Copyright 1997, 1999 by Tad Beckman, Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, CA 91711
Plato was born in 427 B.C. in Athens to an aristocratic family. His father, Ariston, traced his family back through several of the ancient kings of Athens to the god Poseidon. His mother, Perictione, was decended from Dropides, who was a relative and close friend of Solon. Her brother was Charmides and her cousin was Critias, both of whom were well known politicians of the day. Plato had two older brothers, Adeimantus and Glaucon, and a sister, Potone. Plato's father died while Plato was a boy and Perictione married her uncle, by whom she had a boy, Antiphon, whom Plato mentions in one of his dialogues.
Plato's youth came at a terrible time in Athenian history; and he might well have been a very different person had he been born at another time, perhaps several decades earlier. In the early period of the Peloponnesian Wars, a democratic and powerful Athens had been lead onward by one of its greatest political leaders, Pericles; but by Plato's birth, Pericles had died and Athens had begun to decline. The disastrous expedition to Syracuse occured when Plato was fifteen, and the final surrender of Athens occured when he was twenty three. Sparta terminated Athenian democracy and established a ruling oligarchy, "the Thirty Tyrants," in 404. Charmides and Critias were part of this government and encouraged Plato to enter politics.
Plato had become a disciple of Socrates when he was eighteen but members of his family had known Socrates for a long time. Plato was twenty seven or twenty eight when Socrates was brought to trial and executed. While the oligarchy had lasted only one year and democracy had been restored, Athenian politics had become completely destabilized and wise leadership was sadly lacking. While he had been tempted by politics and while it was the natural direction for one of his lineage, Plato was discouraged by everything that he witnessed.
Around 390 B.C., Plato began to travel and wound up in Syracuse where he began his philosophical teaching by introducing Dion (brother-in-law of the king, Dionysus I) to his ethical and political theories. While it is not clear how long this relationship lasted or exactly why it ended, it is clear that Plato's first experiment was a disaster; Plato was sold as a slave by king Dionysus I! Plato was purchased back and returned to Athens, but Syracuse continued to figure into his life. In 367 he returned to Syracuse at Dion's invitation but had to leave hastily when Dion was accused of high treason. Again, in 361 he returned at the invitation of Dionysus II only to become involved in such violent disagreements that he left the state only with difficulty.
Shortly after his first return to Athens (387 B.C.), Plato founded his school, the Academy, as a residence place of scholars and students, just outside of Athens. The time can be associated with the dialogue "Meno," and it is the beginning of the Platonic, as opposed to the earlier Socratic, dialogues. Plato continued as the director of the Academy throughout his life and it became a recognized institution that attracted men with their own independent reputations.
Plato's philosophical personality was quite different from that of Socrates. Socrates' style was "conversational" and it remainded thoroughly Athenian and thoroughly focused on politics and the virtues. Plato's travels and his exposure to scholars who came from diverse schools of thought and teachings made him far more cosmopolitan. Beyond Socrates, Plato was thoroughly exposed to the teachings of Pythagoras, Parmenides, and Heraclitus, at least. Plato developed theories about the nature of the world, the constitution and origins of knowledge, and immortal (reincarnated) life. In the Platonic dialogues, Socrates remains an ever-present character but the philosophical subjects become diverse and the style reaches toward lecturing and occasionally abandons dialectic entirely. The later dialogues take up subjects of natural science. Ironically, since this was the side of Plato's writing that most appealed to the Arab scholar/scientists, this was the Plato that passed through centuries of Arab translation and commentary and, from there, into 13th Century Europe along with Aristotle. It was not until the 16th Century that Europeans uncovered the true diversity of Plato's thinking.
The dialog Gorgias is one of Plato's best examples of Socratic inquiry. It is a series of three discussions bearing on rhetoric, political power, and the good --- all strong Platonic themes. The discussions exhibit Socrates with reasonable accuracy, questioning participants with the hope of making their ideas clear. The method proceeds by obtaining a proposition and then testing the proposition in different contexts. The basis of judgment is always ordinary discourse; that is, our ordinary sense of meanings will inform us when a new context has made a certain proposition incoherent. When this happens, the participant will either offer a revised proposition or Socrates will offer a substitute to which the participant agrees. While, according to tradition, Socrates is supposed to be questioning wise people in order to demonstrate his own lack of wisdom, it is doubtless that Socrates actually held to a central philosophical thesis that justifies his method. Under this thesis, our concepts have definite meanings that were already resident in archaic discourse, which have been distorted or misplaced in the confusion of contemporary rhetorical discourse, and which may be recovered through careful application of dialectic. (This notion that meaning is anchored in something offended Nietzsche, who saw Socrates as the "beginning of the end" for Western philosophy.)
The dramatic aspects of the dialog are excellent and are well exhibited in the contemporary translation by Robin Waterfield. Gorgias is a well known sophist who has just finished a teaching session at a house in Athens. Various young people linger around the teacher, including Polus and Callicles. Socrates engages Gorgias in a conversation about his profession, the teaching of rhetorical skills. The two speak as peers and maintain respect for each other. Polus joins the conversation, defending the general idea that might makes right. And, finally, Callicles pursues several topics relating to what pleases us and whether pleasure determines what is good. Both Polus and Callicles represent the overly self-confident (if not actually arrogant) young products of rhetorical training. At the end, Callicles having run out of patience, Socrates is invited to go on with the discourse alone.
The discussion of rhetoric exploits the standard Socratic and Platonic position that the Sophists, as teachers of mere rhetoric, just train young people to win arguments by persuasion. Rhetoric has no special subject of expertise of its own. Gorgias tries to suggest it is more than this (454b) by saying that "its province is right and wrong." But Socrates demonstrates that we all make a distinction between something we know and something of which we have merely been convinced. In particular, we all recognize that our convictions can be false. Knowledge, on the other hand, is the proper domain of right and wrong. So this cannot be the domain of rhetoric since rhetoric merely offers convictions through its persuasive powers. Taking this as a challenge, Gorgias extolls the political powers of rhetoricians. Take any community of people whatsoever, Gorgias suggests, and put a rhetorician up against an expert in any field of knowledge, and the people will always listen to the rhetorician. (456c) But Socrates points out the obvious fact that this places the rhetorician in the position of doing wrong by convincing people to act contrary to the best knowledge that can be provided in the situation. Gorgias tries to respond that rhetoricians are moral, but Socrates successfully shows that this contradicts other claims that Gorgias has made.
