This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
[430a]
and
exercises of the body. The sole aim of our contrivance was that they should
be convinced and receive our laws like a dye as it were, so that their
belief and faith might be1 fast-colored both about the
things that are to be feared and all other things because of the fitness of
their nature and nurture, and that so their dyes might not be washed out by
those lyes that have such dread2 power to scour
our faiths away, pleasure more potent than any detergent or abstergent
[430b]
to accomplish this, and pain and
fear and desire more sure than any lye. This power in the soul, then, this
unfailing conservation of right and lawful belief3 about things to be and not to be feared is what I
call and would assume to be courage, unless you have something different to
say.” “No, nothing,” said he; “for I
presume that you consider mere right opinion about the same matters not
produced by education, that which may manifest itself in a beast or a
slave,4 to have little or nothing to do with law5 and that you would call it
by another name than courage.”
[430c]
“That is most true,” said I. “Well
then,” he said, “I accept this as bravery.”
“Do so,” said I, “and you will be right with
the reservation6 that it
is the courage of a citizen. Some other time,7 if it please you, we will
discuss it more fully. At present we were not seeking this but justice; and
for the purpose of that inquiry I believe we have done enough.”
“You are quite right,” he said.
[430d]
“Two things
still remain,” said I, “to make out in our city,
soberness8 and the object of the whole
inquiry, justice.” “Quite so.” “If
there were only some way to discover justice so that we need not further
concern ourselves about soberness.” “Well, I, for my
part,” he said, “neither know of any such way nor would
I wish justice to be discovered first if that means that we are not to go on
to the consideration of soberness. But if you desire to please me, consider
this before that.” “It would certainly
[430e]
be very wrong9 of me not to desire
it,” said I. “Go on with the inquiry then,” he
said. “I must go on,” I replied, “and viewed
from here it bears more likeness to a kind of concord and harmony than the
other virtues did.” “How so?”
“Soberness is a kind of beautiful order10 and a continence of certain pleasures and appetites, as they
say, using the phrase ‘master of himself’ I know not
how; and there are other similar expressions that as it were point us to the
same trail. Is that not so?” “Most certainly.”
“Now the phrase ‘master of himself’ is an
absurdity, is it not? For he who is master of himself would also be subject
to himself,
1 γίγνοιτο is process;ἐκπλύναι(aorist) is a single event (μή).
2 δεινά: it is not fanciful to feel the unity of Plato's imagination as well as of his thought in the recurrence of this word in the δεινὰ καὶ ἀναγκαῖα of the mortal soul in Timaeus 69 C.
3 Cf. Protagoras 360 C-D, Laws 632 C, Aristotle Eth. Nic. 1116 b 24. Strictly speaking, Plato would recognize four grades, (1) philosophic bravery, (2) the bravery of the ἐπίκουροι here defined, (3) casual civic bravery in ordinary states, (4) animal instinct, which hardly deserves the name. Cf. Laches 196 E, Mill, Nature, p. 47 “Consistent courage is always the effect of cultivation,” etc., Unity of Plato's Thought, nn. 46 and 77.
4 Phaedo 69 B.
5 νόμιμον of the Mss. yields quite as good a meaning as Stobaeus's μόνιμον. The virtuous habit that is inculcated by law is more abiding than accidental virtue.
6 γε marks a reservation as 415 Eστρατιωτικάς γε, Politicus 30 E, Laws 710 Aτὴν δημώδη γε. Plotinus, unlike some modern commentators, perceived this. Cf. Enn. i. 2. 3. In Phaedo 82 Aπολιτικήν is used disparagingly of ordinary bourgeois virtue. In Xenophon Rep. Lac. 10. 7 and Aristotle Eth. NIc. iii. 8. 1 (1116 a 17) there is no disparagement. The word is often used of citizen soldiery as opposed to professional mercenaries.
7 This dismissal of the subject is sometimes fancifully taken as a promise of the Laches. Cf. Unity of Plato's Thought, nn. 77 and 603.
8 Matthew Arnold's word. But cf. on 398 D and 430 E—“sobriety,” “temperance,” “Besonnenheit.”
9 εἰ μὴ ἀδικῶ is idiomatic, “I ought to.” Cf. 608 D, 612, Menexenus 236 B.
10 Cf. Gorgias 506 E ff.σωφροσύνη and σωφρονεῖν sometimes mean etymologically of sound mind or level head, with or without ethical suggestion, according to the standpoint of the spaeker. Cf. Protagoras 333 B-C. Its two chief meanings in Greek usage are given in 389 D-E: subordination to due authority, and control of appetite, both raised to higher significance in Plato's definition. As in the case of bravery, Plato distinguishes the temperamental, the bourgeois, the disciplined, and the philosophical virtue. But he affects to feel something paradoxical in the very idea of self-control, as perhaps there is. Cf. Laws 626 E ff., 863 D, A.J.P. vol. xiii. pp. 361 f., Unity of Plato's Thought, nn. 77 and 78.
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5 & 6 translated by Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1969.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
Purchase a copy of this text (not necessarily the same edition) from Amazon.com
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.