Complete Works

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

  4. Alternatively, ‘half the litigants’.

  5. Apparently the ‘Nocturnal’ council, which has not yet been announced: see 960b ff.

  6. The vendor from whom the vendor bought the object in question.

  7. Deleting ē in a5.

  8. Nomos (‘law’) suggests nous (’reason’).

  9. 717e–718a, 872e ff., 908e ff., and 947b ff.

  10. Respectively ‘the Distributor of Lots’, ‘the Spinner’, and ‘the Inflexible One’.

  11. Reading atraktōi in c9.

  12. 951d–952d.

  13. See 630d–e.

  14. Presumably Anaxagoras (mid fifth century) in particular. Cf. Phaedo 97b ff.

  15. See 961d and 964e–965a.

  EPINOMIS

  Translated by Richard D. McKirahan, Jr. Text: L. Tarán, Academica: Plato, Philip of Opus, and the Pseudo-Platonic Epinomis, American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, 1975.

  As its name indicates, Epinomis is an addition or appendix to the Laws (Nomoi in Greek). Clinias, Megillus, and the Athenian visitor reconvene at some unspecified time after their conversation in the Laws. Their purpose is to discuss the nature of wisdom—the copestone of human fulfillment and happiness—and, more particularly, the studies by which it is to be attained. Instruction in these must be given to the members of the governing Council of their proposed new city of Magnesia, charged as the Council is with knowing in detail the overall aim of law and how to maintain in perpetuity laws and practices that achieve it. At the end of the Laws, it was agreed that these matters could not usefully be explained in advance; the thing to do was actually to establish a city having the right laws, educate and select a Council, and leave to them the further legislation about their successors’ education. Now, going back on that, the Athenian agrees to explain what the necessary studies are and to legislate about them. It turns out, surprisingly perhaps, that though certain preliminary studies are also needed, wisdom is constituted solely by the knowledge of astronomy—of the single, mathematically unified system of the constant movements of the heavenly bodies (assumed, of course, to be rotating round the earth). Knowing that, the Council members will know the principle of order needed to organize correctly the whole of human life, both individually and socio-politically.

  This discrepancy (and there are others) already suggests that Plato was not the author of this work. This is generally accepted in current scholarship. There is ancient testimony that its author was in fact Philip of Opus, who is also said to have ‘transcribed’ the Laws, presumably from wax tablets in which Plato left the work at his death because he was still revising it. If so, it presents one of the first ‘Platonisms’, very close to Plato’s own time, carrying forward the ‘spirit’ of Plato’s work while giving selective and distorting emphases to various elements within it.

  J.M.C.

  CLINIAS: My friend, all three of us—you, I and Megillus here—have [973] come to do what we agreed: to consider what account we ought to give in explaining the nature of wisdom, as well as to discuss the course of studies that we say makes a person who engages in thought as wise as a [b] human can be. And rightly so, since although we have set out in detail everything else that has to do with legislation, we have neither stated nor discovered the most important thing: what a mortal must learn in order to be wise. We must not abandon this now, since to do so would be to leave largely unachieved the goal of our labors, which was to make things clear from start to finish.

  ATHENIAN VISITOR: That is a good idea, Clinias, but I fear you are about [c] to hear an account that is strange, though yet in a way not strange: the human race is, as a rule, neither blessed nor happy. Many people, through their experience in life, offer this same account. Pay attention then and consider closely whether you find that I too, following them, am correct on this point. I claim that people cannot become blessed and happy; there are but a few exceptions to this rule. (I limit this claim to the duration of our lives. Those who strive to live as nobly as they can during their life and at their end to die a noble death have a good hope of attaining after [d] they die everything for which they have striven.) I am not saying anything clever, but only what we all know in some way, both Greeks and foreigners: from the start the terms of life are harsh for every living thing. First we have to go through the stage of being embryos. Then we have to be born [974] and then be brought up and educated, and we all agree that every one of these stages involves countless pains. In fact, if we don’t count hardships, but only what everyone would consider tolerable, the time involved turns out to be quite brief—a period round about the middle of a person’s life, which is thought to provide a kind of breathing-space. But then old age quickly overtakes us and tends to make anyone who takes his whole life into account unwilling ever to go through life again, unless he is full of childish thoughts.

  [b] What proof do I have of this? That what we are now investigating points in this direction. We are investigating how to become wise, as if this capacity were found in everyone. But it takes to its heels whenever anyone achieves any expertise in any of the so-called arts or branches of wisdom or in any of the other fields usually considered to be sciences—which suggests that none of them deserves the title of wisdom about these human concerns. On the other hand, while the soul is strongly convinced and [c] divines that it is somehow its nature to have wisdom, it is wholly unable to find out what this is, and when and how it is attained. In these circumstances, isn’t our difficulty about wisdom entirely appropriate, and our investigation as well? This turns out to be a larger project than any of us expect who are capable of examining themselves and others intelligently and consistently through arguments of all kinds and sorts. Shall we not agree that this is so?

