Thoughts on Truth - Philosophy

"Socratic Dialogues" is a thematic classification of 20 dialogues characteristic of the historical Socrates's own philosophical approach. A guide to rational scrutiny of ideas, critical analysis, seeking moral knowledge while disclaiming final possession of any, thinking through the issues with Plato.

"Middle" dialogues deal with Forms, like the Symposium, Phaedo, and Republic, but also include the Parmenides, Theatetus, and Phaedrus. End of the Phaedrus, actual knowledge of the truth requires constant capacity to express and re-express it in relation to varying circumstances and needs in response to view questions or challenges that arise, not fixed, universal once for all use. Knowledge is a limitless ability to interpret and reinterpret itself and its understandings, books can't do this, only minds can, but Platonic dialogues attempt this as far as a book can.

"Late" dialogues have a new investigation into logic, metaphysics, physics, ethics, political theory (without Forms playing a role). Includes the Timaeus, Sophist, statesman, Philebus, Laws, and Critias all for stylometric considerations. Theory of Forms revised into a Form as a divided whole discovered through the method of "collection and division" hinted at in Parmenides and Phaedrus, set out in Sophist, Statesman, and Philebus. The Late dialogues are the only grouping supported by hard data, and Plato wrote them between the ages of 60 and 81, which is also when Aristotle arrived at the Academy.

Socratic conception of philosophy is face-to-face discussion, arriving at Truth for ourselves in a hard working cooperative search. Before Plato philosophy was written in meter of epic poetry or in short prose writings or collections of remarks, or rhetorical display pieces. Plato was not the first or only Socratic to write dialogues, after Plato philosophical writing shifted mainly to prose discourse or treatise, the principal exception to this rule is Cicero, expressing a plural, nondogmatic Platonic sceptical view.

Plato ultimately has a position of everything needs further thought, everything we have before us is partial and provisional at best.

Other writers of Socrates and Alcibiades's story: Euclides, Antisthenes, Aeschines. There were other writers of Socratic dialogues before Plato. Simon the Shoemaker might be the first to write Socratic dialogues. Zeno of Elea is credited by Aristotle as the first to use the dialectical method.

Generally thought to be early dialogues:
Apology - The trial of Socrates
Charmides - Sophrosyne
Crito -
Euthyphro
Alcibiades
Lesser Hippias - Doing wrong intentionally is better than unintentionally
Ion - Art is knowledge, not the emotions
Laches - Courage
Lysis - Friendship

Generally thought to be middle dialogues:
Cratylus - origin of language; supposed to take place after the conversation with Euthyphro; I never finished reading it
Euthydemus - Pointing out verbal tricks, equivocation
Gorgias - Tyrants and those who give into their desires are more miserable than those he injures and that doing wrong is the worst thing
Menexenus - Speech in praise of Athens
Meno - virtue is given by the gods, it is not innate or taught
Phaedo -
Protagoras - No man does evil voluntarily
Symposium - On love and beauty

Generally thought to be the later middle dialogues:
Phaedrus - On love and beauty, and the superiority of pure thought to reading
Republic -
Parmenides - Ambiguous as to whether it is a defense or attack on the doctrine of Forms
Theatetus - Epistemology

Generally thought to be the late dialogues:
Clitophon -
Timaeus - Cosmology
Critias -
Sophist - Against the idea that a false thought or a thought about something that doesn't exist cannot be said or thought; supposed to take place the day after the Theatetus
Statesman -
Philebus - Wisdom vs. pleasure
Laws - I haven't finished the Laws

Letters
Epigrams

Generally thought that Plato is not the author:
Second Alcibiades -
Hipparchus -
Rival Lovers -
Theages -
Minos -
Epinomis - I haven't read it
Definitions -
On Justice -
On Virtue -
Demodocus -
Sisyphus -
Halcyon -
Eryxias -
Axiochus -

Apology

pg. 19 pay no attention ... the truth.

Socrates says he will only speak the truth, but expressed randomly and with the first words that come to mind and like he does in the agora; trusting in the justice of what he says, contrary to being the fancy speaker his accusers have warned the jury about.

pg. 19 they got ahold ... no defense.

He says he has two sets of accusers he must deal with and first he must uproot the prejudice and slander made by Aristophanes that the jury has heard since they were young. He says "let the matter proceed as the god may wish." He says the slander can be stated as: Socrates studies things in the sky and below the Earth, he makes the worse into the stronger argument, and teaches these to others. That Aristophanes has Socrates saying he was walking on air and other nonsense, which Socrates says he knows nothing at all and has no part in such things, that he doesn't discuss such things to any extent, which anyone who has heard him speak can attest to. He denies teaching for money, and denies having the knowledge of human and social kinds and how to supervise the young to excel in their proper qualities like the sophists have, Gorgias, Prodicus, Hippias, and Evenus (the last charges five minas).

pg. 20 but Socrates ... and slander.

He says that a certain human wisdom, if he really possesses it, as opposed to the more than human wisdom that the sophists possess but that he himself doesn't, is the cause for his reputation. Chaerephon's asking the oracle.

pg. 21 I went to one of those reputed wise. My experience ... many others.

pg. 21 22a for I must tell .... knowledgable.

22a Though he knew he was becoming unpopular he thought he must attach the greatest importance to the god's oracle. After asking politicians, he found that the poets said many fine things without understanding what they said.

22c I saw that, because ... were not.

22d the good craftsman ... did not have.

He says that he concluded that the god meant the wisest of men understand their wisdom is worthless, so he assists the god in showing those who think they are wise that they are not, and this occupation causes him great poverty and no leisure for public affairs.

23 c those who have ... but with me.

23 d If one asks them ... and numerous.

24 a I should be ... a time.

The formal charges are corrupting the young and of not believing in the city's gods, but in new spiritual things. He asks Meletus who improves the young since Socrates corrupts them. (putting someone on the spot for fear of making enemies), makes Meletus say everyone but Socrates improves them. Socrates uses training horses as an analogy against Meletus's claim, that with animals one or very few improve and the majority corrupt.

25 c Meletus admits that the wicked do some harm to those ever closest to them and the good benefit them, that no man wants to be harmed, and that Socrates corrupts the youth deliberately. Socrates then points out that it is implausible that Meletus is so much wiser than Socrates at the latter's great age and that Socrates is so ignorant that he would deliberatly make his associates wicked and risk being harmed by them. So either he does not corrupt the young, or if he does then it is unwillingly. Either way Meletus is lying. If it was unwillingly then Meletus should have instructed and exhorted Socrates, for if he learns better he shall cease to do what he is doing unwillingly, not take him to trial which is for punishment of the willing wrong doer. Meletus accuses Socrates of atheism, of believing that the sun is stone and the moon is earth.

26d Anaxagoras of Clazomenae

26e interesting info on scrolls, and Socrates called Anaxagoras's theories absurd

27a He seems to ... and others?"

Socrates points out Meletus is contradicting himself between the affidavit and the present claim.

27e You must have ... divine things.

28a I am very ... at me.

28b You are wrong ... bad man.

28d wherever a man .... than disgrace.

28e Potidaea, Amphipolis, Delium

28e when the god ... anything else.

29a Justice

29a to fear death ... know to be bad.

29d I will obey ... your soul?"

30a I shall reproach ... kindred to me.

30a for I go ... collectively."

30c Be sure that ... unjustly.

31b That I am the ... for virtue.

31d Socrates's daemon

31d if I had long ... short time.

32b Short biographical info to 32e

35a Do you think ... not done so.

33c Socrates lists why he does the points out that

33e Brother of Plato. Socrates points out that the alleged "corrupted" and their relatives would come to Socrates's defense but none have for Meletus.

34c Perhaps one of ... in anger.

34d Socrates's children; Socrates's reputation.

It is not the ... habit of it.

35d Supplication in court seeks jurors to abandon their oath and so would be impious; refers to plural gods.

36b He thought himself too honest to survive occupying himself in wealth, household affairs, generalship, public oration, or other city offices

36c He tried to confer upon others what he thought was the greatest benefit, to persuade them not to care about belongings before caring to make oneself as good and wise as possible.

38a It is impossible for him to keep quiet because he would be disobeying the god, and that the greatest good for a man to discuss virtue everyday and what he tests himself on and others, for the examined life is not worth living for men.

38b losing all his money would not hurt him, he proposes to pay what he can afford of 1 mina (100 daily wages of a laborer), then says Plato, Crito, Critobolus, and Apollodorus voluteer to pay 30 minas.

38c Plato makes Socrates prophecy the condemnation of Athens for killing him, a wise man.

38d,e Socrates says he was convicted not for his arguments failing but because those that convicted him wanted to see a shameless display to hear Socrates say what they wanted to hear from him, lamentations and tears, which others do, but that are unworthy of Socrates.