It is at this point in the dialog (461b) that Polus interrupts Socrates, in disbelief, and declares that rhetoricians are the most powerful people in any community. Furthermore, so far as the moral argument is concerned, it is power and not knowledge of morality that makes a person right. So there is a contradiction in Socrates' argument that the rhetorician can be immoral or wrong. Not only, in Polus' opinion, is the powerful person right, by definition, but he is also happy in being so. The connection with happiness is important because Socrates will devote considerable attention to convincing Polus that the bad man cannot be happy. Socrates even pushes this argument to the interesting position of insisting that the bad man will be worse off if he goes unpunished. It is a long and often subtle argument; but it is obviously directly relevant to our own times. Americans, like the Athenians before them, seem far more impressed by, and ready to follow, those who can persuade them; and the powerful in America are surely those who own the capacities of persuasion, who can use the media and other resources to sell an idea or a person.
While Socrates' arguments may sound like "word play," they rely on a basic fact at the center of the discourse. While Polus wants to assert that might makes right, he also knows that right' has numerous traditional meanings which he continues to accept in ordinary discussion. This is the basis of the exchange at 474c, for instance, where Socrates gets Polus to employ both the terms worse' and contemptible.' The former term connects easily with Polus' language of happy and unhappy; but the latter connects with traditional moral appraisals. What is lacking for Polus is an understanding of how what is personally worse comes together with what is socially contemptible. Following tradition, Polus easily accepts that doing wrong to someone is contemptible; yet having wrong done to yourself is clearly worse, in the sense of making one unhappy. It is not difficult for Socrates to bring out the inherent contradiction. Socrates' position is based on the idea that good and bad, right and wrong, commendable and contemptible, are all judgments that require some basis on mutually held values. No one, even if mighty, can simply re-define or misapply these words. A powerful man may do something that badly affects another but mere power does not give him the right to go this "right." The fact is that Polus recognizes that something "bad" has been done.
When Callicles notes that Polus is losing ground, in his discussion with Socrates, he jumps into the argument and berates Socrates as a naive intellectual who would be hopelessly inept in the political world. According to Callicles, Polus should never have admitted that it is more contemptible to do wrong than to suffer wrong doing. As Callicles expands his arguments with Socrates, he proceeds further and further toward the position of Hedonism, defining pleasure as the good. There is no independent basis on which to determine what is good; it is always simply what is pleasant to one. The powerful elite are good and righteous precisely because they simply seek their own self-indulgence. Morality is just a conventional construct, created by the weak, aimed at holding the elite back.
Socrates uncovers a variety of common situations in which pleasure is not how we determine the good. In fact, we have quite independent means of determining good, depending upon the subject. The health of the body, for instance, requires medical knowledge and indulgence in some pleasure may be knowledgeably judged as inconsistent with better health. There are many other such cases. Socrates' point is that judgments of good are always associated with knowledge of something --- in other words, "good for what." Pleasure, on the other hand, is not a form of knowledge nor is it "for" anything. Pleasure is an end in itself. There is no denying that it is sometimes good to take pleasure in things; but this is a good that we can understand in terms of other ends (e.g., mental health).
In the end, Gorgias, Polus, and Callicles are worn out with the arguments and what they see as Socrates' naivete. They invite Socrates to carry on, while they just listen. It is an opportunity for Socrates to set forth his own sense of how we should live. Wealth and power are corrupting influences because people who possess these will be guided by their further pleasures rather than by knowledge of what is right and good. To rule a state or to rule oneself, one must know what is best for the state or for human life, and one must learn to take pleasure in practicing these virtues. In the end, however, Socrates would obviously fair no better in the United States, today, than he did in Athens, 2400 years ago.
The subject of inquiry in this dialogue is whether virtue can be taught. The dialogue is complex, however, and is posed within a conversation about Sophism. Socrates stands between the Sophist, Protagoras, and the young man, Hippocrates. This offers Plato an opportunity to discuss Sophism and rhetorical skills as well.
Socrates has an unnamed companion and he tells him a lengthy story of what has happened between him and a friend, Hippocrates. Hippocrates woke up Socrates, early in the morning, to announce the arrival of the famous Sophist, Protagoras, and to urge him to proceed to see him at once. While Hippocrates is ready to spend a sizable amount for Protagoras' tutoring, Socrates observes that he really doesn't know what benefit this will have. While they both know that Protagoras will help Hippocrates to speak eloquently, as Sophists do, what they don't know, Socrates observes, is what value this will be to Hippocrates. Socrates observes that Hippocrates should be very careful because, as he says, "Knowledge is the food of the soul," and the soul has the potential of being permanently harmed by what we provide to it. Having proceeded to Protagoras, Socrates introduces Hippocrates as an aspiring student. While Protagoras acknowledges the dangers, it is interesting to note that the dangers he has in mind are "jealousies," "enmities," and "conspiracies."
On 317d, Socrates, Protagoras, and the other Sophists present sit down, in a circle, to begin a discussion and Protagoras asks Socrates about Hippocrates, who has come there to learn. Socrates suggests that what is at issue between him and Hippocrates is what the latter will get out of being associated with Protagoras. So Protagoras boldly declares that Hippocrates will be a "better man" each day that they are together. While Socrates accepts this possibility, he pushes Protagoras to suggest "in what way" Hippocrates will be better each day. In this, Protagoras says (318d) that Hippocrates will be improved in "prudence" in both private and public life, in "ordering his household," and in "speaking and acting for the best in the affairs of state." In other words, Socrates concludes, Hippocrates will be taught the art of politics. But Socrates proceeds to doubt the possibility of this, noting many great political figures who have never educated their own children in politics; and Socrates further notes that, in a democracy, everyone gets into politics regardless of training.
The subject, then, is the question "Can virtue be taught?" and Protagoras begins the discussion with a myth (320c) which demonstrates, he thinks, why it seems natural to believe that political virtue is commonly held and that it is not taught, as Socrates has suggested. It is the Greek creation myth. After all of the animals have been created, with their diverse strengths and attributes, humans are about to be brought forward; but Epimetheus has already distributed the stock of attributes to the animals and nothing remains for humans. Thus, Prometheus steals godly powers and arts from Athene and Hephaestus, especially the power to employ fire. For this, Prometheus was dearly punished later. Once on earth, humans were not doing well to survive and were being killed both by animals and by themselves. Zeus solved the problem by sending Hermes to give humans "reverence and justice" so that they could live in cities as friends. And it was decided that rather than merely giving these virtues to a few they should be given to all so that they would all be able to live together well. This, says Protagoras, is why we believe that virtue cannot be taught. (323a)
Protagoras continues (323c-328d) by making two points in favor of the thesis that virtue can, in fact, be taught. First, we obviously believe that everyone should possess at least some virtues and, in fact, that if we punish them for their apparent lack of virtue (honesty, for instance) they will be pushed to learn better. Second, in answer to Socrates' observation that great men do not teach their own children virtue, Protagoras insists that they do teach their children virtue in very many ways but that it doesn't always come out uniformly. In other words, what Socrates notes is not the lack of effort but the lack of consistent results.