  [d] CLINIAS: Perhaps we shall, my friend, since over time we have come to share your hope that we may reach the full truth in these matters.

  ATHENIAN: First we must go through all the other subjects that are called sciences but that do not make those who understand and possess them wise. After getting these out of the way, we will try to identify the ones we need, and then learn them.

  To begin, let us consider how it is that the sciences that have to do with the first needs of a mortal race are most necessary and truly first, but also [e] how it happens that those who have knowledge of them, though in early times they were considered wise, nowadays are not reputed for wisdom, but rather are reproached for such knowledge. We shall identify them and [975] show that virtually everyone with an ambition for a reputation of having developed into as good a person as possible avoids them in order to acquire wisdom and practice it.

  First there is the knowledge that has to do with animals’ eating one another. The story goes that this is what has made it customary to eat some kinds of animals while entirely keeping us from eating others. May the men of former times be kindly to us, as indeed they are; but let the first persons we leave aside be the experts at the knowledge just mentioned. [b] Next, the production of barley meal and wheat flour, in combination with the knowledge of how to use them for nourishment, though it is a noble and excellent pursuit, will never succeed in making anyone completely wise, since this very thing—labelling production as wisdom—would lead to disgust at the products themselves. Nor will cultivation of the entire earth make anyone completely wise: it is clearly not by art but by a natural capacity we have from God that we have all put our hands to working the earth. Moreover, neither will the “weaving together” of dwellings, or construction as a whole, or the art of making all kinds of furnishings and implements, which includes bronze-working, building, molding and [c] weaving, as well as the manufacture of all instruments. This knowledge has practical utility for the masses, but it is not because it is thought to confer virtue that it is called knowledge. Nor does the art of hunting in all its various forms make anyone noble and wise, though it has come to have many forms and involves great skill. Nor do prophetic inspiration or the ability to interpret divine messages have this effect in the least. The prophe
t only knows what he says; he does not understand if it is true.

  We now see that these arts enable us to possess the necessities of life, [d] but that none of them makes anyone wise. Next in order is a kind of play, which is mostly imitative and in no way serious. Its practitioners make use of many instruments and many bodily gestures—and not wholly becoming ones at that. This includes skills that employ words, all the arts of the Muses, and the genres of visual representation, which are responsible for producing many varied figures in many media, both wet and dry. But the imitative art makes no one wise in any of these things, even those who practice their craft with the utmost seriousness.

  Now that all these subjects have been dealt with, the next group turns [e] out to be kinds of defense, which come in many different forms and which benefit many people. The chief and most widespread of these, the art of war, which is known as military strategy, has the highest reputation for utility, but requires the greatest amount of good luck and is granted to [976] people through courage more than wisdom. The art called medicine too is surely a defense, in this case against all the ravages the climate inflicts upon animals through cold, unseasonable heat, and other things of the sort. But none of these arts is distinguished for wisdom of the truest sort. They lack measure, are carried along by opinion, and proceed by guesswork. We will also call both sea-captains and sailors defenders, but no one should encourage us by proclaiming any single one of these men [b] wise. No one could know the anger or friendship of the wind, even though the art of sailing would find this knowledge most agreeable. Nor are those men wise who claim to be defenders in lawsuits by virtue of their speaking ability. Their attention to people’s characters is based on memory and rote acquaintance with opinion, and they stray wide of the truth about what is genuinely just.

  As a candidate for the reputation of wisdom there still remains a certain strange ability, which most would call not wisdom, but a natural gift. Some [c] people easily learn whatever they are learning and accurately remember a great number of things, and some can call to mind what is useful for each person—what would be fitting if it were to take place—and quickly bring it about. When we notice such people, some will regard all these traits as a natural gift, while others will call them wisdom and still others a natural agility of mind. But no intelligent person will ever be willing to call anyone genuinely wise for having any of them.

  But surely there must turn out to be some science whose possession makes a wise person genuinely wise and not merely wise by reputation. [d] Let us see, then. We are tackling an extremely difficult subject—to discover a different science from the ones we have discussed, one which may be both genuinely and plausibly called wisdom, and which will make its possessor neither vulgar nor foolish, but a wise and good citizen of his city, a just ruler and subject, and in tune with himself and the world as well. First let us identify this science. Of all the sciences that now exist, which one would render humans the most unintelligent and senseless of living things if it completely disappeared from the human race or had not [e] been developed? In point of fact, it is not at all hard to identify. If we compare, so to speak, one science with another, we will see that the one that has given the gift of number would have this effect upon the entire mortal race.

