Plato: Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo

by Plato

virtue is knowledge and that when men do wrong, it is only because they do not know any better.

The aim is not to choose the right but to become the sort of person who cannot choose the wrong and who no longer has {x} any choice in the matter.

he proceeds to accuse me to the city as to their mother.

I think he is the only one of our public men to start out the [d] right way, for it is right to care first that the young should be as good as possible, just as a good farmer is likely to take care of the young plants first, and of the others later.

The pollution is the same if you knowingly keep company with such a man and do not cleanse yourself and him by bringing him to justice.

For, they say, it is impious for a son to prosecute [e] his father for murder. But their ideas of the divine attitude to piety and impiety are wrong, Socrates.

It is because I realize this that I am eager to become your pupil, my dear friend.

what kind of thing do [d] you say that godliness and ungodliness are, both as regards murder and other things; or is the pious not the same and alike in every action, and the impious the opposite of all that is pious and like itself, and everything that is to be impious presents us with one form7 or appearance insofar as it is impious?

the pious is to do what I am doing now, to prosecute the wrongdoer, be it about murder or temple robbery or [e] anything else, whether the wrongdoer is your father or your mother or anyone else; not to prosecute is impious.

Then they do not dispute that the wrongdoer must be punished, but they may disagree as to who the wrongdoer is, what he did, and when. EUTHYPHRO: You are right. SOCRATES: Do not the gods have the same experience, if indeed they are at odds with each other about the just and the unjust, as your argument maintains? Some assert that they wrong one another, while [e] others deny it, but no one among gods or men ventures to say that the wrongdoer must not be punished.

want to say this, namely, that if anything is being changed or is being affected in any way, it is not being changed because it is something changed, but rather it is something changed because it is being changed;

It is being loved then because it is pious, but it is not pious because it is being loved?

And yet it is something loved and god-loved because it is being loved by the gods?

Then the god-loved is not the same as the pious, Euthyphro, nor the pious the same as the god-loved, as you say it is, but one differs from the other.

Because we agree that the pious is being loved for this reason, that it is pious, but it is not pious because it is being loved. Is that not so?

It looks as if I was cleverer than Daedalus in using my skill, my friend, insofar as he could only cause to move the things he made himself, but I can make other people’s things move as well as my own.

See whether you think all that is pious is of necessity just.

EUTHYPHRO: He is certainly afraid. SOCRATES: It is then not right to say “where there is fear there is also shame,” but that where there is shame there is also fear, for fear covers a larger area than shame.

I think, Socrates, that the godly and pious is the part of the just that is concerned with the care of the gods, while that concerned with the care of men is the remaining part of justice.

for you do not mean the care of the gods in the same sense as the care of other things,

That is because I am so desirous of your wisdom, and I concentrate my mind on it, so that no word of yours may fall to the ground.

If you had no clear knowledge of piety and impiety you would never have ventured to prosecute your old father for murder on behalf of a servant. For fear of the gods you would have been afraid to take the risk lest you should not be acting rightly, and would have been ashamed before men, but now I know well that you believe [e] you have clear knowledge of piety and impiety. So tell me, my good Euthyphro, and do not hide what you think it is.

No one knows whether death may not be the greatest of all blessings for a man, yet men fear it as if they knew that it is the greatest of evils.

“Whether [c] you believe Anytus or not, whether you acquit me or not, do so on the understanding that this is my course of action, even if I am to face {35} death many times.”

It is not difficult to avoid death, [b] gentlemen; it is much more difficult to avoid wickedness, for it runs faster than death.

You are wrong if you believe that by killing people you will prevent anyone from reproaching you for not living in the right way.

When my sons grow up, avenge yourselves by causing them the same kind of grief that I caused you, if you think they care for money or anything else more than they care for virtue, or if they think they are somebody when they are nobody. Reproach them as I reproach you, that they do not care for the right things and think they are worthy when they are [42] not worthy of anything. If you do this, I shall have been justly treated by you, and my sons also.

SOCRATES: And is life worth living with a body that is corrupted and in bad condition? CRITO: In no way.

the soul is immortal and that at our birth we already possess all theoretical knowledge (he includes here not just mathematical theory but moral knowledge as well).

munificence,

think, Socrates, that virtue is, as the poet says, “to find joy in beautiful things and have power.” So I say that virtue is to desire beautiful things and have the power to acquire them.

For what else is being miserable but to desire bad things and secure them?

Then if the truth about reality is always in our soul, the soul would be immortal so that you should always confidently try to seek out and recollect what you do not know at present—that is, what you do not recollect?

