Help

Use in the book

Once the preceding productive and imitative activities have been achieved, the Athenian introduces help of countless kinds for countless people (975e). The organization is conceptual rather than a chronology of technological invention. The speech turns from making life's provisions and representations to protecting, restoring, directing, or supporting people amid risks.

Generalship is the greatest and most widely applicable help in this class. Medicine is another form, meeting damage caused by untimely seasons. Pilots and sailors help amid uncertain winds; forensic speakers claim to help in lawsuits. The shared label enables comparison across occupations whose objects differ substantially. It does not make their defects identical: military success needs fortune, medical and military practice are assessed as conjectural, navigation cannot know the wind's dispositions, and forensic persuasion is faulted for missing real justice.

The catalogue's usefulness is therefore acknowledged before its intellectual insufficiency is asserted. To call these people helpers is not to say that their help always succeeds; equally, denying them wisdom does not deny every benefit. The distinction matters because the positive knowledge sought is supposed to make a good citizen whether ruling or ruled (976d). The solution must explain good civic conduct at a level the separately helpful skills have not reached.

The plural “helpers” in the forensic example includes a claim made by the practitioners themselves. The Athenian does not endorse their self-description without reservation. This distance between declared assistance and truth about justice is sharper than the straightforwardly conceded usefulness of generalship. The umbrella category thus permits differences of status within it.

Places to read

1. 975eβοήθεια γίγνοιτ’ ἂν μυρία μυρίοις — The new class is countless assistance for countless people
2. 975eεὐδοκιμωτάτη πρὸς χρείαν — Generalship's high reputation is explicitly related to use
3. 976aβοήθεια δέ που καὶ αὕτη — Medicine too is provisionally classified as help
4. 976aβοηθοὺς … τοὺς κυβερνήτας ἅμα καὶ τοὺς ναύτας — Pilots and sailors receive the same category
5. 976bβοηθοὶ δίκαις … φασὶ γίγνεσθαι — Forensic helpers claim this role for themselves

Translation in this edition

“Help” and “helpers” make the repeated family visible. The translation preserves such qualifications as “I suppose” and “claim,” rather than giving every member an equally unqualified endorsement. Chreia is “use” here; it should not automatically be converted into a universal moral good.

Organizing category — βοήθεια (boētheia)

βοήθεια (boētheia)

Organizing category. After productive and imitative activities, countless kinds of help for countless people form the next group of practical expertise. Attested: βοήθεια (975e). Help usefulness and the grouping of practical expertise.

Practical assistant — βοηθός (boēthos)

βοηθός (boēthos)

Practical assistant. Pilots and sailors are classified as helpers; forensic speakers then claim the same role. The shared name permits differences in how firmly benefit is conceded. Attested: βοηθοὺς (976a). Help usefulness and the grouping of practical expertise.

Conjectural practice — δόξα (doxa)

δόξα (doxa)

Conjectural practice. Opinions are the basis through which the helping practices are described as guessed at and carried along without measure. Attested: δόξαις (976a). Help usefulness and the grouping of practical expertise.

Ground of practical esteem — χρεία (chreia)

χρεία (chreia)

Ground of practical esteem. Use is the respect in which the general’s craft receives its high reputation. It does not itself prove the intellectual title wise. Attested: χρείαν (975e). Help usefulness and the grouping of practical expertise.

Unregulated conjecture — ἄμετρος (ametros)

ἄμετρος (ametros)

Unregulated conjecture. The helping practices are carried along without measure and conjectured through opinions; the adjective is part of the epistemic criticism. Attested: ἄμετρα (976a). Help usefulness and the grouping of practical expertise.

Countless help for countless people (contextual phrase)

βοήθεια γίγνοιτ’ ἂν μυρία μυρίοις (975e)

The repeated numerical adjective gives the new practical category breadth. The potential construction introduces what would remain after the preceding activities: aid of many kinds for many recipients. It is an organizing transition, not a literal enumeration of ten thousand services. Help usefulness and the grouping of practical expertise.

Carried along without measure guessed by opinions (contextual phrase)

ἄμετρα γὰρ δόξαις φορεῖται τοπαζόμενα (976a)

The participle explains the practices as conjectured through opinions, while the finite verb pictures their being carried along without measure. The immediately preceding helpers are being assessed against truest wisdom. This is the Athenian’s epistemic verdict, not a modern evaluation of medical or military research. Help usefulness and the grouping of practical expertise.

Use in the book

At 215a things alike are supposed to have no aid to supply one another beyond what each can supply itself. The absence of such assistance is used to question whether they could cherish each other.

The opposite theory immediately reverses the pattern: the weak person turns to the strong for aid. Both uses make the dependence of friendship on practical help explicit. The noun names the offered help, not friendship itself, so the step from aid to affection remains an argumentative step.

Places to read

1. 215aμηδεμίαν ἐπικουρίαν ἀλλήλοις ἔχοντα — Having no aid to offer one another.
2. 215d

Use in the book

Being loved places help and safety in readiness even before a particular benefit is needed. The rhetoric of universal love then acquires a material test: could the lover refuse assistance to the person whom God loves? The imagined gift of one’s last coin presses the cost of that question. Divine omnipresence, meanwhile, is an immediate refuge, joining help to abiding care rather than remoteness. Practical aid and inward consolation belong to one account of beneficence.

Places to read

1. II.59Help and safety are included in what a beloved person receives through another’s affection.
2. IV.58The imagined surrender of the last coin tests whether professed love will actually help.
3. V.9Divine omnipresence is described as immediate help and refuge in trouble.

In this edition

“Succour” in the account of need means relief or assistance. The extreme hypothetical tests Traherne’s principle of love; it is not a detailed rule for every distribution of limited resources.