  It is God himself, I believe, and not some good fortune that saves us by making us this gift. But I must say which god I mean, though it will seem [977] strange, though yet in a way not strange. How can we keep from believing that what causes all things that are good for us is also the cause of the good that is by far the greatest, namely, wisdom? So, Megillus and Clinias, what god am I speaking of with such solemnity? Uranus (i.e., the heaven), the god whom above all others it is most just to pray to and to honor, as all the other divinities and gods do. We will unanimously agree that he has been the cause of all other good things for us. But we declare that he is really the one who gave us number too, and he will continue to give [b] it, supposing that we are willing to follow him closely. If we come to contemplate him in the right way—whether we prefer to call him Cosmos or Olympus or Heaven [Uranus]—let us call him as we like, but let us notice carefully how by decorating himself and making the stars revolve in himself through all their orbits, he brings about the seasons and provides nourishment for all. Together with the entirety of number, he also furnishes, we would insist, everything else that involves intelligence and everything that is good. But this is the greatest thing, for a person to receive from him the gift of numbers and go on to examine fully the entire revolution of the heavens.

  Next, let us return to a point made a little while ago and recall that we [c] were very right to observe that if the human race were deprived of number, we would never come to be intelligent in anything. We would be animals unable to give a rational account, and our soul would never obtain the whole of virtue. An animal that does not know two and three or odd and even, one that is completely ignorant of number, could never give an account of the things it has grasped by the only means available to it—perception and memory. But while nothing prevents it from possessing [d] the remainder of virtue—courage and moderation—no one deprived of the ability to give a true account can ever become wise, and anyone lacking wisdom, which is the greatest part of all virtue, can never become completely good or, in consequence, happy. Thus it is altogether necessary to employ number as a basis, though why this is necessary would require a still longer account than all I have said. But we will also be right in stating the present point, that regarding the achievements attributed to the other arts, the ones we recently surveyed when we allowed all the arts to exist, [e] not a single one remains. They are all completely eliminated when we take away the science of number.

  If we reflect upon the arts, we might well suppose that there are a few purposes for which the human race needs numbers—although even this concession is important. Further, if we contemplate the divine and the mortal elements in the generated world, we will discover reverence for the divine and also number in its true nature. But even so, not every one [978] of us will yet understand either how great a power intimate knowledge of the whole of number can confer upon us (since in addition to what I have mentioned, all musical phenomena clearly require movement and sounds that are based on number), or—the most important thing—that number causes all good things. We must also understand well that it causes no evil that may occur. By contrast, movement that is irrational, disorderly, unseemly, unrhythmical and inharmonious is wholly lacking in number, as is everything that shares in any evil. This is how anyone who is going [b] to die happy must think. And as regards justice, goodness, beauty, and all such things, without knowledge no one who has attained true opinion will ever give a numerical account that is at all likely to persuade either himself or anyone else.

  Now let us go on to take up this very topic, number. How did we learn to count? How did we come to have the concepts of one and two? The [c] Universe has endowed us with the natural capacity to have concepts, whereas many other living things lack even the capacity to learn from the Father how to count. With us humans, the first thing God caused to dwell in us was the capability to understand what we are shown, and then he proceeded to show us, and he still does. And of the things he shows us, taken one by one, what can we behold more beautiful than the day? Later, [d] when we come to see the night, everything appears different to our vision. Since Heaven never stops making these bodies ply their course night after night and day after day, he never stops teaching humans one and two, until even the slowest person learns well enough to count. For each of us who sees them will also form the concepts of three, four, and many. Out of these many, God made a unit by constructing a moon which goes through its course sometimes appearing larger and sometimes smaller, [e] thus always revealing each day as different until fifteen days and nights have passed. This is a period, if one is willing to treat the entire cycle as a unit. As a result, even the stupidest of the animals God has endowed with the ability to learn is able to learn it. Every living being that
can has become quite knowledgeable in numbers this far [i.e., up to fifteen] and [979] in these numbers, by considering each thing individually. Next, for the purpose of reckoning on each occasion all things in relation to one another as numbers1 and also for a purpose which I regard as greater—after creating the moon, waxing and waning as we said, God established months in relation to the year, and so all the living beings who could began to comprehend number in relation to number, with the blessing of Good Fortune. Thanks to these celestial events we have crops, the earth bears food for all living things, and the winds that blow and the rains that fall [b] are not violent or without measure. If on the contrary anything turns out for the worse, we must not blame God, but humans, for not rightly managing their own lives.

  Now in our inquiry about Laws we found that the other things that are best for humans are easy to know, and that we are all competent both to understand what we are told and to act on that basis, as long as we know what is likely to be advantageous and the reverse. Indeed, we found then [c] and we still maintain that none of the other pursuits is particularly difficult, but how to become good people is an extremely difficult problem. Also, to acquire everything else that is good—property in the right amount and a body of the right sort—is, as the saying goes, both possible and not difficult. Further, everyone will grant that the soul should be good, and as to how it should be good, everyone says it must be just, moderate, brave, and wise as well. But when it comes to the precise form of wisdom [d] it must have, as we have recently shown in detail, there is no longer any agreement, at least among the many. But as a matter of fact we have just now discovered over and above all the former kinds of wisdom one that is by no means insignificant, at least in that anyone who masters the material we have outlined is guaranteed a reputation for wisdom. But are those who know these things really wise and good? This is precisely what requires a satisfactory account.