Archer and bow

Use in the book

The archer is the last individually named practitioner in the opening series. He appears after the two musicians and immediately before “anyone at all, in sum, of the craftsmen or of the other intelligent men.” His compressed phrase, “or an archer a bow,” depends on the fuller construction of the preceding flute-player. The reader supplies the possession of an object worth nothing and the question whether its possessor thinks he gains from it.

That position gives the example a specific structural role. It is the point at which enumeration turns into generalisation. The argument no longer offers a separate exchange for each occupation, as it did for the farmer, horseman and pilot. An additional familiar practitioner is enough to carry the companion toward assent about the whole class. His answer is nevertheless qualified: “It does not appear so, at any rate.” Socrates then asks who remains to satisfy the original definition.

The bow exemplifies a means whose value depends on practical use. Knowing that it is worthless for that use undermines an expectation of gain through it. The example does not claim that archery is itself a moral good, and no person to be shot is named. It also does not identify the archer with a soldier or with the general’s army. Although those associations are possible, the sequence needs only a recognisable skill and its instrument.

An attractive but unsupported extension would make the bow a direct metaphor for correct argument. Later, at 227c, Socrates asks which argument one could use without making a mistake, but the text does not there name a target or return to the archer. The connection between practical competence and argumentative correctness is worth considering; it should not be presented as an explicit archery image supplied by the dialogue.

The archer and bow do not recur after 226c. Their continued relevance lies in the limit of the first argument: a knowledgeable user of useless means is an easy case, whereas a person gaining by another’s mistake remains unexamined. The later discussion must therefore move beyond listing practitioners and ask what gain itself is. At 231e the requirement that something be worth possessing supplies a more general criterion than the bow’s particular use.

Places to read

1. 226cτοξότης τόξον — The elliptical pair takes its governing construction from the musicians.
2. 226cἄλλος ὁστισοῦν συλλήβδην — The list immediately opens into its generalising conclusion.
3. 227cοὐκ ἂν ἐξαμαρτάνοι — Later argumentative error is not explicitly described as a failed bowshot.

Translation in this edition

The translation preserves the abrupt “or an archer a bow” rather than expanding every missing word. Read within the whole sentence, this does not leave the bow’s quality undecided. The economical wording also preserves the accelerating pace of the catalogue before its universal claim.