Passages for Professor Walker s Plato Class (3/27/18)

Passages for Professor Walker s Plato Class (3/27/18) 1 I. Epistemic Humility Euthyphro 6b: SOCRATES: Indeed, Euthyphro, this is the reason why I am a defendant in the case, because I find it hard to accept things like that being said about the gods, and it is likely to be the reason why I shall be told I do wrong. Now, however, if you, who have full knowledge of such things, share b their opinions, then we must agree with them, too, it would seem. For what are we to say, we who agree that we ourselves have no knowledge of them? Tell me, by the god of friendship, do you really believe these things are true? Lesser Hippias 372b-373b SOCRATES: You see, Hippias, that I am telling the truth when I say that b I m persistent in questioning wise people? It may be that this is the only good trait I have and that all the others I have are quite worthless. I make mistakes as to the way things are, and don t know how they are I find it sufficient evidence of this that when I am with one of you who are highly regarded for wisdom, and to whose wisdom all the Greeks bear witness, I show myself to know nothing. For I think pretty well none of the same things as you do; yet what greater evidence of ignorance is there c than when someone disagrees with wise men? But I have one wonderfully good trait, which saves me: I m not ashamed to learn. I inquire and ask questions and I m very grateful to the one who answers, and I ve never failed in gratitude to anyone. I ve never denied it when I ve learned anything, pretending that what I learned was my own discovery. Instead, I sing the praises of the one who taught me as a wise person, and proclaim what I learned from him. So indeed now, I don t agree with what you are d saying but disagree very strongly. But I know very well that this is my fault it s because I m the sort of person I am, not to say anything better of myself than I deserve. To me, Hippias, it appears entirely the opposite to what you say: those who harm people and commit injustice and lie and cheat and go wrong voluntarily, rather than involuntarily, are better than those who do so involuntarily. However, sometimes I believe the opposite, and I go back and forth about all this plainly because I don t know. But e now at this moment a fit of lightheadedness has come over me, and I think those who voluntarily go wrong regarding something are better than those who do so involuntarily. I blame the preceding arguments for my present condition, making it appear to me now that those who do any of these things involuntarily are more worthless than those who do them voluntarily. So please be nice and don t refuse to cure my soul. You ll do me a much greater good if you give my soul relief from ignorance, than if you gave my body relief from disease. But if you wish to give a long speech,

I tell you in advance that you wouldn t cure me, for I couldn t follow you. If you are willing to answer me as you did just now, you ll benefit me a great deal, and I think you yourself won t be harmed. I might justly call for your help, too, son of Apemantus, for you goaded me into a discussion with Hippias. So now, if Hippias isn t willing to answer me, ask him for me. EUDICUS: Well, Socrates, I don t think Hippias will need us to plead with him. For that s not what he said earlier; he said that he wouldn t flee from any man s questioning. Right, Hippias? Isn t that what you said? HIPPIAS: I did. But Socrates always creates confusion in arguments, and seems to argue unfairly. SOCRATES: Oh excellent Hippias, I don t do that voluntarily, for then I d be wise and awesome, according to your argument, but involuntarily. So please be lenient with me, for you say that one who acts unfairly involuntarily should be treated leniently. 2 Apology 21b-23b: Consider that I tell you this because I would inform you about the origin b of the slander. When I heard of this reply I asked myself: Whatever does the god mean? What is his riddle? I am very conscious that I am not wise at all; what then does he mean by saying that I am the wisest? For surely he does not lie; it is not legitimate for him to do so. For a long time I was at a loss as to his meaning; then I very reluctantly turned to some such investigation as this; I went to one of those reputed wise, thinking c that there, if anywhere, I could refute the oracle and say to it: This man is wiser than I, but you said I was. Then, when I examined this man there is no need for me to tell you his name, he was one of our public men my experience was something like this: I thought that he appeared wise to many people and especially to himself, but he was not. I then tried to show him that he thought himself wise, but that he was not. As a result d he came to dislike me, and so did many of the bystanders. So I withdrew and thought to myself: I am wiser than this man; it is likely that neither of us knows anything worthwhile, but he thinks he knows something when he does not, whereas when I do not know, neither do I think I know; so I am likely to be wiser than he to this small extent, that I do not think I know what I do not know. After this I approached another man, one of those thought to be wiser than he, and I thought the same thing, and e so I came to be disliked both by him and by many others. After that I proceeded systematically. I realized, to my sorrow and alarm, that I was getting unpopular, but I thought that I must attach the greatest importance to the god s oracle, so I must go to all those who had any reputation for knowledge to examine its meaning. And by the dog, men 22 of Athens for I must tell you the truth I experienced something like this: in my investigation in the service of the god I found that those who had the highest reputation were nearly the most deficient, while those who were thought to be inferior were more knowledgeable. I must give you an account of my journeyings as if they were labors I had undertaken to prove the oracle irrefutable. After the politicians, I went to the poets,

