Soul looking into soul

Use in the book

The formula at 133b is the interpretive climax of the visual analogy. An eye sees itself by looking into another eye, especially the region with which the counterpart sees. The same pattern is proposed for soul: attend to a being of the relevant kind and especially to its best characteristic activity. This supplies an answer to a problem the user argument alone left unresolved. Identifying the person as soul tells us what needs care; it does not yet tell us how that object can be known.

The dialogue's own form gives the analogy an immediate setting. At 130d–e2 Socrates and Alcibiades have described their conversation as soul addressing soul through words. A reader can therefore understand their exchange as a candidate instance of the attention now prescribed. Socrates' concern for Alcibiades' moral improvement, rather than his fading bodily bloom, reinforces that connection. Nevertheless, the text does not explicitly say at 133b “look into Socrates' soul,” and a lexicon should label that identification as an interpretation rather than a quotation.

The restriction to the region of wisdom matters. The command is not simply to inspect any desire, memory, or mood in either person. It directs the knower toward what makes soul excellent, just as sight makes the eye excellent. The corresponding phrase “and into anything else which this in fact resembles” broadens the analogy beyond a solely interpersonal exchange. The following passage identifies the knowing region as most divine and like the god.

The text therefore supports both an interpersonal dimension and a normative direction toward the divine. It does not require that every route be collapsed into one. The explicitly divine mirror belongs to the supplied 133c8–17; the preceding relation to the divine is already present before those lines. The distinction prevents two opposite errors: reducing the passage to ordinary conversation alone, or claiming that the transmitted text has no religious dimension without the supplement.

The analogy leaves questions open. It does not specify a complete procedure for separating wisdom from its appearance in another person, nor explain every step by which attending to another soul gives knowledge of one's own. Those difficulties should not be hidden by slogans such as “know yourself through a friend.” Its more limited direction is clear: the self is not best discovered through external possessions or a bodily image but through soul's knowing excellence and its proper counterpart or standard.

The practical sequel brings this direction back to action. Self-knowledge is temperance, and knowing oneself makes it possible to identify one's own good and act competently for others. The soul-to-soul instruction is therefore a stage in moral and civic education, not an isolated mystical claim detached from the preceding question of care.

Places to read

1. 130d–130e2The existing conversation is described as soul addressing soul
2. 131c–132c2Concern for soul replaces attachment merely to body
3. 133b–133c6The eye analogy directs soul toward soul’s wisdom and divine likeness
4. 133c8–17A supplied extension gives the divine mirror priority
5. 133c18–134a23Self-knowledge is applied to temperance and practical discernment

Translation in this edition

The edition's “look into a soul” preserves the anarthrous Greek rather than naming a particular partner. It also retains σοφία, “wisdom,” as the specification of soul's excellence, though Burnet reports a proposal to delete the word.

ἀρετή

Attested: ἡ ψυχῆς ἀρετή (hē psychēs aretē; 133b); ἀρετῇ (aretēi; 122d); ἀρετή (aretē; 125c, 133b); ἀρετήν (aretēn; 134c). At 133b: The soul's excellence, specified as wisdom in the printed text and matched to sight in the eye. At 122d: The excellence or quality of Spartan land. At 125c: The specific excellence of piloting. At 133b: Excellence of the eye as sight and of the soul as wisdom. At 134c: Virtue the future ruler must acquire before sharing it with citizens. Lexical identification: lemma: ἀρετή. See Soul looking into soul; Virtue and vice.

βλέπω

Attested: εἰς ψυχὴν αὐτῇ βλεπτέον (eis psychēn autēi blepteon; 133b). At 133b: Soul must look into soul to know itself, especially toward its region of wisdom. Lexical identification: lemma: βλέπω. See Soul looking into soul.

τόπος

Attested: τὸν τόπον (ton topon; 133b). At 133b: The region of eye or soul in which its characteristic excellence arises; the analogy does not supply a full anatomy of soul. Lexical identification: lemma: τόπος. See Soul looking into soul.