38e He would rather die after making his noble defense than to live after making a shameless display of himself.

39 Neither I ... than death.

39b They are condemned by truth to wickedness and injustice, I maintain my assessment, they maintain theirs, this perhaps had to happen, and I think it is as it should be.

39c He claims they convicted him to avoid giving an account of their lives. Vengeneance will come in the form of more people testing them, who will be younger and therefore more resented.

39d You are wrong ... good as possible.

40a mentions his daemon who keeps him from doing something wrong did not stop him at any point in the day so that he speculates what happened that day is a good thing, and that death isn't an evil but is a good thing for him then.

40c either the dead are nothing, or death is a change and relocation of the soul. If the first then people often value a dreamless night as better than most days of their lives, and all of eternity would be like one night, and he thinks this would be a great advantage. If the latter, then he will have left the people of Athens, who convicted him, behind for the great upright men of the past. He is willing to die many times if that is true. And he could question the wise and who thinks they are.

41d You too must be ... by the gods.

41d it is clear to him that it is better to die now and escape from trouble. He isn't angry with his accusers or those who convicted him. They deserve blame for trying to hurt him though.

41e I ask from them ... except the god.

Crito

43b Crito syas he has often considered the way Socrates lives his life happy, and especially now that he bears his conviction and death sentence so easily and lightly.

43b It would not ... die now.

43d After Crito says Socrates will most likely die on the morrow Socrates says may it be for the best. If it so please the gods, so be it.

44a Socrates mentions a dream he takes to be prophetic that his soul will return home on the third day, told to him by a beautiful woman in white.

44b Crito says that if Socrates dies he will be deprived of a friend, the likes of which he will never find again. And that others will think that Crito could have saved Socrates with his money but didn't save his friend.

44c My good Crito, why should we ... haphazardly.

46b My dear Crito ... sound statement?

47a ONe should value the good opinions, those of wise men, and not the bad ones, which are those of foolish men. A man should fear the blame and welcome the praise of the one who knows, thinks right, and follow his directions, not those of the many. If he values the opions of the many and disobeys the one who knows he will suffer harm.

47d If we do not ... unjust actions.

47e LIfe is not worth living with a body that is corrupted and in bad condition adn the part of us that is concerned with justice and injustice is superior to the body and life is not worth living if it is corrupted by unjust action.

48a We should not care for the opinion of the many about what is just, beautiful, good, and their opposites but only of one who understands justice and injustice and truth itself.

48b the most important thing is not life but the good life.

48b The good life, the beautiful life, the just life are all the same. The considerations of money, reputation, the upbringing of children belong to the majority of men, those who put men to death and would bring them to live again without thinking. The only valid consideration for us is whether something is right or wrong, not whether we should die or suffer.

48e I think it is important to persuade ... your wishes.

We must never willingly do wrong, no exceptions, not that one can do wrong in one way and not in another, to do wrong is never good or admirable, that doesn't change now that he is facing death, they are not like children who would change. Wrong doing or injustice is in everyway harmful and shameful to the wrongdoer.

49b Nor must one ... do wrong.

49c One should never do wrong ... each other's views.

One should fulfill an agreement that is just with another.

50b A city will be destroyed if the verdicts of its court have no force and are nullified and set at naught by private individuals.

50c The agreement of a city was to respect the judgments the city comes to. Socrates did not criticize the city when it was through it his father and mother married adn begat Socrates, nor did he criticize it when the city was concerned with the nurture of babies and education that he received. Socrates and his forefathers were the offspring and servants of the city, so they are not on equal footing with the city as regards the right (as in law right) so it is not the case that whatever the city does to Socrates it is right for Socrates to do to the city. One is not on equal footing with one's father or master as regards the right, so if the city decides it is right to kill Socrates, he does not have the right to undertake to destroy it as far as he can in return. One's country should be honored above one's parents and ancestors and revered and treated as sacred, it counts for more among the gods and sensible men. One must persuade it or obey its orders.

The city (laws) always allows people to leave if it doesn't agree. The city says that whoever remains, when they see the city's ways has come to an agreement with it to obey its instructions. It is wrong to disobey one's parents, disobeys the one who brings you up, and wrong to break one's agreement, therefore, it is wrong in three ways to disobey the city, unless it is wrong then you must try and persuade it to do better. Socrates never left the city except on military service, he had children there, at his trial he could have proposed a penalty of exile, but prided himself that he didn't resent death but chose death over exile. He had agreed in words and deeds, living there for 70 years.

53a He thought Sparta and Crete, Megara, and Thebes were well governed. The city and the laws have been congenial to you. What city can please without laws? He would be a laughing stock if he had left the city.

53b His friends would be in danger of punishment in Athens, other cities that are not well governed would be hostile to him for his exhortations and life wouldn't be worth living in them anyway, couldn't associate with them without being ashamed and he couldn't talk about virtue and justice are men's most precious possessions, along with lawful behavior and the laws, without being a hypocrite.

53d People will probably say that he was likely to live only a short time more but was so greedy for life that he transgressed the most important laws. He would have to spend all his time ingratiating the new people around him.

54a His children will be better off not being uprooted and becoming strangers, if those who profess to be his friends are any good at all they would look after his children in any case, even if he dies.

54b Do not value one's children or one's life or anything else more than goodness, so you will be blameless before the rulers in Hades. He was wronged by men, not the laws. If he departs, after returning wrong for wrong, mistreatment for mistreatment, breaking his agreement with the laws, mistreating those he sould mistreat the least (himself, his friends, his country, and the laws), they will be angry with him while he is still alive and the laws of the underworld will not receive him kindly, as a destroyer of laws.

54d Socrates says he hears these words as the Corybants seem to hear the music of their flutes, so he says lets act in this way since this is the way the god is leading us.

Euthyphro

[There were laws protecting the city from the god's displeasure; murder was a religious offense since it entailed pollution. Socrates seeks definite, absolute, unambiguous, self-contained, essential properties and definitions, no secondary qualities. Intro suggests that Socrates seems to like the definition that piety is justice in relation to the gods, in serving and assisting them in some purpose of their own, and perhaps that piety may be shown by doing one's best to be as morally good as possible (as is claimed in the Apology), and if so can piety remain an independent virtue with its own unique standard of action?]

Socrates hung out in the Lyceum. Euthyphro says that Socrates would not indict anyone. Meletus, young and unknown, Pitthean deme, long hair, not much of a beard, acquiline nose.

2c. "it is no small thing for a young man to have knowledge of such an important subject."

2d. "it is right to care first that the young should be as good as possible."

3a. Euth. says harming Socrates is harming the heart of the city. Inventing new gods while denying the old. Euth. thinks this is because of Socrates's demon.

3b. "he comes to court to slander you, knowing that such things are easily misrepresented to the crowd." Euth. thinks it is envy, Socrates is unsure. "The Athenians do no mind anyone who is clever, as long as he does not teach his own wisdom, but if he makes others to be like himself they get angry."

3d. "my liking for people makes them think that I pour out to anybody anything I have to say, not only without charging a fee but even glad to reward anyone who is willing to listen. If they were intending to laugh at me...there would be nothing unpleasant in their spending their time in court laughing and jesting."

I don't know if I covered from 3-6 up to the next point.

5e. Piety is to prosecute the wrong doer, no matter who it is.

6ab. Socrates says he doesn't believe such stories and professes agnosticism about the gods.

6d. Socrates asks Euth. for the form of the pious, not to name a few things that are.

7a. Euth. answers that what is dear to the gods is pious, what is not is impious.

7b. Socrates points out that Euth. believes the gods are at discord and enmity with each other.

7b-d. Socrates asks what are the subjects of difference that cause hatred and anger. It isn't things that can be easily solved by a measurement (e.g. number, size, weight), but it is things like just and unjust, beauty and ugliness, good and bad because we are unable to come to a satisfactory decision. So the gods will have differences regarding the same things. So some actions will be considered just by some gods and unjust by others.

8b. Euth. responds that he things they all agree on retribution for murder.

8c-e. People might all agree that retribution for wrong doing is just, but they appear to disagree about who the wrong doer is, what he did, and when, and so the gods are the same. Some assert that they are wronged by another, while others deny it.

9ab. Socrates asks for proof that all the gods agree that it is just, right, to prosecute his father.

9cd. Socrates points out that the pious and impious has not been defined because of the differences in what the gods love.

9e. Euthyphro redefines pious as what all the gods love and the impious as what they all hate. Socrates responds by saying "if one of us, or someone else, merely says that something is so, do we accept that it is so? Or should we examine what the speaker means? (whether it is a sound statement).

10a-d. Socrates asks Euthyphro the question of the dilemma. He tries to make it clearer by going after a form; something is carried because it is being carried, it is not being carried because it is something carried; something is seen because it is being seen, not being seen because it is a thing seen; so the pious is loved because it is being loved, not being loved because it is something that is loved. And the conclusion is that it is being loved because it is pious, but it is not pious because it is being loved.

