Wealth, bodily strength and fortune

Use in the book

At 147a Socrates makes an initially paradoxical comparison: without the relevant knowledge, the more strongly the fair wind blows, the greater the mistakes. Favourable circumstances do not become literally unfavourable weather; rather, greater available force accelerates a badly directed course. The example generalizes the earlier distinction between possessing an apparent good and using it beneficially.

The man of much learning and much craft provides the immediately adjacent case. His capacities may be real, but lacking the governing knowledge he is carried by each of them without a pilot. Wealth and bodily strength belong to the same pattern as specialized knowledge: adding resources need not repair the error that directs their use.

The argument reappears in religious expenditure. Athens claims abundant money and magnificent offerings while charging Sparta with under-spending despite comparable wealth. Socrates’ answer makes the amount spent secondary to the soul’s justice and intelligence. Financial means can sustain impressive wrong-headed action as easily as they can supply a genuine benefit.

This conditional critique should not be flattened into the thesis that poverty, weakness or misfortune are inherently desirable. The condition without this knowledge governs the warning. The dialogue proposes a standard for using advantages, while the present action is to avoid treating their acquisition as self-evidently safe.

Places to read

1. 141cPossessions must be assessed by the possibility and quality of their use.
2. 147a–147bMoney and strength accelerate mistakes when fortune supplies power without a pilot.
3. 148e–149a2Athenian spending becomes the alleged basis of a claim on the gods.
4. 149e–150aExpensive observance can coexist with a defective soul and repeated wrongdoing.

Translation in this edition

The fair-wind sentence at 147a rests on three editorial changes recorded in note 24: Lennep’s relocation of without it and his reading more strongly, and Stallbaum’s fortune for the manuscripts’ soul. The interpretation here is of Burnet’s printed text. The source distinguishes fortune from the more specific terms for misfortune and ill fortune.