Concord and agreement

Use in the book

Alcibiades first specifies the city's good as friendship arising among citizens and hatred and faction disappearing (126c). Asked whether friendship means concord or discord, he naturally chooses concord. The obviousness of the opposition is not proof that friendship has been adequately defined. Socrates asks what kind of concord it is, what its subject matter is, and which craft produces it.

Arithmetic and measurement sharpen these questions. Cities agree about numbers through arithmetic; the same holds for private persons and each person with himself. Measuring decides which is bigger, a span or a cubit; weighing offers a parallel case. These examples connect stable agreement to a determinate expertise with identifiable objects. They also prevent the mere size of the group from making its knowledge a different kind: one mind, several citizens, and whole cities can share the same mathematical competence.

When pressed for the corresponding civic concord, Alcibiades shifts to close relationships: parents and children, siblings, husband and wife (126e). Socrates accepts the household as a test but retains the expertise-based standard. The wife who knows wool-working and the husband who does not cannot share the relevant expert judgment; conversely, a wife who has not learned hoplite fighting cannot agree knowledgeably with her trained husband about it. The dialogue presents the gendered allocation as an assumption of this exchange, explicitly tracing the division to Alcibiades' account at 127a. It does not investigate which subjects women or men could learn under other arrangements.

The challenge then turns on scope. They lack concord “in these” subjects, and therefore friendship in those respects if friendship is concord. Each performs the assigned task, yet on the current definition the performance does not produce the shared knowledge that friendship requires. Alcibiades nevertheless insists at 127b that precisely this division of activity makes the city well ordered and creates friendship. It is just, he adds, for each to do his own business, and citizens' just action must produce friendship. The same people now appear both to have and not have friendship under his set of answers.

At 127d Socrates describes the result as inability to understand what the required friendship or concord is and in whom it occurs. This is a genuine unresolved point in the argument as presented. The lexicon should neither convert the attempted definition into a doctrine that affection is shared craft knowledge nor announce that specialized work necessarily makes family love impossible. Those are conclusions obtained from premises Alcibiades cannot maintain together. Another conception of agreement, a different account of friendship, or a distinction between concord about ends and agreement about techniques might respond, but the dialogue does not explicitly choose one here.

The episode is politically consequential because Alcibiades wanted good counsel to order and preserve the city. Without specifying its beneficial condition, he cannot identify the ruler's knowledge. Concord is therefore not merely a warm civic slogan: the questioning reveals how much its apparent familiarity leaves undecided. The move to care for oneself begins after Alcibiades admits this failure, rather than after he has supplied a successful account of civic harmony.

Places to read

1. 126c–126dArithmetic, measuring, and weighing model craft-based concord across persons and cities
2. 126e–127aFamily relationships are tested by the unequal craft knowledge of husband and wife
3. 127a–127d2Doing one’s own business seems both to exclude and produce the friendship identified with concord
4. 126d (apparatus)Burnet prints Bekker’s αὑτή at d10 for “the same,” relating civic and individual concord
5. 127c (apparatus)The first περὶ τούτων is bracketed by Burnet and excluded from the translation

Translation in this edition

“Concord” consistently marks this family, while “agree” is reserved for ὁμολογεῖν. At 127c the edition asks about concord among people of whom some know about the matters and others do not. At 126d its “the same” rests on a conjecture; the note gives the distinct textual bases of both choices.

διχόνοια

Attested: διχόνοιαν (dichonoian; 126c). At 126c: Discord, the alternative to concord rejected when defining friendship. Lexical identification: lemma: διχόνοια. See Concord.

ὁμόνοια / ὁμονοέω

Attested: ὁμόνοιαν (homonoian; 126c); ὁμονοοῦσιν (homonoousin; 126c); ὁμονοεῖν (homonoein; 126e). At 126c: Concord proposed as the meaning of civic friendship. At 126c: Cities agree about numbers through arithmetic. At 126e: The expert agreement a husband lacking wool-working cannot share with his wife. Lexical identification: family label: ὁμόνοια / ὁμονοέω. See Concord.

Use in the book

Aesara’s account requires each psychic part to receive its fitting proportion for concord, friendship, and justice to exist. Simply giving the superior more and the inferior less is insufficient. Agreement depends on a distribution fitted to the function of each part.

Places to read

1. I.49.27.6Concord within soul requires proportionate arrangement.

Translation in this edition

“Concord” conveys the ordered agreement; specify the psychic context rather than assuming a political assembly.