10c. if anything is being ... affected (and note 2 on pg 10). [Same with love so that 10d the pious is being loved because it is pious; and is something loved because it is being loved by the gods; so the god loved is not the same as the pious.]

11c. Socrates's ancestor clever Daedalus. Euthyphro accuses Socrates of shifting around Euthyphro's propositions for as far as he is concerned they would stay where they are. E. says that all that is pious is just, but S. asks if all that is just is pious or is there some exclusion. "You do not ... shame." Socrates argues against this but says, "But were there ... wickedness?", "fear covers a larger area than shame ... also number [neat analogies]. Pious is part of justice so where there is justice there is not always piety. Socrates gives example of the kind of definition he seeks, using even numbers. Caring for something aims at the good and the benefit of the object cared for, so E's answer that the pious part of justice is caring for the gods because he doesn't want to say he is making the gods better. [Interesting humility to the gods]. So he says it is the kind of care that slaves take of their masters. Socrates asks what aim do the gods acheive in using us as their servants.

14b. is E's answer. "the lover of ... lead him.", "it would not be ... needed.", "I prefer ... true." Piety is said to be a knowledge of how to sacrifice and pray. Sacrifice is to give, pray is to beg. What gifts could the gods need? Pleasing things like: honor, reverence, such things are dear to the gods. Socrates shows they are in the same problem as before.

"If you had nor ... and impiety.", " and my ignorance ... my life."

[Part of the problem with Euthyphro's dilemma is that we don't know how much meaning is supposed to go with "pious", is it just an empty word that can be attached to anything, or does it still have a good connotation? etc.]

Charmides

Socrates returns from the battle of Potidaea. He recognizes the physical beauty of Charmides but he wants to see the beauty of his soul first. He is aroused by Charmides. Good doctors must treat the whole body to help a specific malady, curing the part along with the whole. "If the whole is not in good condition it is impossible that the part should be." And the healthy body requires a healthy soul. Praise for superior beauty, virtue, and everything else called happiness. S. says that if sophrosyne is in Charmides it would provide a sense of its presence so he could form an opinion that he has it and what it is. C. says it is doing everything in an orderly and quiet way (talking, walking in the streets, etc.), a sort of quietness. S. responds that they say the quiet are sophrosunic (?). Sophrosyne is one of the admirable things. S. gives a list of things where it is admirable to do them quickly and slowly and quietly are ugly, so that in the case of the body it is not quietness but quickness which is the more sophrosunic, since sophrosyne is an admirable thing and speed is the admirable. The same for the operations of thought.

160d S. tells C. to look into himself with greater concentration, and decide what the effect of sophrosyne has upon him and what sort of thing it must be to have that effect. C. says that sophrosyne seems to make people ashamed and bashful and so it must be modesty. S. says if sophrosyne is an admirable thing, then sophrosynic men are good, and something cannot be good that does not produce good men, so sophrosyne is a good thing. But Homer said "Modesty is not a good mate for a needy man." So modesty is both good and bad. Sophrosyne must be a good if it makes those good in whom it is present and make bad those in whom it is not. So sophrosyne would not be modesty if it really is a good. C. says sophrosyne is minding one's own business. S. says that all different kinds of teachers, and all the arts, involve other people's business, and a city wouldn't be well governed if it made everyone keep to their own business, but it was previously agreed that a city sophrosynistically governed would be governed well. Perhaps the person who suggested that didn't know what he meant either.

163d Prodicus

Critias is lured in to defend his definition. He says the man who does bad is not sophrosynic, and the man who does good is sophrosynic. The man who does what he ought is sophrosynic. S. says sometimes a craftsman or doctor does not know if he is going to be beneficial from the work he does, so they are sometimes ignorant of their own sophrosynism. Critias doesn't want this so he wants to recant what was said before. He says sophrosyne is to know oneself. Two other sayings "Nothing too much", and "Pledges lead to perdition." If knowing is what sophrosyne is then it must be a science and of something. C. says of oneself. S. says sciences produce something, so what does sophrosyne as a science produce? C. says S. isn't conducting the investigation in the right way because this case doesn't have the same nature. S. agrees but says for every science one can say what it is a science of distinct from the science itself. The art of calculation is of the odd and even. C. answers sophrosyne is unique, it is the only science which it both of other science and of itself.

Here is why Socrates does what he does 166c how could you... will be. 166e

S. says it would also have to be a science of the absence of the absence of science. So only the sophrosynistic man will know himself and be able to examine what he and other people know and don't know. Is it possible to know that one knows and does not know what he knows and does not know? But this is saying there is a science that is a science of itself and the other sciences, but which is a science of no branch of learning. C. says it is a science of something.

168b. S. responds with listing examples when a thing has the faculty of relation to something else that leads to absurdity, as in greater has the faculty of being greater than something. So, like sophrosyne ahs been characterized, if something greater is greater than everything else and greater than itself but greater than nothing that the other things that are greater are, this thing would be greater than itself and less than itself.

[important method distinction] 168e S. says some examples appear to be absolutely impossible, but other examples it is very doubtful if the could ever apply their own faculties to themselves. He lists some cases where they produce disbelief in some, but perhaps it doesn't in other people. In order to move the argument forward S. grants that a science of science is possible (to be investigated later) and now asks if it is possible to know what one knows and doesn't know. But S. challenges C.'s description that to know oneself means that one will know what he knows and does not know.

[science defined] They agree that a science is the ability to divide things into a group of that thing and a group that is not. So a science of science will be the ability to divide things and say when one is a science and the other is not. If sophrosyne is the science of science, medicine is the science of health, politics the science of justice, sophrosyne is not the same as medicine or justice. So a sophrosynic man won't necessarily know the healthy unless he also knows the science of health, medicine. So a sophrosynic man won't know what he knows, only that he knows which sciences are sciences. So sophrosyne would be to know that one knows and does not know. So of other people's science the sophrosynic man will only know that they have a science, but not what they know. In order to distinguish what science it is one must examine what it is a science of. The man of sophrosyne won't be able to distinguish the man who pretends to be a doctor from the real one. The former won't be able to tell through talking because the doctor only knows health and disease but doesn't know science. Medicine is the science of health and disease. So sophrosyne won't have any benefit. If the sophrosynistic man knew what he knew and what he did not know and was able to investigae another man in the same situation, then it would be the greatest benefit to us. S. gives a list of good things, leading to rightness and happiness.

171e Then S. changes hs mind and says that it is not living scientifically that makes us fare well and be happy but only if we have the science of good and evil. All the other sciences will do what they do all the same but we won't be albe to do these things well and beneficially without the science of good and evil (the one which the function is to benefit us). True dreams come through horn gate, deceitful ones through the gate of ivory.

So Sophrosyne can't be beneficial if it is not the craftsman of any beneficial thing. So since sophrosyne is the finest of all things we must not have been able to discover what the lawmaker named sophrosyne. Also we had to grant things hypothetically even to reach this point.

Lesser Hippias

364d Hippias, will you ... answers gently.

Hippias says the truth teller is the opposite from the falsehood sayer. Hippias says that those who speak falsely have the power to do many things, like deceive, and that they are intelligent and know what they are doing, that's how they do their mischief; wise in deception. So a person who did not have the power to speak falsehoods and was ignorant would not speak falsehoods.

S. says each person who can do what he wishes when he wishes is powerful, someone who is not prevented by disease or other such things. H. agrees that he is the best, most powerful and wise, at arithmetic, and could tell the truth or tell a falsehood the best and with the most power. S. points out that the same person has the most power to say falsehoods adn to tell the truth about calculations, this person is the one who is good with calculations, the arithmetician. S. says this because the person ignorant about calculations would involutarily say the truth sometimes when he wished to say falsehoods, whereas the wise person would consistently tell falsehoods if he should wish to tell falsehoods. So the good person is powerful and truthful and the person who can tell falsehoods the best. Likewise for the good geometer and good astronomer.

368e look both at your ... none exists.

S. says the same person has been discovered to be truthful and to speak falsehoods. So Odysseus and Achilles are the same, both truthful and false speakers.

369c Oh Socrates ... learning something.

H. draws a distinction between telling falsehoods involutarily and intentionally. S. points out they agreed that voluntary falsehood speakers are better than involutary ones.

372a You see, Hippias ... because I don't know. 372d

S. says a runner who runs well is a good runner, a runner who runs badly is a bad one. Quickness is a good thing, slowness a bad thing. The one who runs slowly voluntarily is the better runner. Running is doing something, and doing something accomplishes something, and one who runs badly accomplishes something bad and shameful in a race, and on who runs slowly runs badly. So the better runner voluntarily accomplishes this bad and shameful thing, and the bad runner involuntarily. And so on with all the other crafts and sciences, one accomplishes bad and shameful things and misses the mark voluntarily but the more worthless does this involuntarily.

