Builder and house-building

Use in the book

Before any argument, the builder's trade gives Socrates, narrating, an image for himself: "Where the beautiful are concerned I am simply a white measuring-line on white stone: nearly everyone of that age looks beautiful to me" (154b). A mason's line (στάθμη, stathmē) was coloured so as to mark the stone; a white one on white marble marks nothing, and Socrates, by his own account, marks off no beautiful youth from another.

In the argument building is first a kind of doing. Charmides has offered the definition that temperance is "doing one's own business" (161b), and Socrates takes "doing" in its widest sense: "Yes, and healing, my friend, and building houses and weaving, and producing, by any craft whatever, any of the works of craft, are surely doing something." Charmides answers, "Certainly" (161e). A city under a law that made each man weave his own cloak and cobble his own shoes would not, Charmides thinks, be well managed, and so, Socrates concludes, doing one's own business in that sense would not be temperance (161e–162a; see Action).

House-building comes into its own once Critias has made temperance knowing oneself (164d). Socrates goes on from medicine and its health: "And if you asked me about house-building, which is knowledge of how to build, what work I say it produces, I would say, 'Houses'; and the same with the other crafts" (165d). The sentence gives house-building both things a craft can be asked for, what it is knowledge of and what work it produces, and it is the work that Socrates demands of temperance: "what fine work does it produce for us, worthy of its name?" (165e). Critias turns the house against him, asking what work calculation or geometry has "in the way that a house is the work of house-building, or a cloak of weaving"; Socrates grants that they have none, points instead to what each knowledge is of, and asks what temperance is knowledge of (165e–166b2; see Art and craft).

When building returns, the house is gone and only the field remains. One knows, Socrates says, "the healthy by medicine and not by temperance, the harmonious by music and not by temperance, what belongs to house-building by house-building and not by temperance, and so on for everything." "So it appears," Critias answers; and asked how, by temperance, "if it is only knowledge of kinds of knowledge", anyone will know "that he knows the healthy, or what belongs to house-building", he says, "In no way" (170c). The man who has only temperance will know "only that he knows", not what, and will not be able to tell a true doctor from a pretender (170c–171c2; see Art and craft).

House-building can thus be read as framing both demands made of temperance. At 165d it shows what a knowledge can be expected to produce, and Critias denies that every knowledge has a work; at 170c it shows what a knowledge is of, and temperance, if it is only knowledge of knowledge, cannot reach the builder's field. The house drops out of the argument; what belongs to house-building remains, and only house-building knows it.

Places to read

1. 154bSocrates, narrating, calls himself a white measuring-line on white stone where the beautiful are concerned.
2. 161e–162aHealing, building houses and weaving are doing something; a city whose law made each man make his own things would not be well managed.
3. 165c–166aHouse-building is knowledge of how to build and produces houses, and Socrates asks what fine work temperance produces; Critias objects that calculation and geometry have no work in the way that a house is the work of house-building, and Socrates grants it.
4. 170b–d2What belongs to house-building is known by house-building and not by temperance; a man with knowledge only of knowledge would know that he knows, not what.

Translation in this edition

Οἰκοδομική is "house-building" at all three of its places (165d, 165e, 170c), and "house" is kept for the product, both for Socrates' οἰκήσεις, "Houses" (165d), and for Critias' οἰκία, "a house" (165e). Οἰκοδομεῖν is "building houses" in Socrates' list of doings (161e) and "how to build" in "knowledge of how to build" (165d). The neuter τὸ οἰκοδομικόν is "what belongs to house-building" both times (170c). At 165d Burnet prints τοῦ οἰκοδομεῖν, "of building", with T and W, the Venice and Vienna manuscripts; B, the Bodleian manuscript written in 895, has τοῦ οἰκοδομικοῦ, which would make house-building knowledge "of what belongs to house-building", the phrase of 170c. The edition follows Burnet.

οἴκησις

Attested: οἰκήσεις (oikēseis; 165d). A dwelling, a house. It is Socrates' answer when he imagines being asked what work house-building produces: "Houses" (165d). Critias, taking up the example, uses the common word οἰκία, "a house" (165e). Lemma: οἴκησις.

οἰκοδομέω

Attested: οἰκοδομεῖν (oikodomein; 161e, 165d). To build, to build houses. "Building houses" is among the activities that, Socrates says, "are surely doing something" (161e); and house-building is "knowledge of how to build" (165d). Lemma: οἰκοδομέω.

οἰκοδομική

Attested: οἰκοδομικήν (oikodomikēn; 165d), οἰκοδομικῆς (oikodomikēs; 165e), οἰκοδομικῇ (oikodomikēi; 170c); the neuter οἰκοδομικόν (oikodomikon; 170c twice), "what belongs to house-building". House-building, the builder's craft. Its work is houses (165d), and Critias asks what work calculation or geometry has "in the way that a house is the work of house-building"; Socrates grants that they have none (165e–166a). Its field, "what belongs to house-building", is known "by house-building and not by temperance" (170c). Lemma: οἰκοδομική; οἰκοδομικός.

Elsewhere in Plato

The Republic builds a city in speech from its needs, and the builder is in it from the start. Food comes first, Socrates tells Adeimantus, Plato's brother, then housing (οἴκησις, Socrates' word at Charmides 165d for the houses that building produces), then clothing; so the barest city has a farmer, a builder, a weaver, and a cobbler or someone else who tends the body, four or five men in all. Socrates then asks which way is better. Should each put his own work at the service of all, so that the farmer grows food for four? Or should the farmer spend a quarter of his time on food for himself and the rest on providing himself a house, a cloak and shoes, and "do his own things by himself"? The first way, Adeimantus answers, is perhaps easier; Socrates adds that men are born unlike one another, each fitted for a different work, and Adeimantus agrees that one man does better practising one craft than many (369d–370c). The farmer of the second way, who builds his own house and makes his own cloak and shoes, can be read as the man the law Socrates imagines at Charmides 161e–162a would require, and both dialogues set him aside. The phrase of the definition Charmides offers, "doing one's own business" (τὰ αὑτοῦ πράττειν), here names that self-sufficient man; later in the Republic it becomes the definition of justice (433a–b; see Action).

In the Gorgias house-building is the first case on which competence is tested. If he and Callicles, his chief opponent in that dialogue, were urging each other to take on the city's buildings, walls, docks or temples, Socrates says, they ought first to examine themselves: whether they know the craft, house-building, and from whom they learned it, and whether either has ever built anything privately, for a friend or for himself, and whether it is fine or ugly; only with good teachers and many fine buildings to show would it be sensible to go on to public works. He then turns the test on doctors and on Callicles, who has just begun to manage the city's affairs: whom has he made better (514a–515b)? The Gorgias judges a builder by marks the two partners could examine for themselves, his teachers and his buildings; the Charmides can be read as asking for more, since what belongs to house-building is known only by house-building (170c), and the temperate man, if temperance is only knowledge of knowledge, could judge, like any craftsman, only a "fellow craftsman" (171c).

In the Statesman the unnamed visitor from Elea, in southern Italy, who leads the conversation counts the master builder, like calculation, among the kinds of knowledge that supply knowing, not handiwork, but parts the two: calculation only judges, while the master builder, having judged, must direct the workmen until the work is done (259e–260b; see Calculation and geometry). Set against Charmides 165e, this can be read as moving the master builder, though not his workmen, to the side of calculation.