Socrates takes up the argument at this point (329c), presuming just to ask about a little detail, and the dialectic begins. Is virtue something of which justice, temperance, holiness, etc. are separate parts? Or are these virtues simply different names for one simple thing, which is virtue itself? Protagoras takes the position that the individual virtues are parts of a whole and that they are different parts, like nose, eyes, and mouth are different parts of a face. Is this a position that we can maintain? Socrates pushes Protagoras into a series of discussions. First, asking whether "justice is just or unjust" and "holiness is holy or unholy," he concludes that justice and holiness are more alike than not. Second, assuming that one thing is the opposite of only one other thing, and working with folly, he concludes that folly seems to be the opposite of both wisdom and temperance, leading us to suspect that wisdom and temperance are the same. Third, he asks whether "an unjust man can be temperate in his unjustice?" But when Socrates connects temperance with exercising "good sense" and successfully slips "the good" into juxtaposition with doing injustice, Protagoras goes off on a long speech and the conversation breaks down (334a). What Socrates has shown, through his questioning, is that the apparent differences between the virtues do not run as deep as we might think and that there is really a central notion behind virtue.
After this interruption, in which Socrates almost leaves, Protagoras and Socrates renew their discussion, this time with Protagoras attempting to ask the questions (339a). Protagoras picks a poem by Simonides and asks Socrates to help interpret it. While Socrates believes it to be a good and truthful poem, Protagoras wants to maintain that it involves a contradiction. In particular, the contradiction is between two parts --- "Hardly can a man become truly good" and "Hardly can a man be good." Socrates enters into a very long interpretation of the poem in which he suggests that Simonides was actually responding to a saying by a Lesbian, Pittacus, who had asserted "Hard is it to be good." Thus, Simonides is saying to Pittacus that what is truly hard is becoming good and that being good is not hard because, impossible. Men are not ever good, suggests Socrates, but rather they are always in a state of becoming. Socrates begs to leave off poetry interpretation and to resume questioning about virtue and whether virtue can be taught (347b). The exchange offers Plato an opportunity to contrast the way that Sophists and others have conversations and the way (dialectic) of serious philosophy, a truth-seeking discussion.
At 349a, Socrates rephrases the line of questioning that he had been pursuing, asking whether the virtues (at this point, considering five --- wisdom, courage, temperance, justice, and holiness) are part of a whole or separate things. Do they have a common essence? Protagoras continues to take the position that the virtues are separate and suggests that an obvious example of this is someone being courageous and yet not virtuous in any other way.
Socrates argues that we are mistaken in calling someone courageous in situations where they take risks foolishly. Who are the people who are confident of themselves in doing this or that? Protagoras sees that the confident are always the people who have special knowledge, and Socrates' conclusion is that courage is related to wisdom. Without knowledge, taking risks is madness, not courageous. But Protagoras counters this with the charge that confidence alone does not make one courageous. Perhaps being truly courageous comes from also being confident, but not all confident people are courageous.
Socrates shifts the direction of inquiry at this point to pose a question about knowledge. In effect, is knowledge our master or is it a slave to everything else in us? Protagoras agrees with Socrates that knowledge is master. Socrates is especially concerned about our "knowledge of good and evil" and the question of whether one who knows what is best will not, in fact, do what is best. Socrates leads us through a number of examples in which the general point is that pleasure is good and pain is evil. When we become confused about pleasures and pains being good or evil, it is usually because there is some conflict over time. Hence, drunkeness is evil, not because it is unpleasant, but because it involves long-term pains; equally, a surgeon's treatment is good, not because it involves various pains, but because it seeks long-term pleasures.
What is at issue here is the question of why a person would knowingly do evil, and the typical response is that the person was "overcome" in some way. In fact, people often say that one was overcome by pleasure. But Socrates maintains that, since we have identified pleasure with the good and pain with evil, we cannot say a person was overcome by pleasure since that would imply that the person did evil because overcome by good, an obvious contradiction.
What follows is Plato's resolution of this problem and it shows the influence of the Pythagoreans. It is, in some sense, a problem of measurement for we know that, when objects are distant, they appear smaller than objects that are nearby. It is only by learning the art of measurement that we can learn to judge the true magnitudes of things at diverse distances from us. Without this art, we can merely have opinions about true dimensions. All of this can be transferred to the discussion of good and evil, pleasure and pain. When we do a long-term evil to ourselves for the sake of an immediate pleasure (good), it is not that we have been "overcome by pleasure" but rather that we are ignorant of the balancing evil. We are guided by appearance instead of by reality.
At the end, Socrates returns to the question of courage. Does Protagoras continue to believe that one can be confident and still not courageous? It is, again, a matter of appearance and reality, ignorance and knowledge. For Socrates (Plato), the virtue courage is equivalent to "the knowledge of that which is and is not dangerous." The result is ironic since the initial question was whether virtue can be taught, with Socrates clearly being skeptical and Protagoras, confident. Now, however, with virtue arising out of knowledge, it must appear that virtue can be taught, as a matter of fact, and that Socrates' skepticism was misplaced. The dialogue ends but on the definite note that whether or not knowledge can be learned is now at issue. This will be taken up in the dialogue "Meno."
Plato's book-length dialogue "The Republic" is his chief work and, certainly, one of the most influential works in political philosophy ever written. The book is about 300 pages in Greek (about 400 in English translation). Along with "Meno," "Phaedo," and "Symposium," it is the product of his middle years, a period when Plato's Academy was still new, Athens was still struggling to find its political footing, and Plato was still somewhat involved in the affairs of Syracuse.