375d Justice is some sort of knowledge or power or both. If justice is a power of the soul, isn't the more powerful soul the more just? The wiser soul is more just, the more ignorant the more unjust. So the soul with more knowledge and power is more just, and the more ignorant is more unjust. The more powerful and wiser soul was seen to be better and to have more power to do both fine and shameful things. Whenever it accomplishes shameful results it does so voluntarily by the attributes of justice, power and craft. To do injustice is to do bad, to refrain from injustice is to do something fine. The good man will do injustice voluntarily and the bad man does it voluntarily.

376c I can't agree ... company.

[S. has shown this to result from Hippias's positions. S. disavows the conclusion, and offers a conditional "if-then" conclusion.]

Ion

A rhapsode must present the poets thought and what was meant to the audience. Ion claims to be the best rhapsode ever and expert on Homer. S. asks him if this extends to what other poets say too because the poets talks about the same types of things. Ion says it is different because Homer wrote on those topics the best. S. says that only one who has mastered arithmetic can differentiate the good speaker on arithmetic from the bad. So when a number of people speak on the same subject, its always the same person who can pick out the good from the bad, and he is "wonderfully clever" about both speakers. There is an art of poetry as a whole, and as well for the whole of any other subject. One uses the same discipline throughout whenever one masters a subject.

532d I wish that ... ordinary man.

S. points our that no one knows of someone who only knows about a master of one particular subject and yet knows nothing about other masters of the same subject. S. says that Ion hasn't mastered speaking will about Homer, he is moved to speak by a divine power. Euripides called stones that moved iron rings "magnetic" stones because natural magnets came from Magnesia. Most people called them Heralean stones after the town of Heraclea, both in Asia Minor. This shows knowledge that magnets move iron and can make them magnetic too. This is likened to how the Muse inspires people. S. says none of the good lyric or epic poets are masters of their craft but are inspired, possessed, just like the Corybantes dancers. Rhapsodes are the representatives of the representatives of the gods. The last ring is the audience he affects. Ion says he knows all of Homer equally well. S. asks him if he knows the professional subjects, like a charioteer is a master of chariot races so he would know better than a doctor about whether Homer's lines on the chariot race are accurate. So a god has granted the ability to know a certain function to each profession. The things we learn by mastering one profession we won't learn by mastering another. But if a profession teaches the same knowledge of the same subjects it is just the same profession. A person who has not mastered a profession will not be able to be a good judge of the subjects of the profession so a charioteer will know better than a rhapsode if Homer spoke beautifully about the race.

534b For a poet is ... sing prophecy.

A rhapsode's profession is different from a doctors, a charioteers, etc. so they will know different subjects. S. asks where then Homer says a passage that belong to the rhapsodes profession, that a rhapsode would know better than anybody. I. says all of them, that a rhapsode will know what is fitting for a man or a woman to say, or a slave or freeman, or a follower or leader. S. asks if a navigator comes to a storm at sea, who would know better what to say, a rhapsode or a navigator? S. again repeats that a horseman knows best how to tell a good horseman from a bad, which is only taught by horsemanship, not cithera playing. I. says he knows what a general would say to his troops. I. says he doesn't think there is a difference between the two professions that they are just one, not two. S. asks if being a good general will make a good rhapsode. I. still claims to be the best general in Greece having learned from Homer's poetry. S. asks him why he hasn't been commanding troops.

541d they're also ... officials.

Apollodorus of Cyzicaas, Phanosthenes of Andros, Heraclides of Clazoemae are all foreigners that Athens appoints as generals or other officials. And why does not Athens select Ion if he was worth noticing? S. says I. has been avoiding giving him a demonstration of his knowledge on Homer. So either Ion is doing wrong or he is divinely inspired. IOn accepts the later as being lovelier to be thought of.

Laches

178a Now there are some ... communicate to you.

179a We have made up ... turn out best. 180e

179e So we thought ... enterprise.

180b As for what Lysimachus ... carelessly

180d People at my time ... the time.

180e [Socrates's father's name was Sophroniscus]

181a [description of S] I have seen him ... of that kind.

[Athenian's were defeated by the Boeotians at the Battle of Delium in 424. S keeping up his country's reputation, if the rest had been willing to behave in the same manner as Socrates, Athens would be safe and would not have suffered a disaster of that kind. Alcibiades speaks of S's behavior in the retreat t Symposium 220e.]

181b the praise you ... praise you.

181d it seems to me ... and the others.

181e it is a good ... at leisure.

only those are ... of war.

Nicias says he thinks fighting in armor is good because it is the starting point for all the other studies and pursuits which are fine and of great value for a man to learn and to practice, like tactics and the whole art of the general, etc.

182c this knowledge will ... he looks.

182d it is difficult ... to learn it?

Nicias says if fighting in armor was useful the Lacedaemonians would have studied it, like the Athenians value good writers of tragedy. No fighter of armor has become renowned in battle.

184b if a cowardly ... have this knowledge.

S. asks whether someone would decide the education of their son based on a vote or based on who has been educated by a good trainer of the art sought. S asserts it is by knowledge that one ought to make decisions if one is to make them well. So they must look for an expert, but they are not looking for an expert in the art of fighting in armor but this world be for the sake of the boys soul, as in we take counsel about the eyes when a man considers to annoint his eyes and not medicine, or when we take counsel about horses when we consider whether we should put a bridle on a horse, not the bridle. That for the sake of which. So they need an expert in the care of the soul who has had good teachers, and for those who are experts without teachers you wouldn't trust them without well executed products of their art to show you. So the expert on the soul will be good themselves and have tended the souls of many young men, that have become good through his services. S says he has had no teacher in that subject though he has always longed for it. and was too poor to pay the sophists, who were the only ones professed to be able to cultivate him and he claims to be unable to discover the art even now.

186d they seem to me ... subject.

187a But if you yourselves ... wine jar.

[Solon - I grow old ever learning many things.

[saying - Don't begin pottery on a wine jar.

187e [description of Socrates's behavior] You don't appear ... Socrates were present.

188b don't regard it ... of his life.

[About Socrates] 188c Whenever I hear ... account of himself. 189b

189c ON account of my ... exactly good.

S says if we know that adding a thing to another thing makes the latter thing better, and we are able to add the former, then we clearly know the thing about which we should be consulting as to how one might obtain it most easily and best. Ex. we know that adding sight to the eyes makes them better and if we are able to add it, then we clearly know what sight is. Because if we didn't know what sight in itself was, we wouldn't be worthy counsellors about the eyes as to the manner in which sight might best be obtained. So they must know what virtue is before they could possibly advise the best method to obtain it.

[Knowledge] If one knows something they must be able to state it. S proposes starting by seeing if they have sufficient knowledge of a part of virtue. S proposes to look at what the techniques of fighting in armor would lead to, i.e. courage. Laches says if a man remains at his post to defend against the enemy without running away he is a man of courage. S asks what characteristics courage for every sort of warrior and at sea, and illness and poverty, because cavalry retreat and attack, and the Scythians at the battle of Plataea ran away but then attacked when the Persian lines broke and so won, and also include those brave in the face of pain and fear and also those clever at fighting desire and pleasure whether by standing ground or running away. So all these men are brave but some possess courage in pleasures, some in pains, some in desires and some in fears, and others show cowardice in the same respects.

Laches then says courage is an endurance of the soul. Laches agrees that he regards courage as a very fine thing, and that endurance accompanied by wisdom is a very fine thing, but accompanied by folly is harmful and injurious. S points out[192d] then that this type of endurance is not fine and so is not courage.

192e So then it is investigated if wise endurance is courage. S asks if it is wise in respect to everything both great and small. S points out cases where wise endurance would not be called courage, and examples where foolish endurance would be more courageous, but foolish daring and endurance were agreed to be disgraceful and harmful, and courage is still seen to be a noble thing.

194a I am really getting ... what it is.

194d I have often ... ignorant.

Nicias says if a man is really courageous then he is wise, so courage is a kind of wisdom - knowledge of the fearful and hopeful in war and every situation.

193a it strikes me ... moment ago.

Laches objects that Nicias would not call doctors courageous though they have knowledge. Nicias responds that the doctors knowledge is restricted to just the knowledge of describing health and disease. The courageous one knows what is and is not to be feared, and is possessed by very few.

196c let us see if ... instruct him.

S says that N must deny courage to wild beasts unless he wants to say that they know what few men do. N says he does deny it to anything that for lack of understanding does not fear what should be feared; they are rash or mad.

197b Or do you suppose ... of that distinction.

197d Prodicus

It is certainly more ... share of wisdom.

