Making and poetry

Use in the book

Critias' first defence relies on keeping making distinct from doing. Craftsmen may make other people's things without ceasing to be temperate (162e–163a2); he has not agreed, he protests, that doing others' affairs has the same consequence. He then assigns poiēsis the wider range. A production can be disgraceful, whereas a work properly so called is fine and beneficial (163b–c). Making therefore includes both what his preferred usage counts as doing and what it excludes.

The restriction is rhetorical and evaluative. It is not a theory that making necessarily has an external product while action necessarily has its end in itself. The Charmides neither formulates that distinction nor applies Critias' usage consistently as an authorial technical vocabulary. Socrates explicitly allows him to choose the name, provided he explains what he means, and asks whether doing or making good things is the proposed definition (163d–e).

The family also supplies a dramatic echo: Critias has been compared to a poet whose own compositions, poiēmata, an actor mishandles (162d). He claims authority over his account much as over an authored product. Elsewhere producing effects is indispensable to the virtue question: temperance is said to make people bashful or good, medicine makes them healthy, and a knowledge is asked to make its possessor happy. These uses establish what the proposed cause brings about without assuming every effect is a separable manufactured object.

Places to read

1. 160e–161a2Temperance is discussed as making its possessors bashful or good
2. 162dPoiēmata are the poet’s compositions in Socrates’ comparison
3. 162e–163e23Making is separated from doing and restricted good production
4. 164a–b2The doctor makes a patient healthy
5. 174a–e23Happiness, health and craft products are considered as effects of kinds of knowledge

Translation in this edition

“Making,” “doing” and “working” remain distinct in the disputed passage. The edition's “makes someone healthy” also preserves the causative construction ὑγιᾶ ποιεῖν. The dictionary noun ποίησις is represented by its attested accusative and plural forms above; the lexicon does not imply that an isolated nominative formula occurs.

ποιέω

Attested: ποιεῖν / ποιοῦντες / ποιοῦντας (poiein / poiountes / poiountas). To make or produce; craftsmen can make things belonging to others, and Critias insists that agreement about their making does not yet establish agreement about their doing. References: 162e, 163a, 163b. Lexical identification: lemma: ποιέω. See Making and production.

ποίημα

Attested: ποιήματα / ποίημα (poiēmata / poiēma). A thing made or composition; first the poet’s verses mishandled by an actor, later any made product that Critias says may be disgraceful unless made with what is fine. References: 162d, 163c. Lexical identification: lemma: ποίημα. See Making and production.

ποίησις

Attested: ποίησιν / ποιήσεις (poiēsin / poiēseis). Making or production; Critias distinguishes it from working and doing, reserving “doings” for makings of good and beneficial things. References: 163b, 163d, 163e. Lexical identification: lemma: ποίησις. See Making and production.

Use in the book

Porphyry interprets the crossroads of Hades through the soul’s threefold structure and declares the result to be truth and a natural account rather than myth or poetry. Here poetry names the kind of imaginative narrative from which the interpretation claims to move. The claim is Porphyry’s own assessment of the explanation.

Places to read

1. I.49.60.9A psychological reading of the underworld is contrasted with myth and poetry.

Translation in this edition

“Poetry” fits this contrast. “Making” belongs to contexts in which production rather than poetic discourse is intended.