I would contend at all costs in both word and deed as far as I could that we will be better men, braver and less idle, if we believe that one must search for the things one does not [c] know, rather than if we believe that it is not possible to find out what we do not know and that we must not look for it.

ANYTUS: Easily, for I know who they are, whether I have experience of them or not. SOCRATES: Perhaps you are a wizard, Anytus, for I wonder, from what you yourself say, how else you know about these things.

We must then at all costs turn our attention to ourselves and find someone who [e] will in some way make us better.

To acquire an untied work of Daedalus is not worth much, like acquiring a runaway slave, for it does not remain, but it is worth much if tied down, for his works are very beautiful. What am I thinking of when I say this? True opinions. For true opinions, as long as they remain, are a fine thing and all they do is good, but they are [98] not willing to remain long, and they escape from a man’s mind, so that they are not worth much until one ties them down by [giving] an account of the reason why. And that, Meno, my friend, is recollection, as we previously agreed. After they are tied down, in the first place they become knowledge, and then they remain in place. That is why knowledge is prized higher than correct opinion, and knowledge differs from correct opinion in being tied down.

SOCRATES: It follows from this reasoning, Meno, that virtue appears to be present in those of us who may possess it as a gift from the gods.

“What a strange thing that which men call pleasure seems to be, and how astonishing the relation it has with what is thought to be its opposite, namely pain! A man cannot have both at the same time. Yet if he pursues and catches the one, he is almost always bound to catch the other also, like two creatures with one head.

I thought it safer not to leave here until I had satisfied my conscience by writing poems in obedience to the dream.

Do you not think, he said, that in general such a man’s concern is not with the body but that, as far as he can, he turns away from the body towards the soul?

“It really has been shown to us that, if we are ever to have pure knowledge, we must escape from the body and observe things in themselves [e] with the soul by itself. It seems likely that we shall, only then, when we are dead, attain that which we desire and of which we claim to be lovers, namely, wisdom, as our argument shows, not while we {104} live; for if it is impossible to attain any pure knowledge with the body, then one of two things is true: either we can never attain knowledge [67] or we can do so after death.

But if knowledge=Virtue, what about dialecti recollection?

While we live, we shall be closest to knowledge if we refrain as much as possible from association with the body and do not join with it more than we must, if we are not infected with its nature but purify ourselves from it until the god himself frees us.

It is no doubt permeated by the physical, which constant intercourse and association with the body, as well as considerable practice, has caused to become ingrained in it? Quite so. We must believe, my friend, that this bodily element is heavy, ponderous, earthy, and visible. Through it, such a soul has become heavy and is dragged back to the visible region in fear of the unseen and of [d] Hades. It wanders, as we are told, around graves and monuments, where shadowy phantoms, images that such souls produce, have been seen, souls that have not been freed and purified but share in the visible, and are therefore seen. That is likely, Socrates.

The lovers of learning know that when philosophy gets hold of their soul, it is imprisoned in and clinging to [e] the body, and that it is forced to examine other things through it as through a cage and not by itself, and that it wallows in every kind of ignorance. Philosophy sees that the worst feature of this imprisonment is that it is due to desires, so that the prisoner himself is contributing to his own incarceration most of all.

When Socrates heard this he laughed quietly and said: “Really, Simmias, it would be hard for me to persuade other people that I do [e] not consider my present fate a misfortune if I cannot persuade even you, and you are afraid that it is more difficult to deal with me than before. You seem to think me inferior to the swans in prophecy. They sing before too, but when they realize that they must die they sing most and most beautifully, as they rejoice that they are about to depart to [85] join the god whose servants they are. But men, because of their own fear of death, tell lies about the swans and say that they lament their death and sing in sorrow. They do not reflect that no bird sings when it is hungry or cold or suffers in any other way, neither the nightingale nor the swallow nor the hoopoe, though they do say that these sing laments when in pain. Nor do the swans, but I believe that as they belong to Apollo, they are prophetic, have knowledge of the future, [b] and sing of the blessings of the underworld, sing and rejoice on that day beyond what they did before. As I believe myself to be a fellow servant with the swans and dedicated to the same god, and have received from my master a gift of prophecy not inferior to theirs, I am no more despondent than they on leaving life. Therefore, you must speak and ask whatever you want as long as the authorities allow it.”

One of the hollows of the earth, which is also the biggest, pierces through the whole earth; it is that which Homer mentioned when he said: “Far down where is the deepest pit below the earth . . .,”18 and which he elsewhere, and many other poets, call Tartarus; into this chasm all the rivers flow together, and again flow out of it, and each [b] river is affected by the nature of the land through which it flows.