198a Courage was agreed to be one part among other parts which taken together are called virtue, along with the parts temperance and justice eand everything else of this kind. Fearful things are those that produce fear. hopeful things those that do not produce fear. 198b Fear is produced by evils which are anticipated not by evils which have happened or are happening. Fearful things are future evils, and hopeful things are either future non-evils or future goods. Nicias says knowledge of these things is courage.

[Homer - modesty is not a good mate for a needy man.]

[Family servants (slaves) were the tutors of young teen men]

S says that in each art it appears the knowledge is the same for the past, present, and future, not different knowledges, whether medicine, farming, or generalship; so that the same knowledge has understanding of the same things whether past, present, or future. So courage must be knowledge of the fearful and hopeful at any time. Which makes it knowledge of practically all goods and evils put together. And would a man with this kind of knowledge seem to depart from virtue in any respect if he knows all goods whatsoever? Would this man lack in temperance, or justice and holiness (dealing with gods and men with respect to the fearful and the good things he can obtain from them). This sounds like virtue itself and not a part of virtue. So we have not discovered what courage is.

200a That's a fine attitude ... need of learning.

[Stuff on Socrates's character]

200d if Socrates ... anyone else.

200e it would be a ... with the boys. 201b

Lysis

S says he has a god-given ability to quickly tell when someone is in love and who they are in love with. S points out that all Hippothales songs of praise to Lysis turn out to be praises of Hippothales himself if he is victorious in winning him as a boyfriend, but if he fails then the more he will seem to have lost and the more he will be ridiculed. By praising Lysis he will give him a big head and make him harder to catch, and a poet who hurts himself with it is a bad poet. H asks for S's advice on how to make Lysis like him. S says he'll model how to have a conversation with him.

205e You are really what ... hurt himself. 206b

207c And friends have ... is true.

S gets Lysis to agree that if a mother and father love one very much they will wnat the loved to be as happy as possible. A slave or one not permitted to do whatever on likes won't be happy. But Lysis's father doesn't let Lysis do whatever he wants, he can't drive the chariot or mule-team which the father lets slaves control.

There is a slave in charge of Lysis and school masters too. His mother won't let him touch dangerous or valuable things. Lysis says it is because he hasn't come of age yet. S says that can't be it, because they let Lysis read and write for them, tune his lyre the way he wishes. L says he supposes this is because he understands these things but isn't allowed to do the things he doesn't understand. S asks L answers that a series of people will allow others to control things for them if the latter is convinced that the former has superior knowledge to themselves. A person might trust another another more than himself with all of his business as long as the latter seemed to be more skilled. So in areas where we really understand something others will trust us, and there one can act just as they choose, and nobody will want to get in one's way. There one will be free but in control of others, and things will belong to us because one will derive some advantage from them. But in areas where we don't have any understanding, no one will trust us to act as we judge best, but will do their best to stop us, even our parents. And there we are subject to the orders of others, and things won't be ours because we are not going to derive any advantage from them.

210a This is the way ... good for nothing?

People won't want to be someone's friend or love one as a friend in those areas which we are good for nothing, but if you become wise everyone will be your friend.

210c So it turns out ... close relatives.

S says it isn't possible to be high-minded in areas where one hasn't had one's mind trained, and since Lysis needs a teacher his mind is not yet trained so he is not high-minded.

210e This is how ... as you do."

211d Eversince I was a boy ... experience of it.

S syas he wants to know how Lysis and Menex became friends. He asks if when someone loves someone else which of the two becomes the friend of the other, the loved or the lover. L says they both become each other's friend, though it is possible that the love is not reciprocated, sometimes is hated. Which is the friend in this case?

212c Isn't this how men ... are hated.

[Solon quote]

L changes his view to say they are only friends if the both love each other, so nothing is a friend of the lover unless itl oves him in return. L agrees Solon's saying as believed true that people can really love something that is not your friend. So this changes his view to what is loved is a friend to the person who loves it, whether it lvoes him or hates him, and the hated is the enemy, not the hater.

213a Babies ... dearest friends.

So this results in the impossiblity of being enemies to one's friends and friends to one's enemies. Loving ones enemies and hating one's friends. So the lover is the friend and the hater is the enemy, which means one is frequently a friend of the nonfriend, and enemy of the nonemeny. So none of these will do.

S suggests they to to the ancestrial voices of wisdom, the poets, for guidance. They say god makes people friends by drawing the like to the like, the writers who write about Nature and the universe say the same, the like must always be friends to the like.

214b To our way of ... to be friends.

The wicked and the wicked can't be friends. The wicked would do injustice so iti s impossible for him and the one who suffers his injustice to be friends, so the saying can only be half true. So the good are like each other and are friends while the bad are never alike, not even to themselves, they are off-kilter and unstable.

214d But what I think ... friend to it.

The conclusion is that whoever are good are friends, but S aks when something is like something else how can it benefit or harm its like in a way that it could not benefit or harm itself? How is it useful to its counterpart. Things can't e prized when they can't give assistance.

215a Can such things ... assistance?

how can it be a friend if not prized? So like is not firend to like. A person who is good is self-sufficient in so far as he is good, so he wouldn't need anything and thus not prize anything and thus not love and whoever doesn't love is not a friend. Hesiod says that like is most hostile to like.

215d Potter is ... enjoyment of its like.

S considers the oppostie being its opposite's best friend, but dismisses it because enmity is the thing most opposite to friendship, but that would mean the enemy is firend to the firend, and the just a friend to the unjust, the temperate to the licentious, good to the bad, which aren't friends. S considers that the friend is neither good nor bad but becomes the friend of the good just for that reason. Perhaps the beautiful is a firend. The good is beautiful. What is neither good nor bad is a friend of the beautiful and the good. There are three kinds of things: the good, the bad, and the niether good nor bad. The previous arguments show the good is not friend to the good, the bad is not friend to the bad, all that remains is the neither good nor bad is friends with the good, since like is not friend to liek and nothing could be freind to the bad. A healthy body isn't friend to a doctor on account of his good health, but a sick man is. The body is neither good nor bad, but disease is bad and medicine goode. So what is neither good nor bad becomes the friend of the good because of the presence of the bad. Some things are the same sort as what is present in them and some are not, so that bead is present in it but the neither good nor bad has not yet become bad itself. This would mean that the wise no longer love wisdom, and no bad and stupid man loves wisdom. ONly those who have ignorance but are not yet made ignorant and stupid by it, conscious of not knowing what they don't know, can love wisdom. Anyone who is a friend is a friend to someone on account of something. Two problems result, a body (neither good nor bad) is friend to medicine (a good) because of disease (an evil) fo rthe sake of health (a good). 1) [I missed a logical step in Plato's argument] if a friend becomes friend [219b] of the friend, then like has become friend of the like[I guess they are alike because they are both friends and goods](which they said was impossible). 2) Being a friend to something for the sake of soemthing else that's good (which is also a friend) results in an infinite chain, one needs a first principle, a first principle, [219c] a first friend, a something for the sake of which we say that all the rest are friends too. S draws the distinction between merely using the word "friend" and the real friend that all these phantoms are for the sake of. The real friend is therefore not for the sake of another friend. And it is on account of the bad that the good is loved.

221c When a cause is abolished, the thing it was the cause of can no longer exist.

Without the bad there would be no need for the good. So the true friend is a friend for the sake of an enemy. Hunger, thirst, and all the other desires can be felt sometimes to one's benefit, sometimes to one's harm, and sometimes to neither. So the desires that are neither good nor bad will continue to exist even if bad things are abolished, but the good would disappear if the bad were abolished. But it isn't possible to desire and love something passionately without feeling friendly towards it, so there will be friendly things even if the bad is abolished, so the bad can't be the cause of something's being a friend. So perhaps desire is the cause of friendship. A friend to that which it desires. But a thing desires what it is deficient in [221e], which is when something has been taken away from it. So it is what belongs to oneself that passionte love and friendship and desire are directed towards. What belongs to us by nature is something we must love, so one loves another passionately or as a friend only if he belongs to his beloved either in his soul, or in some characteristic, habit, or aspect of his soul, and the genuine lover, not the pretended lover, must be befriended by his boy. S assumes that what belongs is something different from what is like so they wouldn't end up in the same problem where like is useless to like. If the bad belongs to the bad, the good to the good, the neither bad nor good to the neither bad nor good, then the unjust will be no less a friend to the unjust and the good to the good. But if we say that the good is the same as belonging then the good will be a friend only to the good, but this point was already refuted.

223b We thought they ... our party.

But what a friend is we have not yet been able to find out.

Alcibiades

Socrates confronts Alcibiades to tell him why he has persistently pursued him in spite of the latter's rejection of all suitors.

105a. if I saw...have in mind.

Socrates tells Alcibiades that he is the only one that can help the latter acheive his ambitions and the former desires the influence over the latter.

105a. Suppose one...in life.

