Advantage

Use in the book

At 113d Alcibiades makes his most plausible attempt to recover his position as a political adviser. The Greeks, he says, think questions of justice obvious and generally deliberate instead about what will be advantageous if they act. He appeals to experience: some have profited from great wrongdoing, others have acted justly without advantage. This is his claim, not a neutral description endorsed by Socrates. It combines an assertion about actual deliberation with an ethical distinction and an implied claim that Alcibiades understands expediency even if he cannot explain justice.

Socrates initially separates these issues. Even granting that just and advantageous things differ, Alcibiades still owes an account of knowing what benefits human beings and why. The same learning-or-discovery questions apply. Socrates declines to repeat them at length because Alcibiades dislikes a reused argument; he does not concede expertise in advantage. He then asks Alcibiades to demonstrate that justice and advantage differ. Being unable to persuade one competent interlocutor would be an awkward preparation for persuading the Assembly.

The subsequent proof works through evaluative links, not through a survey of political outcomes. All just things are conceded fine. Alcibiades resists the further identification of fine and good by invoking rescue in battle: rescuers may die, while men who fail to help survive. Socrates separates the courage displayed from the wounds or death incurred. Rescue is fine insofar as courageous, and courage is a good Alcibiades would not exchange away; its bad aspect is different. At this point the explicit result is qualified: nothing fine is bad insofar as it is fine. A single course can still have good and bad aspects.

At 116b Socrates adds another route. Fine conduct is doing well; those who do well are happy through possessing goods, which they acquire by doing well and finely. Because εὖ πράττειν can mean both acting well and faring well, this step binds right conduct to success in living. At 116c the conclusion is generalized: whatever is found fine will also be found good, “from this argument at least.” Good things are then conceded advantageous. Recalling the earlier premise that just actions are fine produces the conclusion that just things are advantageous at 116d.

Readers should distinguish the conclusion the speakers accept from a proof that every immediate external consequence of a just act is favorable. The rescue example expressly preserves death and injury as bad. Nor does the chain establish the converse proposition that anything apparently profitable is just. Socrates' recap at 116d–e speaks of just and advantageous things as the same, but the stated inferential route establishes that the just is advantageous through the fine and good; it does not separately test every candidate advantage. The ethical pressure is to reconsider what counts as genuine benefit, rather than to guarantee military survival.

The practical result is diagnostic. Alcibiades cannot maintain his original distinction under questioning, yet does not possess a settled replacement. At 117a he includes advantageous and nonadvantageous things among the matters on which he wanders; at 118a these are among the greatest matters. Later arguments about the benefits of virtue and the ruinous effects of unrestricted power continue this problem in different vocabulary. Advantage is therefore a hinge between political calculation and self-examination, not a self-sufficient alternative to justice.

Places to read

1. 113d–114b2Alcibiades distinguishes profit and advantage from justice; Socrates challenges both his knowledge and the distinction
2. 114d–115a2Socrates promises that the respondent will hear from himself that just things are advantageous
3. 115b–116a2The rescue example establishes aspect-qualified relations among fine, good, and bad
4. 116b–116e2Doing well and happiness lead to the accepted justice-to-advantage inference and renewed perplexity
5. 117a–118a23Advantageous and nonadvantageous matters belong to the unstable judgments of greatest consequence

Translation in this edition

The consistent “advantageous” preserves a term that “useful,” “profitable,” and “beneficial” might otherwise scatter. “Profited” at 113d renders λυσιτελεῖν, not a second occurrence of συμφέρειν. The supplied καί at 114e8 makes the promise “just things are also advantageous”; Burnet takes it from Stobaeus. The distinct value terms in the intermediate proof should remain distinct even where its conclusion connects them.

λυσιτελέω

Attested: ἐλυσιτέλησεν (elysitelēsen; 113d). To pay or prove profitable; Alcibiades claims that committing great wrongs has paid many people, motivating his separation of justice from advantage. Lexical identification: lemma: λυσιτελέω. See Advantage.

συμφέρω

Attested: τὰ συμφέροντα (ta sympheronta; 113d); συμφέροντά (sympheronta; 116d). At 113d: What is advantageous, proposed by Alcibiades as the real subject of political deliberation. At 116d: Advantageous, the predicate the argument establishes for just things. Lexical identification: lemma: συμφέρω. See Advantage.

Use in the book

The Phaedrus argument asks whether divinely sent love benefits lover and beloved and promises to defend the positive case. Benefit is therefore the disputed point, not an assumption that every kind of madness helps. The following distinctions among sources of madness are necessary to the argument.

Places to read

1. I.9.8The benefit of divinely sent love is set as the claim to be demonstrated.

Translation in this edition

“Benefit” makes the recipient’s good clear; “advantage” is a broader equivalent.