The Lovers

Outline

The divisions follow the argument. References are to Stephanus pages and sections, which stand in the margins of both pages of the text.

I. The school of Dionysius: is philosophizing fine? (132a–133b)

132a–b Socrates goes into the school of Dionysius the writing-master and finds two lads who appear to be quarreling “about either Anaxagoras or Oenopides”, drawing circles and “miming some inclinations” with their hands. He asks the lover beside him what they are so earnest about.

132b–c The athlete: “No: these two are prattling about the things up in the sky, and talking nonsense, philosophizing.” Socrates: “Young man, do you think philosophizing is shameful?”

132c His rival lover answers for him: “It is not like you, Socrates, even to ask this fellow”, who “has spent his whole life having his neck twisted, stuffing himself and sleeping”.

132d One lover had spent his time on music, the other on gymnastics. Socrates lets the athlete go and asks “the one who laid claim to being wiser” whether he thinks “philosophizing is fine or not”.

133a–b The lads fall silent and listen; Socrates is “dazzled”, and the wiser lover “no less on edge”. “If ever I thought philosophizing shameful, I would not even consider myself a man”, he says, loudly, “so that his beloved should hear him”.

II. Philosophy as much learning (133b–134c)

133b–c Can one know whether a thing is fine or shameful “if one did not know at all what it is”? Then what is philosophizing? “What else but what Solon says?”: “I grow old always learning many things”. The philosopher “must in this way always be learning one thing at least”.

133c–d Socrates asks “whether he thought philosophy was much learning”. “Entirely.” Fine, and “Good as well”.

133d–e Is the love of exercise also fine and good? The wiser lover answers “very ironically”: “To this fellow let my answer be that it is neither; to you, however, Socrates, I agree that it is both fine and good”. “Then in exercises too, do you think much labor is the love of exercise?” “Certainly, just as in philosophizing too I think much learning is philosophy.”

133e–134a Those who love exercise desire to have their bodies in good condition; “how could anyone … have his body in good condition from few labors, at least?”

134a–b The athlete, nudged into the argument: “even a pig would know that moderate labors put bodies in good condition; so how could a man not know it—a man, at any rate, sleepless and unfed, with an unrubbed neck, and thin with worries?” The lads laugh; the other blushes.

134b–c Socrates turns to the wiser lover: “Do you, for your part, now concede …?” He answers: “With this fellow I would very gladly contend … with you, however, I have no need to strive for victory against my own opinion”: “it is not the many but the moderate exercises that produce good condition in men.”

III. The moderate in body and soul: perplexity (134c–135a)

134c–d So with food and everything to do with the body, “what is moderate is most beneficial, not what is much or little”; and of the things given to the soul, the subjects of learning too.

134e The doctor or the trainer judges the moderate labors and food for the body, the farmer the sowing of seeds; “And about the planting and sowing of subjects of learning in the soul, whom would we justly ask, how many and what kind are moderate?”

135a “From there on we were all of us now full of perplexity”. Socrates, teasing, offers to ask the lads: “Or are we perhaps ashamed, as Homer said of the suitors …?”

IV. The philosopher as runner-up (135a–136b)

135a–b Which subjects of learning must the philosopher learn, “since it is not all, nor many”? The wiser lover: those that give “the greatest reputation for philosophy”, by seeming “experienced in all the crafts, or if not, in as many as possible”, knowing of them “whatever belongs to understanding, not whatever belongs to handiwork”.

135b–c As in carpentry, where “a top master builder” costs more than ten thousand drachmas? He agrees. Is it not impossible for one man to learn only two crafts in this way?

135c–d “Don’t take me that way, Socrates”: not “precisely, like the man who has the craft himself, but as is reasonable for a free and educated man”, able to follow the craftsman and “to contribute a judgment of his own, so as to seem the most accomplished and the wisest”.

135e–136a Socrates: the pentathletes fall short of the racers and wrestlers “in these men’s own events” but are “first among the other athletes”; so the man who has philosophized “becomes a kind of runner-up in everything”.

136a–b The wiser lover accepts the likeness: the philosopher is “not to be a slave to any one thing … but to have laid hold of all of them in moderation”.

V. Where is the philosopher useful? (136b–137b)

136b–c The good are useful, the base useless; philosophers useful, and “most useful”. “Come, then, let us find out … where are they actually useful to us, these runners-up? For it is plain that the philosopher is poorer than each of those who have the crafts, at least.”

136c–d In sickness, the doctor rather than “that runner-up”; in a storm at sea, the pilot rather than the philosopher. “Then so too in everything else: as long as there is any craftsman, the philosopher is not useful?”

136e “Then is the philosopher now a useless sort of man for us? For there always are craftsmen for us, I suppose …” “He was compelled to agree.”

136e–137b Socrates goes over what was agreed: by the wiser lover’s argument, “if philosophizing is having knowledge about the crafts in the way you mean, philosophers are base and useless as long as there are crafts among men”. “But I suspect, my friend, that they are not so”: philosophizing is not “being in earnest about the crafts, nor living as a busybody, stooping over things, nor learning much, but something else”, since being in earnest about the crafts is “a disgrace” and such men “are called menial”.

VI. Punishing, knowing oneself, temperance and justice (137b–138b)

137b–c The craft that makes horses and dogs best also punishes them rightly, and knows “the decent and the worthless”.

137c–d So with men: “the craft that makes men best is also the one that punishes them rightly and distinguishes the decent and the worthless”, for one and for many alike.

137d “What, then, is the knowledge that rightly punishes those in cities who are unruly and break the law? Is it not the judge’s?” No other is justice.

137e That by which men punish rightly is that by which they know the decent and the worthless (“By that”). Whoever knows one will know many, and whoever is ignorant of many is ignorant of one. A horse, an ox, a dog ignorant of the decent and base of its kind would be ignorant of itself.

138a A man ignorant of the decent and worthless men is ignorant of himself, “whether he is decent or base”. Being ignorant of oneself is “not being temperate”; then “knowing oneself is being temperate?” “I say so.” “This, then, it seems, is what the inscription at Delphi urges: to practice temperance and justice.”

138b That by which we punish rightly is justice, that by which we distinguish oneself and others temperance: “Then it is the same thing, both justice and temperance?” “It appears so.” “And indeed it is in this way that cities, too, are well ordered: when wrongdoers pay the penalty.”

VII. One craft of king and household manager (138b–c)

138b The statesman’s art is the same. When one man orders a city rightly, his name is “tyrant and king”, and he orders it “by the kingly and tyrannical craft”.

138c When one man on his own orders a household rightly, his name is “household manager and master”, and he orders it “by justice”. “And there is one craft: the kingly, the tyrannical, the statesman’s, the master’s, the household manager’s, justice, temperance.”

VIII. The philosopher must lead (138d–139a)

138d Is it shameful for the philosopher not to follow or contribute when a doctor or a craftsman speaks, but “not shameful” when a judge or a king does? “How could it not be shameful, Socrates, about matters so great, at least, to have nothing to contribute?”

138e Is the philosopher “a pentathlete and a runner-up” here too, “of no use as long as there is any one of these men”? Or “must himself punish, judging rightly, if his household is to be well ordered”? He concedes the second.

138e–139a When his friends or the city ask him to decide or judge, “it is shameful in these matters, my friend, to appear second or third and not to lead?” “I think so.”

139a “Then, my excellent friend, for us philosophizing is far from being either much learning or busying oneself with the crafts.” The wise one falls silent, “ashamed of what had been said before”; “the unlearned one said that it was so; and the others praised what had been said.”