the writers of tragedies and dithyrambs and the others, intending in their case to catch myself being more ignorant than they. So I took up those poems with which they seemed to have taken most trouble and asked them what they meant, in order that I might at the same time learn something from them. I am ashamed to tell you the truth, gentlemen, but I must. Almost all the bystanders might have explained the poems better c than their authors could. I soon realized that poets do not compose their poems with knowledge, but by some inborn talent and by inspiration, like seers and prophets who also say many fine things without any understanding of what they say. The poets seemed to me to have had a similar experience. At the same time I saw that, because of their poetry, they thought themselves very wise men in other respects, which they were not. So there again I withdrew, thinking that I had the same advantage over them as I had over the politicians. Finally I went to the craftsmen, for I was conscious of knowing practically nothing, and I knew that I would find that they had knowledge of many fine things. In this I was not mistaken; they knew things I did not know, and to that extent they were wiser than I. But, men of Athens, the good craftsmen seemed to me to have the same fault as the poets: each of them, because of his success at his craft, thought himself very wise in other most e important pursuits, and this error of theirs overshadowed the wisdom they had, so that I asked myself, on behalf of the oracle, whether I should prefer to be as I am, with neither their wisdom nor their ignorance, or to have both. The answer I gave myself and the oracle was that it was to my advantage to be as I am. As a result of this investigation, men of Athens, I acquired much unpopularity, of a kind that is hard to deal with and is a heavy burden; many slanders came from these people and a reputation for wisdom, for in each case the bystanders thought that I myself possessed the wisdom that I proved that my interlocutor did not have. What is probable, gentlemen, is that in fact the god is wise and that his oracular response meant that b human wisdom is worth little or nothing, and that when he says this man, Socrates, he is using my name as an example, as if he said: This man among you, mortals, is wisest who, like Socrates, understands that his wisdom is worthless. 3 Meno 70c-71d But here in Athens, my dear Meno, the opposite is the case, as if there were a dearth of wisdom, and wisdom seems to have departed hence to go to you. If then you want to ask one of us that 71 sort of question, everyone will laugh and say: Good stranger, you must think me happy indeed if you think I know whether virtue can be taught or how it comes to be; I am so far from knowing whether virtue can be taught or not that I do not even have any knowledge of what virtue itself is. I myself, Meno, am as poor as my fellow citizens in this matter, and I b blame myself for my complete ignorance about virtue. If I do not know what something is, how could I know what qualities it possesses? Or do