In the earliest editions, "The Republic" was divided into ten books and those divisions have largely remained in tact. However, as will be seen below, there are better organizations and some editions, today, ignore the original books. To compare across editions, the Greek pagination has become the only reliable basis. A significantly more serious problem centers around the Greek word, 'dikaiosune,' which has at least two rather different translations. Older translations almost always replaced this word with 'justice' so most readers have grown up thinking about "The Republic" as Plato's treatise on justice. Some new translations, however, replace this word with 'morality.' This creates a number of confusions. For modern audiences, morality seems equivalent to virtue; but for the Greeks justice is but one of the four virtues. At the same time, modern readers may feel uncomfortable talking about individuals being just, thinking that justice is only a matter for states. While I have convinced myself that both translations have their advantages, I will use "justice" throughout this discussion since that is consistent with most of the editions that are available.
Having said these introductory things about editions, "The Republic" is a book about justice. How does an individual become just? How does a state become just? How are states constituted? And, of the various constitutional forms, which are most likely to produce just states? While early translators and editors of the work divided it into ten books, it breaks most naturally into five distinct parts. Book I through the first third of Book II (367D), is an introductory Socratic dialogue of traditional form. Socrates is at the house of a rich and wise old man, Cephalus, in the company of Cephalus' son, Polemarchus, and Plato's brothers, Glaucon and Adeimantus. A well known Sophist, Thrasymachus, is also present. The topic of conversation turns to justice and Socrates questions Polemarchus, producing the usual results. While Polemarchus has been brought up well in the house of Cephalus and possesses the traditional wisdom of the poets, he does not really know how to interpret this into a contemporary framework or apply it to individual behavior. Thrasymachus is eventually drawn into the questioning and he proposes a cynical definition --- "Justice is nothing but the advantage of the stronger." Under Socrates' questioning, Thrasymachus is led to defend three assertions --- that selfishness is the ultimate principle of living well, that selfishness will make one strong, and that selfishness will make one happy. Socrates attempts to demonstrate that selfishness represents lack of wisdom, hence, is not a principle of virtue at all. Thus, the selfish life cannot be a just or happy life. Since it remains obvious to all listeners that the general belief is that selfish and manipulative people wind up famous, rich, and happy, Glaucon and Adeimantus wind up suggesting that Socrates must prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that a life of justice is good for its own sake even if otherwise unrewarded by wealth or reputation.
From here through Book IV (445E), Plato describes the ideal state and its virtues. He begins with an anthropological vision of how people may have come together originally to find protection and to seek survival. As the state becomes larger and more complex, the need for order and defense becomes greater, and Plato asserts that this is provided by the "spirited" and "philosophic" natures of its leaders, the Guardians. The bulk of this section of the book is devoted to an extensive critique of education. Plato makes it clear that the human soul is always vulnerable when embodied. (Plato believes in the reincarnation of immortal souls.) To become well educated, the person must avoid being corrupted and must be exposed to a gradual and well tuned program of learning in gymnastic, music, poetry, arithmetic, and geometry. (Plato would have had real problems with Acid Rock, Rap, TV, and cinematic violence!) Plato's state is divided into classes and its founding myth (the Myth of Metals) suggests that everyone is born with a specific metal essence which the Guardians can detect within the educational process; hence, regardless of the status of one's parents, citizens will be divided into their essential natures (iron, bronze, silver, and gold) and deployed in society appropriately (farming, crafts, military service, and ruling). At the end of this section, then, Plato suggests his answer to Glaucon and Adeimantus. Both the state and the individual are "organic" entities; indeed, they are exactly analogous "organisms," each consisting of three parts --- the ruling part, the spirited part, and the desiring part. These are easiest to see in the macrocosm of the state, where we see that the ruling part is the class of Guardians, the spirited part is the class of warrior Auxiliaries, and the desiring part is the class of citizens at large (farmers, fishermen, craftsmen, and artisans). With more difficulty, Plato suggests the tripartite division of the soul (a suggestive model that survives directly into Freudian analysis), the regulative mind, the fighting spirit, and the appetitive organs (what Freud mirrored in his superego, ego, and id). The section concludes with Plato defending the idea that his state is necessarily virtuous and that the analogous individual is also virtuous. For the state is wise, being ruled by well educated Guardians, courageous, being defended by educated and spirited Auxiliaries, and temperate, being well order and, hence, able to work harmoniously toward a common good. The state is just, in Plato's mind, exactly because each individual does that specific work to which he/she is best suited and submits to both the ordering principles and one's natural talents. Injustice is when an individual tries to become what he/she is not qualified for and steps outside of the internal ordering of the state. The virtues are applied analogously to the microcosm of individual life.
The third section consists of Books V (449A) through VII (541B). Having described both the ideal state and the ideal person, and having suggested what constitutes justice in each, Plato recognizes that he must demonstrate how it is possible to reach such ideals. His answer, the rule of wisdom, suggests that the best life is that of philosophy and the best ruler is the philosopher king.
The work concludes with two further sections. In Book VIII (543) through IX (592B), Plato offers an extensive discussion of how the state will decline into corruption if it abandons the rule of wisdom. First it slides into the stage of Timocracy (the rule of honor), then into the stage of Oligarchy (the rule of wealth), then the stage of Democracy (the rule of the whole), and finally the stage of Tyranny (the rule of a despot). (The pathology of Fascist tyrannies rising out of democratic republics, in the first half of this century, was well anticipated by Plato.) Plato includes the analogical decline of the individual. In Book X (595), Plato concludes with a discussion of the complex interrelationships between the arts and statecraft; he follows this (614B) with a myth, tying the whole discussion into a classic story of the struggle of the soul to lead a good life.
In this discussion, we will begin Book II at the end of the introductory conversation with Thrasymachus and others, at the house of Cephalus. From here (367D) forward, the style takes a radical change of direction away from the dialogue style of Plato's early Socratic works and toward a monologue lecture style. The next natural division is at the end of Book IV (445E).
Socrates has been challenged to define justice and to demonstrate that the just person is happy. At the beginning of this section, Socrates suggests an analogy between the individual and the state. They are both organic wholes and Plato believes that they both express the classic virtues. The suggestion is that we should defer consideration of individuals and talk, instead, about states. The state being larger will show us the virtues in the large; hence, it will be easier to see justice in the example of the state. At the end of this section, Plato returns to the analogy and, having discovered what justice is in the state, he carries the analogy back to the individual to complete the task by defining justice in the individual.
