From the book
Symposium
Plato · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordRight opinion is not simply any opinion somebody confidently regards as right.
- In the SymposiumThe distinction appears as an example in an argument about Love.
- In this editionThe supplied English rightly says right opinion, not wrong opinion or mere illusion.
- A place to readThe definition of the intermediate and its application to Love.
Meaning
Right opinion is not simply any opinion somebody confidently regards as right. Correctness concerns its reaching what is; its defect is that it cannot give an account. The phrase about giving an account must be taken as a whole.
Use in the book
The distinction appears as an example in an argument about Love. Socrates assumes that whatever is not beautiful must be ugly. Diotima asks whether everything not wise is ignorant and supplies a third case. An opinion that is right but cannot explain itself is neither knowledge nor ignorance. It misses the account required of knowledge but does not miss reality. The example supports an intermediate between contraries without pretending that all intermediate states are identical.
The construction does not offer a full definition of knowledge. It tells us that a judgement without an account cannot be knowledge; it does not demonstrate that adding any explanation whatever would suffice, nor settle what a satisfactory account must contain. Likewise, hits upon what is need not be translated into a modern technical theory of accidental true belief. The local point is success regarding the object despite inadequate explanatory command.
Later, opinions belong to the soul’s changing contents, alongside desires, pleasures and fears. That claim about alteration should not be substituted for the earlier distinction by truth and account. Alcibiades’ imagined exchange of opinion for truth at 218e is another local contrast, in Socrates’ conditional response to his proposal. It does not retroactively turn right opinion at 202a into falsehood.
Places to read
Translation in this edition
The supplied English rightly says right opinion, not wrong opinion or mere illusion. Its knowing, knowledge and intelligence distinguish words that Diotima places on the cognitive side of the comparison. The explanatory gloss in this article does not import the Meno’s fuller account, although the edition notes that parallel.
δοξάζω (doxazō)
doxazō — To hold an opinion; with the correctness modifier, to judge correctly or hold right opinions.
- 202a — Τὸ ὀρθὰ δοξάζειν. The activity is considered together with inability to give an account.
Read: Right opinion.
λόγον δίδωμι (logon didōmi)
logon didōmi — To give an account: a phrase record, not one dictionary headword.
- 202a — ἄνευ τοῦ ἔχειν λόγον δοῦναι. Right opinion is specified as lacking the capacity to render an account.
Read: Right opinion.
ὀρθὴ δόξα (orthē doxa)
orthē doxa — Right opinion: a judgement that reaches what is without being able to supply an account.
- 202a — ἡ ὀρθὴ δόξα. Diotima’s positive intermediate between intelligence and ignorance.
Read: Right opinion.
τυγχάνω (tynchanō)
tynchanō — Here, to hit upon or reach, with a genitive object; not automatically a judgement about accidental truth.
- 202a — τοῦ ὄντος τυγχάνον. The opinion reaches what is, which prevents classifying it as ignorance.
Read: Right opinion.