105c. I think you'd ...all mankind

106d. one advises another because they believe they know better about those matters. One is a good advisor on matters that they know about. What is known is learned from others or found out for oneself. One doesn't seek to learn something that they think they already understand so there must have been a time when one didn't think they knew. It doesn't matter if the expert is rich or poor, tall, short, noble or common, as long as they are actually one who practices (who know it) in those matters that they are advising one on.

107d. Alcib. says he will advise them on war and peace. Socrates says this should be about when it is better, who it is better to go to war with, and what length is better.

A wants to advise the Athenians but its only on matters one knows about that aone is a good advisor, and the only things you know are what you've learned from others or found out for yourself. He learned writing, lyre-playing and wrestling but he won't be teaching them these or other things that others would be better at advising on like building or divining, a builder or diviner would be no matter how tall, or ugly, or common, or poor. A says he will advise on war, peace, or anything else that is the business of the city. The knowledgable will teach who you do something to whom its best to do it to, when it is better to do it, for how long it should be done, how much it should be done. What is correct in every case in accordance with the skill. Yet A doesn't know what the correct is called in the case of war and peace when that is what he claims to know but he does know what the correct or better is called in the case of medicine though he isn't a doctor. He doesn't know what the better tends toward in keeping the peace or in waging war with the right people. A says we accuse the other of tricking us, attacking us, or stealing from us when we go to war. The better would be the more just. S asks who taught him about virtue. A says he found it out. S says if he found it out it would have to been investigatedat a time when A thought he didn't know what it was. S asks when A thought he didn't know because S remembers when A was a child playing knucklebones or some other game he would confidently accuse them of cheating, no like someone who was at a loss about justice and injustice. A claims he did know they were cheating and did understand justice, and always thought he knew, so it wasn't by finding out that he knew it [111b], A guesses he learned it from people in general. S point out that one must know something in order to teach it and that people who know something agree with each other, they don't know it if they disagree. [Like Wittgenstein] When we say people understand Greek we mean they reach for the same things when we say get some wood or stone. They agree with each other, with themselves in private, and they agree in public, so they would make good teachers of these things. But for knowledge of horses, or healthy people the people in general disagree and so would not be able to teach us. People in general disagree over what is just or [112c] unjust to the degree of fighting and killing each other over it, as in the cases of Tanagra and Coronea. It is from such people that A had claimed to have learned about justice. S points out this and that A's opinion wavers a lot, and A didn't learn about justice from himself or from anyone else, how does he know it?

S points out that he isn't saying these things about A, A is saying he doesn't know what justice is since S asks questions and A is answering. S says te scheme to try and teach things one doesn't know is crazy. [113d] A points out that the Athenians just assume what is just and move on to what is more advantageous and says that what isjust is not the same as what is advantageous.

"many people ... right thing." S asks him how he knows the advantageous.

113e What's to stop me ... new proof.

If someone knows something he can persuade others one by one as well as all together. S wants to show A that just things are also advantageous. A admits he has never thought that something was both just and contemptible, so all just things are admirable. A says some admirable things are bad, and some contemptible things are good, like dying in rescuing friends and relatives in battle, or not and living. It is admirable in so far as it is courage an attempt to help the people who you should help, but it is contemptible in so far as it is bad for its injuries or death. A says he would rather have good things and more so the greatest goods, and the least willing to be deprived of such things. People who do things admirable do things well, and people who do things well live successful lives because they have good things. ONe gets good things by acting properly and admirably. [116b] So the thing that is admirable is also good. Good things are advantageous, doing what's just must also be doing what's admirable, and so doing what's good, and so advantageous. So just things are advantageous. S syas if someone claims to knw what is just and then claims sometimes just things are bad what could you do but laugh at him.

116e S points out that A would give the same answer to how many hands he has at different times because he knows this. So giving conflicting aswers bout something without meaning to means one doesn't know something. A person will waver if they don't know or understand something but they think they understand it. If they don't understand it and don't think they understand it they don't waver on it they just defer to someone who does know. (know that you don't know)

S says the errors in our conduct are caused by this kind of ignorance,(this causes bad things and is the most disgraceful sort of stupidity and is most harmful and contemptible dealing with the most important things) of thinking that weknow when we don't know. We don't set out to do something unless we think we know what we are doing, but when people don't think they know how to do something they hand it over to someone else. [117e] So those latter people don't make mistakes because they leave things to others, and those who know don't make mistakes. A agrees that the most important things are what is just, admirable, good, and advantageous, which are the things he is wavering about, and so he is ignorant about the most important things but he thinks he knows. S says this means he is wedded to stupidity, rushing into politics before he has an education, but he is like most politicians in Athens. Pericles is one of the few exceptions, he had kept company and consults with philosophers like Pythaclides of Ceos, Damon of Athens, and Anaxagoras of Clazomenae. S says experts are able to make other experts in their field. We can be sure someone understands something if he can show he has made someone else understand it. S points out that Pericles's sons were idiots, and Clinias (Alcibiades's brother) is crazy, and that nobody else who kept company with Pericles became more of an expert. A says he wasn't affected by Pericles because he didn't pay attention. S says Pythodorus and Callias (both politicians in Athens) paid Zeno of Elea 100 minas each and became wise from him. A says since very few of the politicians are educated, he doesn't need the trouble of learning either and can defeat them with his superior natural abilities. S says he is furious with A and his infatuation with him because he would stoop to compete with those Athenian politicians. S points out that A should seek to be so superior to the others that they would happily assist him against his real opponents, without competing with him, He should be focused on his real opponents Sparta and Persia not on his comrades.

120a But no sir ... thorough preparation. (speaking sarcastically)

S points out that if A were to cultivate himself should he do it if he thought they (his real opponents) were formidable or if not, but cultivating oneself wouldn't do any harm, but would be a big help. S says that A's notion is also false judging by probabilities [probabilities help judge falsehood]. Natural talents will be greatest in noble families. If the well born are well brought up will be perfectly virtuous. S points out that despite his and A's lineage, the kings of Sparta and Persia are kings descended by a line of kings all the way back, and they wouldn't be impressed with the land of Salamis or Eurysaces, and people don't even notice when they are born whereas the birth of princes is such a big deal.

121e [education in other lands like for the Persian prince].

122a These are four ... is slavery.

122b your birth ... with you.

122b Again if you care ... these respects.

124a And yet ... as abroad.

every human being needs self-cultivation

S and A agree they want to be as good as possible. A says they want to be as good as possible in taking care of things, like those who are clever in the ability to rule men when they are helping each other and dealing with each other, over those who take part in citizenship and make mutual contributions. S asks what skill is that, what knowledge is it. A says the knowledge of good advice for safety and better management of the city. [126a] S asks what is present and what is absent when the city is safe and better managed. A says mutual friendship, (i.e. agreement) hatred and insurrection are absent. S points out that there are skills to get us to agree to things like arithmetic and measurement, so what is the agreement he is talking about and what is its skill. A says the agreement between family members. S points out that the man wouldn't know about woman's work and so wouldn't agree with her, and vice versa. Some subjects are women's subjects, some subjects are men's. S points out that to this extent there is no friendship between them, so cities are not well governed when the different groups do their own work. A says it is when each person does his own work that mutual friendship results. If everyone does his own work they are being just, but then when citizens do what is just then there is no friendship between them, if friendship is agreement.

127d But don't lose ... to see it.

128a Well then ... we're not.

S asks what does it mean to cultivate oneself, and it appears we cultivate things with one skill and what belongs to the thing with another skill, so that if you are cultivating what belongs to you you aren't cultivating yourself. So what skill won't make anything that belongs to us better, but make us better. We have to know what a thing is in order to know the skill that makes it better.

129a Is it actually ... know how.

How can we find out what 'itself' is, in itself? The user of a thing is different from what he's using, and a man uses his body so he is different from his body. Maybe its what uses the body, the soul. The sould is what uses the body. Man is either the body, the soul, or the two of them together. The body is ruled, it doesn't rule itself, and if one of them doesn't rule then it isn't a combination of both that rules. So either man is nothing or he is the soul.

130c if we've proven ... of study.

Nothing has more authority than the soul, when two people talk one sould uses words to address the other soul. So to know thyyself is to know one's soul. If being self-controlled is knowing yourself, then the skills of tradesmen and farmers and money earners don't make them self-controlled, and that's why we consider them not suitable for gentlemen and beneath us. If someone loves your body, he doesn't love you but something that belongs to you, they must love your soul.

131c But someone who loved ... as possible.

131d [Pederasty - S mentions that Alcibiades isn't yet 20 but that his body has lost its bloom and everyone has gone away]

131e[Socrates's parents are Sophroniscus and Phaenarete]

131e I was your only ... dangers.