The majority of the discussion occurs between these two parts and is a thorough consideration of how states come into being, what their needs are, how they should be organized and directed by a reliable guardian class, how the guardians should be educated, and how the guardians should live. By the end of this discussion, Plato has divided out a special mature class of guardians as the true guardian rulers and left the bulk as auxiliaries who continue to hold responsibility for maintaining order and defending the state. It is a three-class state (guardian rulers, guardian auxiliaries, and craft-workers) and Plato justifies the separation of classes with his Myth of the Metals, recognizing that every state requires a "noble lie" as its foundation. It is important to recognize that the "metals" represent "inner strengths" or attributes of the people and not merely accidental features that they have acquired. The state is expected to mirror the natures of the individual people who live in it, with people playing the roles appropriate to their natures.
Plato's view of how states come into being represents interesting anthropological speculation. It tends to focus attention on people's activities and talents and, as a consequence, it tends to ignore the idea that society evolved our of extended families and tribes. It also tends to ignore any idea of a natural tendency to associate or desire companionship. Basically, for Plato, states emerge because people are best at doing one thing so, in the face of specialization, states can grow in complexity of filling needs only by acquiring more diverse people. Eventually, as complexity increases, states need internal organization and direction; they also clearly need an adequate defense against changing political environments. The people who will provide organization, direction, and defense will be called guardians. From here onward, Plato devotes himself to the guardians.
Plato lays out an elaborate plan for the education of the guardians. It will expose them to the best influences in literature, music, and physical preparation. Needless to say, much of what is presently available will not be usable. Literature and music, for instance, must provide the best educational stimuli; they cannot merely reflect the inventive accidents of their artists. A contemporary audience is shocked by the degree to which Plato would control the educational resources to which the guardians are exposed. One should ask, however, whether one can really defend the results of our own laissez faire attitudes. For Plato, what is involved is the most important aspect of life, namely, the best start toward a life of acquiring wisdom.
Once the education of the guardians is described, Plato describes how the guardians will be tested and divided into the ruling guardians (those who are wisest and can rule) and the auxiliary guardians (those who will be used for organization and defense). It is clear that Plato's society has three rigidly defined classes and even Plato recognizes that this will not obviously be approved by normal people. It is essential, in the founding of the state, to make a "noble lie" which people grow up with and makes stratification into classes natural to them. This is the "Myth of Metals." The people will grow up believing that there are three different inner natures that the rulers of the state can discover within the education process. Thus, through education, the children will be separated and start their paths to realize their particular inner natures. It is important to recognize that the chief aspect of inner nature that Plato has in mind is access to wisdom. The stronger the inner nature, the less important are external things (wealth, activity, etc.). The weaker the inner nature, the more important are external things (working through crafts, agriculture, fishing, etc.). Lies will be balanced between internal and external realms as appropriate.
How then will the guardians live? There are two determining factors. First, given what has been said above, their external world will be very sparse. Second, they must avoid other possible means of corruption. They must remain focused on the good of society. The ideal mode of living, then, is a commune in which they are constantly within a social focus. They are all brothers and sisters. Property and privileges are unknown.
With the ideal state fully described, Plato is prepared to consider its virtues. The Greek conception of virtue suggests that the state should be wise, courageous, temperate, and just. To find justice, Plato proceeds through the virtues in this order. The state is wise, of course, because it is ruled by the wisest among the people. The state is courageous because its defense is in the hands of the wise and caring auxiliaries. But what are temperance and justice in the state? Temperance is the state's ability to overcome diverse or disparate aims or motives and, hence, to continue on a constructive path of development. The state's temperance derives from the fact that the classes work together effectively. Justice, finally, lies in the fact that each class does the work for which it is intended and qualified, submitting itself to the authority of ordering principles.
At this point, Plato must employ the analogy between individual and state in order to discover the virtues of the individual as "read" from the virtues of the state. Before he can do this, he must demonstrate that the analogy holds in detail. Thus, since the state possesses three classes, Plato must argue that we can reasonably find three divisions in individuals, indeed, in the souls of individuals. Since we have no capacity to see into the souls of men, the argument must be made by inference; and the principle of inference that Plato employs is that tensions, indecisiveness, and inconsistent behaviors in individuals demonstrate division of opposing factors within the soul. Plato develops examples of several situations that lead him to conclude that each soul can be divided into a desiring faction, a reasoning faction, and a spirited faction. It is no surprise that these closely parallel the classes of his ideal state. It is more surprising, perhaps, that this three-part division has survived 2400 years in various philosophical and psychological treatises. It is very close, indeed, to Freud's analysis of the human psyche (for which Freud used the German word 'Seele' also translatable as "soul") into the Id ('das Es' in German or "the It"), the Ego ('das Ich' in German or literally "the I"), and the Superego ('das ber-Ich' in German or "the Over-I" also called "Conscience" or ruling reason). Nietzsche had suggested a similar division 50 years earlier.
The individual interpretation of the virtues is now clear. Obviously, courage comes from the so-called spirited faction; and wisdom comes from the reasoning faction. Temperance, evidently, means that the complex of three factions is balanced and properly organized so as to lead the individual on a constructive path. Justice means that each faction of the individual performs its intended duty to the organism and no faction tries to usurp another's role. For instance, an individual would become less just if the desiring part were to begin to take over a portion of the reasoning faculty.
At this point, since Plato has now defined justice, one should look back at the definitions offered in the introductory section of The Republic. In particular, it is interesting to look at the definition given by Cephalos and his son, Polemarchus. Cephalos suggested that the just man has lived in harmony with human society. Polemarchos suggested following the poetic wisdom that we "give back what is owed to each." Plato's suggestion is not that far removed, but he has given both an explicit context.
By the end of Book IV, Plato had completed his description of the ideal state, an aristocracy of wisdom, and he had used that description to interpret the concepts of wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice. Also, he completed his analogy between individual and state so that he could extend his interpretation to the virtues of the individual. Indeed, in Plato's mind, the state and the individual share the same virtues and also the same possibilities of decline from virtue.
At the beginning of Book V, Plato is beginning to organize himself to describe the manifold ways in which both the state and the individual can decline and become corrupted. However, he is interrupted and these descriptions are, then, left until Books VIII and IX. Books V, VI, and VII offer answers to the questions that the audience now pose. Plato is reticent to answer these because he knows the answers will be unpopular and difficult to believe since they certainly contradict Athenian traditions. Plato conceives of these as three great waves of increasing difficulty --- the role of women, the structure and disposition of families, and the authority to rule.
Beginning at 451c, Plato takes up the role of women in his ideal state. The thesis that Plato will pursue is that men and women should be treated as equals and play all of the same roles as qualified by their individual natures. But won't it be argued that men and women have radically different natures such that men will have their own roles and women, entirely separate ones?
