will be even more acutely embarrassed at standing up and singing in front of the varied audience in a theater. And if men of that age were forced to sing in the same condition as members of choruses competing for a prize—lean and on a diet after a course of voice-training—then of course they would find the performance positively unpleasant and humiliating, and would lose every spark of enthusiasm.

  [666] CLINIAS: Yes, that would be the inevitable result.

  ATHENIAN: So how shall we encourage them to be enthusiastic about singing? The first law we shall pass, surely, is this: children under the age of eighteen are to keep off wine entirely. We shall teach them that they must treat the violent tendencies of youth with due caution, and not pour fire on the fire already in their souls and bodies until they come to undertake the real work of life. Our second law will permit the young man under [b] thirty to take wine in moderation, but he must stop short of drunkenness and bibulous excesses. When he reaches his thirties, he should regale himself at the common meals, and invoke the gods; in particular, he should summon Dionysus to what is at once the play-time and the prayer-time of the old, which the god gave to mankind to help cure the crabbiness of age. This is the gift he gave us to make us young again: we forget our [c] peevishness, and our hard cast of mind becomes softer and grows more malleable, just like iron thrust in a fire. Surely any man who is brought into that frame of mind would be ready to sing his songs (that is ‘charms’, as we’ve called them often enough) with more enthusiasm and less embarrassment? I don’t mean in a large gathering of strangers, but in a comparatively small circle of friends.

  CLINIAS: Certainly.

  ATHENIAN: As a method of inducing them to join us in our singing, there wouldn’t be anything you could particularly object to in this. [d]

  CLINIAS: By no means.

  ATHENIAN: But what sort of philosophy of music will inspire their songs? Obviously, it will have to be one appropriate to the performers.

  CLINIAS: Of course.

  ATHENIAN: And the performers are men of almost divine distinction. What notes would be appropriate for them? Those produced by the choruses?

  CLINIAS: Well, sir, we Cretans, at any rate—and the same goes for the Spartans—would hardly be up to singing any song except those we learned to sing by growing familiar with them in our choruses.

  ATHENIAN: Naturally enough. In cold fact, you have failed to achieve [e] the finest kind of song. You organize your state as though it were a military camp rather than a society of people who have settled in towns, and you keep your young fellows together like a herd of colts at grass. Not a man among you takes his own colt and drags him, furiously protesting, away from the rest of the herd; you never put him in the hands of a private groom, and train him by combing him down and stroking him. You entirely fail to lavish proper care on an education which will turn him out not merely a good soldier but a capable administrator of a state and its towns. [667] Such a man is, as we said early on, a better fighter than those of Tyrtaeus, precisely because he does not value courage as the principal element in virtue: he consistently relegates it to fourth place wherever he finds it, whether in the individual or the state.

  CLINIAS: I suspect, sir, you are being rather rude about our legislators again.

  ATHENIAN: If I am, my dear fellow, it is entirely unintentionally. But if you don’t mind, we ought to follow where the argument leads us. If we know of any music that is of finer quality than the music of choruses and the public theaters, we ought to try to allocate it to these older people. [b] They are, as we said, embarrassed at the other kind; but music of the highest quality is just what they are keen to take part in.

  CLINIAS: Yes, indeed.

  ATHENIAN: The most important point about everything that has some inherent attractive quality must be either this very quality or some kind of ‘correctness’ or (thirdly) its usefulness. For instance, I maintain that eating and drinking and taking nourishment in general are accompanied by the [c] particular attractive quality that we might call pleasure; as for their usefulness and ‘correctness’, we invariably speak of the ‘wholesomeness’ of the foods we serve, and in their case the most ‘correct’ thing in them is precisely this.

  CLINIAS: Quite.

  ATHENIAN: An element of attractiveness—the pleasure we feel—goes with the process of learning, too. But what gives rise to its ‘correctness’ and usefulness, its excellence and nobility, is its accuracy.

  CLINIAS: Exactly.

  ATHENIAN: What about the arts of imitation, whose function is to produce [d] likenesses? When they succeed in doing this, it will be quite proper to say that the pleasure—if any—that arises out of and accompanies that success constitutes the attractive quality of these arts.

  CLINIAS: Yes.

  ATHENIAN: Generally speaking, I suppose, the ‘correctness’ in such cases would depend not so much on the pleasure gi
ven, as on the accurate representation of the size and qualities of the original?

  CLINIAS: Well put.

  ATHENIAN: So pleasure would be the proper criterion in one case only. A work of art may be produced with nothing to offer by way of usefulness [e] or truth or accuracy of representation (or harm, of course). It may be produced solely for the sake of this element that normally accompanies the others, the attractive one. (In fact, it is when this element is associated with none of the others that it most genuinely deserves the name ‘pleasure’.)

  CLINIAS: You mean only harmless pleasure?

  ATHENIAN: Yes, and it is precisely this that I call ‘play’, when it has no particular good or bad effect that deserves serious discussion.

  CLINIAS: Quite right.

  ATHENIAN: And we could conclude from all this that no imitation at all should be judged by reference to incorrect opinions about it or by the criterion of the pleasure it gives. This is particularly so in the case of [668] every sort of equality. What is equal is equal and what is proportional is proportional, and this does not depend on anyone’s opinion that it is so, nor does it cease to be true if someone is displeased at the fact. Accuracy, and nothing else whatever, is the only permissible criterion.

  CLINIAS: Yes, that is emphatically true.

  ATHENIAN: So do we hold that all music is a matter of representation and imitation?

  CLINIAS: Of course.

  ATHENIAN: So when someone says that music is judged by the criterion of pleasure, we should reject his argument out of hand, and absolutely [b] refuse to go in for such music (if any were ever produced) as a serious genre. The music we ought to cultivate is the kind that bears a resemblance to its model, beauty.