We need to cultivate our souls and let others take care of our bodies and our property. If the soul is to know thyself it must look at the part of the soul that makes a soul good, its wisdom, and any other part of that soul that is similar to itself, like an eye can only see itself when looking in the good useful part of another person, the pupil that reflects and sees. The most divine part of the soul are where knowing and understanding take place, so it resembles the divine and looking at that part and grasping its divine aspects, vision and understanding, would also have the best grasp of himself. If we don't know ourselves and aren't self-controlled (knowing oneself is the same as being self-controlled) we wouldn't be able to know which things that belong to us are good and which are bad.

133e So it turns out that if one doesn't know oneself then they won't know what belongs to them or belongs to their belongings, let alone other people's belongings, or what belongs to the city, and so he couldn't become a statesman, or manage a household estate. He wouldn't know what he is doing and so he'd make mistakes and so conduct himself badly publicly and privately, he'll be a failure and so will the peole he's working for. So it is impossible to prosper unless one is self-controlled and good. It is the bad men who are failures, so one doesn't avoid being a failure by getting rich but by being self-controlled. And for cities to prosper they don't need walls, warships, shipyards, numbers or size without virtue. So if A wants to manage the city's business well and properly one must impart virtue to the citizens, but how can one impart virtue if one doesn't have it?

134c So what you ... self-control.

When an individual or a city with no intelligence is at liberty to do what he or it wants, if he's sick without medical insight but behaves with a dictator's power his health will be ruined, if in a boat without insight and skill in navigation he and his fellow sailors would die. But before one acquires virtue it's better to be ruled by somebody superior than to rule, and what is better is more admirable, which is more apporpriate. So it's appropriate and better for bad men to be slaves, and we should avoid what is appropriate for slaves, i.e. vice and being bad. Virtue is appropriate for a free man.

135e I should like to ... me and you.

281b That is what ... affairs of state?

H says that the skill of the sophists has improved wisdom compared with the ancient sages. So Bias would be a laughing stock among the modern wise just as Daedalus would be amongst modern sculptors.

282a However I ... of the dead.

S says the skill of wisdom has been improved in the ability to handle public business as well as private.

282b [mentions Gorgias, Prodicus, and Protagoras]

H claims to have made 150 minas in a short time

283a That's a fine thing ... the most money.

S says H must have made the most money in Sparta because the Spartans value virtue, they have the money, and H has the ability to sell it to them. H says the wisdom he has makes those who study it stronger in virtue, and no noe can educate in virtue better than him, so a man who teaches the greatest virtues be given the highest honor and make the most money.

284a What's most highly prized in law-abiding cities is virtue.

284a a man who knew ... studied.

H says the spartans have a law against foreign education, and an ancestral tradition forbids them from changing their laws. H says the law is made to be beneficial, but sometimes it does harm if the law is made badly. So laws failed to be made good, they aren't lawful, or even law.

284d Don't lawmakers ... is impossible.

H says in precise speech that is the case but ordinary men are not accustomed to use words in that manner. Ordinary people don't know the truth, but people who know believe that what is more beneficial is more lawful in truth for all men. So the Spartans are breaking the law by not having their sons taught by H, even though they appear to be most lawful. The Spartans aren't interested in astronomy, geometry, many can't even count. H is known for making the sharpest distinctions in the functions of letters, syllables, rhythms, and harmonies. The Spartans like to hear speeches on the genealogies of heroes and men, on settlements of cities, and ancient history. H also has the art of memory, claiming to hear 50 names once and be able to memorize them. H claims to speak well on fine activities and what a young man should take up.

286d S makes up a story about how he commented on parts of a speech that were fine and not fine and some other person asked him what the fine is, so he wants to act like this other person and learn from Hippias what the fine is. It is by justice that just people are just. Justice is something, so by being something it can't be that they are not that thing. So fine things are fine by the fine. S asks what is the fine. H thinks there is no difference betwen the fine and a fine thing. H says a fine goal is a fine thing because a fine thing is a fine thing. H responds how can you be refuted when you say what everyone thinks, when everyone who hears you will testify you're right.

288d [S describes himself]

Since a fine thing is a fine thing, a fine pot is a fine thing though it is foul compared with a fine woman, and a woman is foul compared with the class of the gods. So when one asks what is the fine it is odd to respond with things that are as foul as fine.

289a [two Heraclitus quotes]

289b [a Heraclitus quote]

S asks again if H still mantains that the form of the fine is a horse, girl, or lyre. H. responds that if that's what he's looking for, the thing that when added beautifies a thing and is deemed fine when added, then the answer is gold. That we all know when gold is added, even if something was foul before it will be seen as fine when beautifed with gold, H says this man must accept what's said correctly or be a laughing stock.

289a [Description of Socrates: he is simple, with no feeling at all for fine possessions. He stops at nothing and never accepts anything easily.]

The hypothetical challenger will ask if S thinks Phidias is a bad workman because he was ignorant about gold making everything fine since he didn't make his Athena out of gold. H answers ivory is fine too, S asks why he made the center of the eyes out of stone. H says stone is fine when its a fine stone and appropriate but its foul when not appropriatae. H says whatever is appropriate to each thing makes the particular thing fine. S asks which one is more appropriate for stirring a fine soup in a fine pot, a gold spoon or a fig wood one? The figwood one makes the soup smell better and won't break our pot and so won't spill our soup. And since the appropriate is finer than the inappropriate then the figwood is finer than the gold.

291d H says S is looking for an answer that says the fine is the sort of thing that will never be foul for anyone, anywhere, at any time and that is for every man in every place to be rich, healthy, and honored by the Greeks, to arrive at old age, to make a fine memorial to his parents when they die, and to have a fine, grand burial from his children.

S's character still asks what the fine itself is. The fine is agreed to always be fine and have been fine. S asks is it fine for the children of gods to bury their parents? H says he didn't mean it for the gods or children of gods. So what is foul for some heroes is fine for others.

293e S proposes that maybe the appropriate itself is the fine. H says the appropriate is what is present that makes things to be seen to be fine, like clothes that suit him even if he is ridiculous. S says this is a kind of deceit about the fine, what are things fine by the projecting, for even if they are not seen to be so if they project they are necessarily large. H says the appropriate makes things both be fine and seem to be fine, when it is present. H asserts it is impossible for things that are fine not to be seen as fine, but that everything really fine is unknown by people. S says that if the appropriate is what is added to makes things be and be seen to be fine, it would be the fine but not make things be seen fine or it makes things be seen as fine but not make them be fine. H says the appropriate is what makes things seen to be, which means the appropriate isn't the fine. S suggests the fine is the useful. We say eyes are fine when they are able to see. We call what is useful fine in respect of the way it is useful, what it is useful for, and when it is useful, So ability (or power) is fine, but inability foul.

296a The finest ... foulest of all.

So wisdom is the finest thing of all and ignorance the foulest. S objects that one can't do something he doesn't know how to do. When people make mistakes, do bad work, even unintentionally, if they aren't able to do things, they wouldn't ever do them. Everyone who does things is able to do the things he does.

296c And all men ... unintentionally.

We don't call the useful for the bad fine. So we redefine it as the useful for making some good is the fine.

So anything that is fine is fine because it's beneficial. The beneficial is the maker of the good then, and the maker of something is its cause. So the fine is the cause of the good. Therefore, the fine is not good, and the good is not fine. H and S don't like that conclusion.

298b not past the ... didn't know.

S proposes the fine is the pleasant through hearing and sight, H says the form of the fine would be different in the case of the laws.

299a And as for making love ... to be seen.

So whatever is not pleasant through hearing and sight won't be fine. S's character asks what differentiates the pleasures of sight and hearing from the other pleasures, it can't be just because it is pleasure through sight because hearing isn't pleasure through sight.

300e You'll be seen to be saying nothing.

301b But Socrates ... of being.

They're not the ... get them.

S. points out that he is one and H is one but together they should each be one. Together they are two so they each should be two. One is odd numbered so both should be odd numbered. So it is not necessary that whatever is true of both is true of each, and that whatever is true of each is also true of both. The pleasant adheres in both sight and hearing but not in each.

304a It's flakings ... nonsense.

304e So when I go ... know that.

Euthydemus

pg. 710 272b Aren't you afraid... being afraid.

273a he's a well-bred ... brashness.

pg. 712 He is young ... ruin him.

[They claim to be able to teach virtue better than anyone and else even persuade someone who does not believe that virtue can be taught or who thinks that they don't know or see Euthydemus and Dionysodorus as teachers, 274 e, which are the men who learn, the wise or the ignorant? 275d In the first place Prodicus says you must learn about the correct use of words.]

pg. 715 These things are ... mere play 278 b

Since there could ... do well. 278 e

[If people wish to do well through having many good things like being rich, healthy, handsome, needs provided for, noble birth, honor in one's country, self-controlled, just, brave, wisdom, good-fortune.]

pg. 716 Good fortune ... of the goods.