Well, Plato sees only two genuine differences between men and women. Women are equipped by nature to bear children and women, in his opinion, are generally weaker physically. When it comes to various tasks, we see that men and women can both try to do various things, though men are often better in some and women better in others. But this both demonstrates that men and women can do the same things and that more common education could erode the observed differences in performance. In effect, Plato argues that, in a good state, we should strive to prepare everyone to develop their best potential, male or female, and that the state will be best served by creating, in this way, the largest population of excellence. We should focus attention on inner natures and potential and not on superficial differences.
This ends the first argument but Plato imagines that the second argument will be an even greater challenge. At 457d, he introduces the second thesis, that the Guardians will live as one "family" --- communally --- husbands, wives, and children all in common. [NOTE: Plato never deals with the question of whether this pattern of family life should also apply to the less educated merchants, craftsmen, and farmers. One suspects, however, that his answer would be negative. The difference between metals prevails. The highest have a strong inner life, while the lowest must have strong outer lives. That which can be foregone in the outer life by the Guardians must still be realized in the outer lives of the lower people.] Plato proceeds by dividing the issue, first, by exploring the plan and its benefits to the state and, second, by arguing for its possibility.
The proposal is indeed amazing. Plato would have all Guardians (and Auxiliaries) live together communally with different generations calling each other brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, etc. Furthermore, he would carry his general idea of "best natures" to the obvious conclusion that only the best should mate with the best and bring forth the best of children. Since this will obviously defy natural feelings, the rulers of the state will have to organize the matrimonial process carefully, making matrimony very sacred and providing for selection on some apparently competitive basis so that the losers will blame their bad luck rather than the decisions of the rulers. Plato clearly believes that it will be best to practice abortion or exposure to maintain the quality of children. Now, having described the plan, he faces the challenge of demonstrating its benefits (462a). Plato's argument is distinctly a matter of public versus private life. When we are allowed private property and interests, the natural tendency is to try to gain whatever we can, even when it is not naturally ours. This leads to discord and disagreement. The great benefit to the state, in Plato's system of Guardian families, is the holding of all property in common so that the greatest accord between rulers is promoted. In Plato's vision, the Guardians take joy in the same things and feel sorrow in the same situations. They are together in promoting the good of the state. They struggle to protect what is collectively theirs.
After some further elaboration of how the Guardian class will conduct its communal life, including how they will conduct themselves among all Hellenic peoples, Plato is challenged to demonstrate that this is all possible. This, in fact, is the third great wave, or argument, that he has anticipated. At 473d, he introduces his final thesis, that philosophers should be the kings of the ideal state! From here to the end of Book VII, Plato discusses the role of philosophy.
The philosopher is a lover of wisdom; and like all lovers of any kind, the philosopher loves the whole of wisdom. But how do we separate those who merely dabble in everything from the true philosophers? Plato observes that the true philosophers are "lovers of the vision of truth." This requires some explanation. What Plato has in mind is a person who recognizes the universal (or absolute) in any sphere and distinguishes it from the particulars that simply participate in it. The philosopher sees and loves absolute beauty through his experience of beautiful things.
From here to the end of Book V, Plato develops the differences between ignorance, opinion, and knowledge. In his view, these are related to non-being, becoming, and being, respectively. To know something is to possess a kind of certainty and permanence regarding it. But what would be the proper objects of knowledge in this sense? Only being, as such, namely, that which truly is, could be the proper object of knowledge. While this may seem obvious, the difficult issue for Plato is to convince us that opinion is intermediate between knowledge and ignorance, whose proper object is non-being. Thus, the proper objects of opinion must lie intermediate between non-being and being. So the proper objects of opinion lie in the realm of becoming and that is precisely where we live. We can only have opinions about the things of our world; and we can see this within the fact that everything we address in this world is in flux and of degrees. A philosopher, then, is a lover of wisdom, that is, a lover of knowledge of being, of that which truly is. Those who remain lovers of the things in becoming's realm remain lovers of opinion only and have no sight of truth.
Having pointed out that philosophers are true lovers of wisdom and that not all who call themselves philosophers qualify, Plato stands in the position of needing to clarify what wisdom is and what the problems are with addressing wisdom. That is, why is the goal of philosophy so difficult and, hence, why is it so rarely realized? Yet, if a philosopher were king, why would this so obviously promote a truly virtuous state? This discussion continues throughout Book VI.
In the end, the problem really revolves around the fact that knowledge (and wisdom) is not what we would first expect or that the multitude would judge it. Knowledge is not present in experience, as such; but it can only be recollected, in very abstract ways, through the midwifery of experience. Knowledge addresses that which is, that is, those objects that are found in the realm of being. These are the proper objects of knowledge because they only are permanent and unchanging. All experience, on the other hand, is in the realm of becoming; these objects are always in a state of flux. Thus, it is only by a well ordered, disciplined, and faithfully carried out program of educational experience that the individual can address the objects of knowledge. Indeed, our only access to knowledge lies in the facts of reincarnation and of the individual soul's relationship to the realm of being.
Plato considers the realm of becoming as a world in which we sustain sense impressions of objects, especially through sight, and in which the sun plays the crucial role of illuminating objects for us to see. In the realm of being, another entity provides analogous "illumination" of these objects so that the minds of our souls can apprehend them. This entity is the Idea of the Good. Plato pursues the analogy consistently; for instance, there is no way that we can "look directly" into the Idea of the Good than we could see directly into the sun. Yet it is the Good which illumines all of the Ideas, or objects of being.
There is a crucial concept that potentially connects the two realms, making it possible for us to use the medium of experience to recollect our knowledge of the Ideas. That is the concept of "participation." Thus, Plato frequently says that something participates in its ideal; e.g., a particular chair participates in the essence of being a chair. An elaboration of the concept of participation was a problem that Plato never really solved and that Aristotle carried forward into his own approach to metaphysics and epistemology.
In Book VII, Plato expands on his metaphysical and epistemological ideas by telling the Allegory of the Cave. In this story, the interior of the cave is likened to the realm of becoming and the exterior, daylight landscape is likened to the realm of being, illuminated by the Idea of the Good. All are in chains in the cave except one who somehow breaks the chains and begins the long journey upward to the exterior world. Once one has seen what the world is really like, why would one want to go back to the cave? But also, if one did go back and tell the others about the real world, wouldn't he/she be laughed at and, probably, punished or imprisoned? Thus, if a philosopher is to rule, he will have to do it out of obligation and certainly won't do it out of desire.