you think that someone who does not know at all who Meno is could know whether he is good-looking or rich or well-born, or the opposite of these? Do you think that is possible? MENO: I do not; but, Socrates, do you really not know what virtue is? Are we to report this to the folk back home about you? SOCRATES: Not only that, my friend, but also that, as I believe, I have never yet met anyone else who did know. 4 Republic 337d-338b What if I show you a different answer about justice than all these and a better one? What would you deserve then? What else than the appropriate penalty for one who doesn t know, namely, to learn from the one who does know? Therefore, that s what I deserve. You amuse me, but in addition to learning, you must pay a fine. I will as soon as I have some money. He has some already, said Glaucon. If it s a matter of money, speak, Thrasymachus, for we ll all contribute for Socrates. I know, he said, so that Socrates can carry on as usual. He gives no answer himself, and then, when someone else does give one, he takes up the argument and refutes it. How can someone give an answer, I said, when he doesn t know it and doesn t claim to know it, and when an eminent man forbids him to express the opinion he has? It s much more appropriate for you to answer, since you say you know and can tell us. So do it as a favor to me, and don t 338 begrudge your teaching to Glaucon and the others. While I was saying this, Glaucon and the others begged him to speak. It was obvious that Thrasymachus thought he had a fine answer and that he wanted to earn their admiration by giving it, but he pretended that he wanted to indulge his love of victory by forcing me to answer. However, he agreed in the end, and then said: There you have Socrates wisdom; he b himself isn t willing to teach, but he goes around learning from others and isn t even grateful to them. When you say that I learn from others you are right, Thrasymachus, but when you say that I m not grateful, that isn t true. I show what gratitude I can, but since I have no money, I can give only praise. But just how enthusiastically I give it when someone seems to me to speak well, you ll know as soon as you ve answered, for I think that you will speak well. Theaetetus 150a-e SOCRATES: Now my art of midwifery is just like theirs in most respects. The difference is that I attend men and not women, and that I watch over the labor of their souls, not of their bodies. And the most important thing c about my art is the ability to apply all possible tests to the offspring, to determine whether the young mind is being delivered of a phantom, that

is, an error, or a fertile truth. For one thing which I have in common with the ordinary midwives is that I myself am barren of wisdom. The common reproach against me is that I am always asking questions of other people but never express my own views about anything, because there is no wisdom in me; and that is true enough. And the reason of it is this, that God compels me to attend the travail of others, but has forbidden me to procreate. So that I am not in any sense a wise man; I cannot claim as the d child of my own soul any discovery worth the name of wisdom. But with those who associate with me it is different. At first some of them may give the impression of being ignorant and stupid; but as time goes on and our association continues, all whom God permits are seen to make progress a progress which is amazing both to other people and to themselves. And yet it is clear that this is not due to anything they have learned from me; it is that they discover within themselves a multitude of beautiful things, which they bring forth into the light. But it is I, with God s help, who deliver them of this offspring. 5 II. Becoming Godlike (Divine) Phaedo 80ab, 80d-81a Look at it also this way: when the soul and the body are together, nature orders the one to be subject and to be ruled, and the other to rule and be master. Then again, which do you think is like the divine and which like the mortal? Do you not think that the nature of the divine is to rule and to lead, whereas it is that of the mortal to be ruled and be subject? I do. Which does the soul resemble? Obviously, Socrates, the soul resembles the divine, and the body resembles the mortal. Consider then, Cebes, whether it follows from all that has been said that the soul is most like the divine, deathless, intelligible, uniform, indissoluble, always the same as itself, whereas the body is most like that which is human, mortal, multiform, unintelligible, soluble and never consistently the same. Have we anything else to say to show, my dear Cebes, that this is not the case? Will the soul, the invisible part which makes its way to a region of the same kind, noble and pure and invisible, to Hades in fact, to the good and wise god whither, god willing, my soul must soon be going will the soul, being of this kind and nature, be scattered and destroyed on leaving the body, as the majority of men say? Far from it, my dear Cebes and Simmias, but what e happens is much more like this: if it is pure when it leaves the body and drags nothing bodily with it, as it had no willing association with the body in life, but avoided it and gathered itself together by itself and always practiced this, which is no other than practising philosophy in the right way, in fact, 81 training to die easily. Or is this not training for death? It surely is.