In the remainder of this book, Plato discusses the educational process which, in real life, will replace this metaphorical unchaining. A crucial idea is the starting point. While Plato believes that all education should begin in the perfection of the body with gymnastic, he sees arithmetic, number in particular, as the starting point of the long journey toward recollection of knowledge. What is it about arithmetic? Plato believes that we discover a fundamental puzzle in arithmetic; it is the puzzle of "the one and the many." We have already noticed the one and the many in sense experience, perhaps. For we can see that a single object can be divided up into many attributes. At the same time, we can see many trees, of some distinct kind, which, nevertheless, represent one tree. Arithmetic, in Plato's mind, gives us an abstract theater in which to explore this concept and, importantly, to make the jump from the work of the senses to the work of the mind.
The book concludes as Plato gives some estimate to the ages at which we can expect different kinds of knowledge to be achieved. It is a sobering schedule, in the face of our own concepts of education, since Plato does not imagine that we will have made great progress toward dialectical knowledge until we are well advanced in years.
From a literary point of view, this is probably Plato's most elegant piece of work. The setting is a dinner party that was held during the late period of Athenian greatness. Socrates may be in his early 50s. The participants recline on couches and are served. After dinner, the normal course of such a party might be heavy (often mandatory) drinking; however, in this case, because of partying on the previous night, the participants agree to calmer things. The flute player is sent off and they begin a challenge to oration --- indeed, to sing the praises of Love --- and proceed in turns around the table. There are six speeches, including that composed by Socrates. The first is by Phaedrus and he offers an accurate statement of Love's position in traditional mythology. Love is the oldest of the gods and is the original source of all that benefits man. Furthermore, by bringing lover and beloved together in relationship, Love is the greatest teacher of virtue (179d, 180b). This is a point to which Socrates' argument will return, later; typical of Socrates and Plato, there is an assumption here that mythic material contains wisdom which merely requires delivery and clarification. Pausanias presents the next speech; he was the disciple of a Sophist. He divides Love into two --- heavenly and common --- and notes that the latter is marked by lust for bodily pleasures and may pair either sex. Heavenly love, however, resides only between well chosen, intelligent males. Pausanias extols the virtues of this kind of love and notes that it is inimical to tyranny, belonging more to elevated societies. Eryximachus, the physician, offers a scientific analysis of Love, noting its natural being among plants, animals, and men, and interpreting it in terms of harmonies of the elements, etc. In all of this, he follows the pattern of thinking established by the speculative philosophers prior to Socrates. Perhaps the most famous of the speeches is that of Aristophanes, the noted comic poet and author of "Clouds," who speculates that all were formerly "double beings" that were cleaved in two M-M, M-F, and F-F, and that men and women have sought their natural mate ever since. The speeches culminate with that of Agathon, a great tragic poet. Agathon begins with the premise that Love is the youngest, not oldest god, and that he is associated with the young and with youth always. He builds his praises of Love's virtues to a veritable crescendo, indeed, to excess.
Socrates, making fun of Agathon's excessiveness, supposes that the group had been in search of the truth about Love and not mere praise. So Socrates [never invite a philosopher to a dinner party] sets off on an investigation of Love's true character. Socrates begins by questioning Agathon and helps him to the conclusion that, while we seem to seek a person, in love, we actually seek to possess beauty and goodness through the person. After this, he tells a long tale of love, derived from Diotima of Mantineia.
Diotima persuades Socrates that Love is not a god at all since Love, after all, is always in a state of wanting or desiring. Rather than a god, Love is in the middle ground between man and god, spanning the distance and bringing them close. As a great spirit (daimon) Love points the way toward love of the good and, especially, generation and birth. As Diotima explains, we seek immortality in any way we can. We can be pregnant in body so as to produce offspring; but we can also be pregnant in mind, or soul, so as to produce great and beautiful works (206c). And best of all is one who produces great institutions such as the state (209a). The tale of Diotima concludes with the way we are led to love the beautiful, following the ladder-of-beauty, to the final contemplation of absolute Beauty (211c). And Socrates concludes that there is no greater helpmate in our path to this wonderful contemplation of Beauty than Love himself. (Note, here, that Socrates, through Diotima, has regained the concept of love as teacher of virtue but within a more substantial explanation and understanding.)
A very drunken Alcibiades invades the party, at this point, and is seated between Agathon and Socrates. Alcibiades, having heard about the evening thus far, launches into a lengthy oration in praise, not of love, but of Socrates. Drunk as Alcibiades is, he manages to provide a wonderful picture of Socrates, the sensitive lover and most temperate of men.
The evening ends with Socrates, Aristophanes, and Agathon alone, late at night, drinking heavily. Socrates is holding forth on the similarity of art in comedy and tragedy; and the two poets are just barely able to keep up with the discourse.
I have to admit that, by a half hour into class time, Monday, I wondered why I had assigned Plato's "Symposium," early last summer, when I thought through the readings for this course. I've thought a lot about that since. It's not unusual, mind you, that the reading of a work goes differently from what you anticipated. It's hard to foresee in advance where discussions will go, what the "personality" of a class will be, whether it'll be dark-and-rainy on that day, etc. But why the "Symposium?"
From a structural point of view, "Symposium" closes the arguments begun in "Lysis." It tells us what Plato presumes that Socrates was reaching for as he questioned the boys about love and friendship. From a literary point of view, it gives Plato a chance to picture life in the late days of Athens' greatness; these are men who are warm with friendship themselves, at the very least. It is a time, almost 2400 years distant from us; yet how distant is it really. From a philosophical point of view, it advances some ideas about love. It's "argument" is very much like all of Plato's dialogues. It begins with a presentation of traditional, mythic and poetic treatments; it advances to whatever enlightenment contemporary rhetoric can provide; and it culminates in a statement of Plato's theory of the good and the beautiful, with a concluding, sentimental idealization of Plato's teacher in all of this, Socrates. The round-table format even allows him to toy with tragedy and comedy.
So why should love interest us? And why should it be difficult to discuss? Is sex the source of embarrassment? It's hard to imagine, in our world, that sexuality is the problem; and the dialogue itself makes it clear that there is much more to love and friendship than sexuality. Is that the problem? That the dialogue takes love seriously and suggests that we sing its praises? Yet when we turn around and look about in the world, what we see is love operating in widely diverse ways. Not just incidentally but pervasively. However, if I am right about that, isn't it interesting to ask whether we mean the same thing by "love?" Are loving and being loved powerful forces that are so central to being human that they have not changed in any fundamental way over thousands of years? Why do we love?