A soul in this state makes its way to the invisible, which is like itself, the divine and immortal and wise, and arriving there it can be happy, having rid itself of confusion, ignorance, fear, violent desires and the other human ills and, as is said of the initiates, truly spend the rest of time with the gods. Shall we say this, Cebes, or something different? This, by Zeus, said Cebes. 6 Republic 611b-612b, 613a Yet our recent argument and others as well compel us to believe that the soul is immortal. But to see the soul as it is in truth, we must not study it as it is while it is maimed by its association with the body and other evils which is what we were doing earlier but as it is in its pure state, c that s how we should study the soul, thoroughly and by means of logical reasoning. We ll then find that it is a much finer thing than we thought and that we can see justice and injustice as well as all the other things we ve discussed far more clearly. What we ve said about the soul is true of it as it appears at present. But the condition in which we ve studied it is like that of the sea god Glaucus, whose primary nature can t easily be made out by those who catch glimpses of him. Some of the original parts d have been broken off, others have been crushed, and his whole body has been maimed by the waves and by the shells, seaweeds, and stones that have attached themselves to him, so that he looks more like a wild animal than his natural self. The soul, too, is in a similar condition when we study it, beset by many evils. That, Glaucon, is why we have to look somewhere else in order to discover its true nature. To where? To its philosophy, or love of wisdom. We must realize what it grasps e and longs to have intercourse with, because it is akin to the divine and immortal and what always is, and we must realize what it would become if it followed this longing with its whole being, and if the resulting effort lifted it out of the sea in which it now dwells, and if the many stones and 612 shells (those which have grown all over it in a wild, earthy, and stony profusion because it feasts at those so-called happy feastings on earth) were hammered off it. Then we d see what its true nature is and be able to determine whether it has many parts or just one and whether or in what manner it is put together. But we ve already given a decent account, I think, of what its condition is and what parts it has when it is immersed in human life. We certainly have. And haven t we cleared away the various other objections to our argument without having to invoke the rewards and reputations of justice, as b you said Homer and Hesiod did?9 And haven t we found that justice itself is the best thing for the soul itself, and that the soul whether it has the ring of Gyges or even it together with the cap of Hades10 should do just things? We have. That s absolutely true.

Then we must suppose that the same is true of a just person who falls into poverty or disease or some other apparent evil, namely, that this will end well for him, either during his lifetime or afterwards, for the gods never neglect anyone who eagerly wishes to become just and who makes himself as much like a god as a human can by adopting a virtuous way of life. 7 Phaedrus 249c-250c For just this reason it is fair that only a philosopher s mind grows wings, since its memory always keeps it as close as possible to those realities by being close to which the gods are divine. A man who uses reminders of these things correctly is always at the highest, most perfect level of initiation, and he is the only one who is perfect as perfect can be. He stands outside human concerns and draws close to the divine; ordinary d people think he is disturbed and rebuke him for this, unaware that he is possessed by god. Now this takes me to the whole point of my discussion of the fourth kind of madness that which someone shows when he sees the beauty we have down here and is reminded of true beauty; then he takes wing and flutters in his eagerness to rise up, but is unable to do so; and he gazes aloft, like a bird, paying no attention to what is down below and that is what brings on him the charge that he has gone mad. This is e the best and noblest of all the forms that possession by god can take for anyone who has it or is connected to it, and when someone who loves beautiful boys is touched by this madness he is called a lover. As I said, nature requires that the soul of every human being has seen reality; otherwise, no soul could have entered this sort of living thing. But not every 250 soul is easily reminded of the reality there by what it finds here not souls that got only a brief glance at the reality there, not souls who had such bad luck when they fell down here that they were twisted by bad company into lives of injustice so that they forgot the sacred objects they had seen before. Only a few remain whose memory is good enough; and they are startled when they see an image of what they saw up there. Then they are beside themselves, and their experience is beyond their comprehension because they cannot fully grasp what it is that they are seeing. b Justice and self-control do not shine out through their images down here, and neither do the other objects of the soul s admiration; the senses are so murky that only a few people are able to make out, with difficulty, the original of the likenesses they encounter here. But beauty was radiant to see at that time when the souls, along with the glorious chorus (we27 were with Zeus, while others followed other gods), saw that blessed and spectacular vision and were ushered into the mystery that we may rightly call the most blessed of all. And we who celebrated it were wholly perfect and free of all the troubles that awaited us in time to come, and we gazed in rapture at sacred revealed objects that were perfect, and simple, and unshakeable and blissful. That was the ultimate vision, and we saw it in pure light because we were pure ourselves, not buried in this thing we are carrying around now, which we call a body, locked in it like an oyster in its shell.