I think that "Symposium" is a wonderful piece of literature. It has been read and admired for 2400 years; yet it is evidently also "just another empty and meaningless rag by yet another dead white man," in the judgment of a society that will be lucky if it is even remembered in 100 years. Frankly, I am getting pretty tired of hearing that. There is nothing wrong with dead people so long as they were alive once. The real bummer is being alive and dead at the same time. Sometimes I think that, in our society, we take great pains to deaden everything and don't really want to admit that we're alive and well. Yes, we are surrounded by some awful things, today, but the only way to get beyond that is to grasp the good and the beautiful, just as Plato said. Did someone teach us what it is? Or did we find it by ourselves? And if we found it, was there someone loved who helped us?
[FOOTNOTE, in passing: It's interesting that the most difficult part of this dialogue for us to handle is the intimate relationships proposed between older men and youths. Yet, today, if you have the experience of joining a group of men, as in the Men's Movement, men who have come together to offer mutual council and support, one of the first things that happens to these men is an outpouring of pain and grief and tears, a genuine abyss of grieving for lost fathers --- fathers who are dead, or never were alive; fathers who never saw their sons, even if they walked through the same house; fathers who were alcoholics and abusive --- grieving for something that only men can give each other and sounding the tragic absence of what could have been and needed to be. I have seen it many times.]
The Phaedrus is unusual in several ways. First, Socrates is engaged with just one person and shares the better part of a day with him. Second, quite the opposite of Socrates' custom, which is to stay well with the city walls, Phaedrus and Socrates walk out into the country and have their conversation in a lovely spot of natural beauty. And finally, we find Socrates in a very playful mood.
Phaedrus has brought along a short speech given by Lysias and reads it to Socrates. It is a typical piece of Sophistic rhetoric which takes the position that, in intimate relationships, the non-lover is always to be preferred to the lover. In effect, non-lovers are directed by their own self-interest; lovers are driven by passion. Passion produces a wide variety of problems --- from jealousy onward. On the other hand, the group of non-lovers is a large group from which to select a companion, and the group of lovers is always small.
Socrates is so taken by the speech and by the natural beauties of the environment, that he proposes his own rhetorical defense of the non-lover, suggesting that he can present the arguments much more convincingly. Socrates' speech takes the form of a lecture to a young boy and convinces him that the lover is gripped by a kind of madness, culminating in the warning that "as wolves cherish lambs, so lovers befriend boys." (241d) All of this is ironic since the prevailing social custom in well-to-do Athenian male society is exactly this, older men striking up loving relationships with bright young men. Socrates himself seems quite enamored with Phaedrus.
While the speech has been well organized and is rhetorically convincing, Socrates realizes that it has been fundamentally misdirected; and he says, "I might win honor among human beings by sinning against the gods." (242d) Love is, after all, divine. Socrates must correct the wrong that rhetoric has caused; he must offer a second speech (244b through 257b). This begins by agreeing that love is a kind of madness; but it asserts that love is a divine madness. And divine madness is often a great good.
Since Socrates' intention is to show that love is a great good to the soul of a person, he begins with a lengthy discussion about the nature of the soul. The discussion is an amplification of the picture Plato developed in the Phaedo. First of all, the soul of man is immortal. Secondly, it has a specific form. Third, the soul's existence is an eternal cycle through various phases. The immortality is defended on the grounds that the soul is the sort of thing which changes from an inner need. Things which are changed from outer forces eventually fall into decomposition. The things which represent the force of change itself and which change from within have no origin themselves; and hence they also have no end. In form, the soul is something like a chariot with two powerful horses and a charioteer --- all winged. While the horses of the gods are strong and upright, the human soul's horses are divided. One is noble and tends toward the good and the other is weak and tends toward the bad. The charioteer must handle this divided team, with difficulty, in an attempt to rise to the best that he can. (One can easily see the basis in Plato's philosophy which the early Christian fathers, in Hellenistic Alexandria, worked into a comprehensive theology organized around the life and death of Christ.) The cycle takes the soul through an enriching period of existence in relation to what is universally real, the realm of ideas, but it also passes through a traumatic stage in human life, where it loses its wings and attaches itself to a body, losing most of its memory of what is truly real in the universe.
According to Plato, knowledge is what the soul possesses in relation to that which is real, the Ideas. During human life, the soul is tremendously confused by the senses and thinks itself to have knowledge about all the objects that it finds in the sense world. But all we can ever have about these changing, mortal objects is opinion and belief. Through certain experiences, the soul is vaguely reminded of its true knowledge and, if this process of recollection is guided by dialectic, the soul may regain some level of knowledge of the Ideas. For Plato, the Ideas are hierarchically arranged along moral lines. That is, the preeminent concept is the Idea of the Good, and around this Idea are gathered the Ideas of the four classic Greek virtues --- courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. Thus the soul's path to virtue is through the discipline of knowledge. For Plato, we always err out of ignorance. The exercise of dialectic is always directed toward knowledge and, hence, toward moral ends.
It is with this in mind that we should regard Socrates' next discussion (249d), for the experience of love is an opportunity to recollect the realm of the Ideas through the observation of Beauty participating in a beautiful person. If the loving relationship becomes a dialectical process through the complex of relations that are inevitable, the participants will be guided through ascending levels in recognizing the true nature of Beauty. Because the relationship of loving humans is tied to all the fundamental ways in which humans live with each other and in society, the lessons in beauty will inevitably lead to knowledge of virtue itself. Thus, the divine benefit of love is ultimately its constructive force in leading to virtuous life through recollection of what the soul may know of the realities of the universe.
There is good reason to believe that this is the direction in which the argument of Euthyphro should have taken. That is, holiness, or piety, is something like a love of the gods. But a loving relationship with the gods has a very definite aim, namely, a very direct discipline of the virtues. It is the virtues that stand as the true aim of piety.
Through the remainder of the Phaedrus, and on the basis of the three speeches given, Socrates and Phaedrus discuss rhetoric and dialectic. The question is whether we should not prefer speaking and writing that is directed at knowledge of the truth. Doubtless there are many speech writers in the world, especially in the courts, who are ready to convince us just for the experience of convincing us, or worse, for their private gain. But there are innumerable examples of real situations in which we are involved where it is always obvious that what we want, what has genuine utility for us, is the best knowledge available. The discussion concludes with a prayer by Socrates, indicative of his commitments. "Grant that I may develop inward beauty and that my external possessions be in friendly accord with what is within. May I consider the wise rich . . ."
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