8 Theaetetus 176a-177b SOCRATES: But it is not possible, Theodorus, that evil should be destroyed for there must always be something opposed to the good; nor is it possible that it should have its seat in heaven. But it must inevitably haunt human life, and prowl about this earth. That is why a man should make all haste to escape from earth to heaven; and escape means becoming b as like God as possible; and a man becomes like God when he becomes just and pious, with understanding. But it is not at all an easy matter, my good friend, to persuade men that it is not for the reasons commonly alleged that one should try to escape from wickedness and pursue virtue. It is not in order to avoid a bad reputation and obtain a good one that virtue should be practiced and not vice; that, it seems to me, is only what c men call old wives talk. Let us try to put the truth in this way. In God there is no sort of wrong whatsoever; he is supremely just, and the thing most like him is the man who has become as just as it lies in human nature to be. And it is here that we see whether a man is truly able, or truly a weakling and a nonentity; for it is the realization of this that is genuine wisdom and goodness, while the failure to realize it is manifest folly and wickedness. Everything else that passes for ability and wisdom has a sort of commonness in those who wield political power a poor cheap show, in the manual workers a matter of mechanical routine. If, therefore, one meets a man who practices d injustice and is blasphemous in his talk or in his life, the best thing for him by far is that one should never grant that there is any sort of ability about his unscrupulousness; such men are ready enough to glory in the reproach, and think that it means not that they are mere rubbish, cumbering the ground to no purpose, but that they have the kind of qualities that are necessary for survival in the community. We must therefore tell them the truth that their very ignorance of their true state fixes them the more firmly therein. For they do not know what is the penalty of injustice, which is the last thing of which a man should be ignorant. It is not what they suppose scourging and death things which they may entirely evade in spite of their wrongdoing. It is a penalty from which there is no escape. e THEODORUS: And what is that? SOCRATES: My friend, there are two patterns set up in reality. One is divine and supremely happy; the other has nothing of God in it, and is the pattern of the deepest unhappiness. This truth the evildoer does not see; blinded by folly and utter lack of understanding, he fails to perceive 177 that the effect of his unjust practices is to make him grow more and more like the one, and less and less like the other. For this he pays the penalty of living the life that corresponds to the pattern he is coming to resemble. And if we tell him that, unless he is delivered from this ability of his, when he dies the place that is pure of all evil will not receive him; that he will forever go on living in this world a life after his own likeness a bad man tied to bad company: he will but think, This is the way fools talk to a clever rascal like me.

THEODORUS: Oh, yes, Socrates, sure enough. SOCRATES: I know it, my friend. But there is one accident to which the unjust man is liable. When it comes to giving and taking an account in a private discussion of the things he disparages; when he is willing to stand his ground like a man for long enough, instead of running away like a coward, then, my friend, an odd thing happens. In the end the things he says do not satisfy even himself; that famous eloquence of his somehow dries up, and he is left looking nothing more than a child. 9 Timaeus 90a-d Now we ought to think of the most sovereign part of our soul as god s gift to us, given to be our guiding spirit. This, of course, is the type of soul that, as we maintain, resides in the top part of our bodies. It raises us up away from the earth and toward what is akin to us in heaven, as though we are plants grown not from the earth but from heaven. In saying this, we speak absolutely correctly. For it is from heaven, the place from which our souls were originally born, that the divine part suspends our head, i.e., our root, and so keeps our whole body erect. So if a man has b become absorbed in his appetites or his ambitions and takes great pains to further them, all his thoughts are bound to become merely mortal. And so far as it is at all possible for a man to become thoroughly mortal, he cannot help but fully succeed in this, seeing that he has cultivated his mortality all along. On the other hand, if a man has seriously devoted himself to the love of learning and to true wisdom, if he has exercised these aspects of himself above all, then there is absolutely no way that his c thoughts can fail to be immortal and divine, should truth come within his grasp. And to the extent that human nature can partake of immortality, he can in no way fail to achieve this: constantly caring for his divine part as he does, keeping well-ordered the guiding spirit that lives within him, he must indeed be supremely happy. Now there is but one way to care for anything, and that is to provide for it the nourishment and the motions that are proper to it. And the motions that have an affinity to the divine part within us are the thoughts and revolutions of the universe. These, d surely, are the ones which each of us should follow. We should redirect the revolutions in our heads that were thrown off course at our birth,44 by coming to learn the harmonies and revolutions of the universe, and so bring into conformity with its objects our faculty of understanding, as it was in its original condition. And when this conformity is complete, we shall have achieved our goal: that most excellent life offered to humankind by the gods, both now and forevermore.