[says wisdom is good fortune, if someone is a success in something then we say they have better luck than others, but then he switches over to printing out that people believe, wisdom often leads to success, so it is luckier to do things in the company of wise men than ignorant.]

pg. 717 So wisdom makes ... addition.

if we had many ... well

[but good things can only make us happy if we make use of them rightly, which requires knowledge of that thing and this requires love of knowledge]

pg. 718 So it seems ... having them.

Now I suppose ... nor good.

There knowledge ... or action.

Would a man ... miserable.

the poor, weak, cowardly, lazy, slow, hard of hearing or seeing do less, therefore it is better that people of this type possess less.]

pg. 719 it seems likely ... any value.

of the other ... bad?

And for a man ... become wise.

you have done ... taught [not very Socratic]

[but this ends Socrates's example of what he thinks a hortatory argument should be. Next is Dionysodorus's argument that to want someone to be wise is to want them to be dead. It's not possible to tell untruths (Parmenides's influence).]

pg. 722 Then good men... of the bad.

[Arguments over whether contradiction is possible or not (good stuff).]

286 c Protagoras's argument and a following refutation up to 288a.

pg. 724 Are you making ... man?

Really, Socrates ... wise men).

pg. 725 [it matters nothing ... nonsense. Socrates jumping in to allay tempers and preclude hard words. He also keeps saying his opponents are wise but says they are joking around and not being serious with their arguments. The sort of knowledge we should acquire if we went about it in the right way is the sort that benefits us, and a kind which combines making and knowing how to use the thing which it makes.]

pg. 727 whenever I have ... sorts of crowds.

pg. 728 [acquiring knowledge like catching birds.]

[he is going through a series of arts and finding limitations of the art in its not being able to know both how to make and how to use the thing which it makes. Kingly art is considered but first it is asked what the kingly art produces? One might attribute results like: making the citizens rich and free and not disturbed by faction as just some of what might be attributed to the statesman's art. If it is the art they seek it will be useful and provide good, and as was already decided before, nothing is good except a sort of knowledge. Attributes are not to be considered good unless they provide some knowledge. The notion of good here seems to be used as something beneficial and something that makes one happy. If it is the art that is sought then the knowledge it conveys will be used to make others good.]

pg. 730 "knowledge which is none other than itself"?

Corinthus, son of Zeus?

[what does "good" mean here? and it is acknowledged that factually the statesman's art does not convey every sort of knowledge nor does it make all people "good", whatever that means. This appears to lead to a vain repitition. 293 a Knowledge that allows us to live in the right way.]

[pg. 731 293 b demonstrate that I ... my age.

[Socrates says there are trivial things he knows. It is stated as impossible for an existing thing not to be what it is. Euthydemus's argument for knowing everything or not knowing anything.

pg. 731 proverb - "whatever you say is well said"

[Euthydemus argues that Socrates knows the knowledge of how to be happy and good since Socrates necessarily knows everything because he knows something. Socrates asks if they know a series of arts since they claim to know everything. Ctesippus asks for evidence that they know everything like how many teeth their brother has. They claim to know everything even since they were born. Socrates mentions probability and authority. Euthydemus argues that to knowledge is of something and it is known by means of which one has knowledge (Socrates says this means is the soul). He only wants Socrates to answer the questions he asks with yes or no answers, without any qualification on the answer, whether Socrates fully understands the question or not. Then he says "if you always know by this same means then you always know, and if you know know everything by this one means then you know everything, even before you were conceived and before the creation of Heaven and Earth. But he says "if I want it that way" and Socrates responds "since you have stated I do". Socrates asks if he knows that good men are unjust. Socrates's half-brother's name is Patrocles, and his father's name is Sophroniscus.]

298a Dionysodorus's father argument.

proverb - "you are not uniting flax with flax."

[If your dog is a father and he is yours, then he is clearly your father. 299d & e Having good things argument. 300a seeing cloaks. Here Ctesippus says "possible to speak and say nothing". 300b the speaking silent argument.]

300d your brother ... done for.

301a Socrates saying beautiful things are different from the beautiful but there is some beauty in each of them.

But in what ... different.

301b Isn't the beautiful ... he said."

cooking the cook argument. He can do with the god whatever he wants argument. The praise of the common people for this stupidity.

pg. 742 303d And then there is ... quite removed.

pg. 743 For it is ... the best.

304d Now it seems ... advice.

304e But surely ... reproach.

pg. 744 305 These are the persons ... (all the way to the end).

Middle

Phaedo

pg. 51 for nothing gives me... do so.

pg. 51 I had no ... ever does.

pg. 53 Tell this to ... is not right. 61b-61d

pg. 54 and it is never ... benefit them.

pg. 54 Indeed, said ... to it.

[We shouldn't kill ourselves because maybe we are in a prison, or maybe we are the gods' possessions]

As for what you ... rejoice at it. 62d

I should be wrong ... the wicked. 63b

I will try ... upon them. 63e

Our people in ... death they deserve. 64b

64c Death is separation of the soul from the body. The true philosopher despises the physical pleasures: food, drink, sex, clothes, turns away from the body towards the soul, more than any other man he frees the soul from association with the body as much as possible, and such a man is thought by the majority not to deserve to live and to be close to death. The poets tell us we don't see or hear anything accurately, and since all the other senses are inferior to these, then we don't find truth in the senses, the body is an obstacle to acquiring knowledge, it deceives us, but reality becomes clear to the soul in reasoning, and reasons best when it is as removed from the body as possible, so the soul of the philosopher wehn trying to acquire knowledge of reality flees from the body seeking to be by itself. There is such a thing as the Just, the Beautiful, the Good, Biggness, Health, Strength, the reality of all other things, that which each of them essentially is, are never grasped with the senese but what is most true in them is grasped best by those who prepare themselves best and most accurately to grasp that thing itself will come closest to the knowledge of it. If anyone reaches pure knowledge of reality it will be the man who approaches the object with pure thought (observe things in themselves with the soul by itself) alone without associating any senses with his thought.

as long as we ... seeing the truth. 66d pg. 58

So either we can never attain knowledge or we can only do so after death.

Those who love learning in the proper manner must believe and say to each other that we will be closest to knowledge if we refrain as much as possible from association with the body until the god frees us, and we shall be likely to be in the company of people of the same kind, and by our effects we shall know all that is pure, which is presumably the truth, for it is not permitted to the impure to attain the pure. Full of good hope because of his preparation for death and purified, this purification concept is a big deal in Plato

Only those who practice philosophy is the right way who always most want to free the soul and so it would be ridiculuous for one who trains himself to live in a state as close to death as possible to resent death when it comes, they are in training for dying and fear death the least. True philosopher is seeking to attain wisdom is firmly convinced that he won't find pure knowledge anywhere but in the afterlife. So anyone resenting death is not a lover of wisdom but of the body and wealth, or of honors or both; so courage especially belongs to them.

68c And the quality ... of philosophy?

68d To others death is a great evil and the brave among these face death for fears of greater evils. Therefore it is fear and terror that make these men brave, but this is illogical to be brave through fear. 68e Likewise, these men fear to be deprived of certain pleasures, so they keep away from some pleasures because they are overcome and mastered by others, so that a kind of licentiousness makes them moderate. We can't obtain virtue by exchanging pleasures for pleasures, pains for pains, fears for fears, etc. this is false, fit for slaves but only by exchanging these things for wisdom. Wisdom gives us true courage, justice, and moderation (in a word, true virtue) whether pleasures and fears be present or absent. Wisdom is a kind of purification. Moderation courage and justice purge pain, pleasures, and fear.

69c Whoever arrives in ... are few.

69d The few true worshippers are those who practice philosophy in the right way. S. says has done everything possible to be one, and he will know shortly if his eagerness has accomplished anything. S. says he is rightto leave without resentment believing that he shall find good masters and good friends. Cebes says that men think that the soul ceases to exist once it leaves the body. S. mentions an ancient theory that souls here die and go to the underworld, and souls here are born from souls there to see if this is the case they will investigate if all things that come to be must necessarily came from their opposite and from nowhere else, as when something larger must necessarily come to be from something smaller, and vice versa, etc. The process from one to its opposite is called either increasing or decreasing, separation or combination, cooling or heating, and others we don't have names for. Being dead is the opposite of being alive, so one comes from the other. We know the process of life to death exists (why would nature enact one and not the other), and if it is not a cycle but only one way then everything would cease to become. Everything that partakes of life would ultimately be dead and nothing alive. Therefore the dead exist somewhere, which would also be true if it is true that learning is recollection (that theory S. is accustomed to mention frequently). The argument for this is that when men are questioned in the right manner they always give the right answer, and they couldn't do this if they didn't have the right answer inside of them. If anyone recollects, they must have known it before. If someone perceives a thing they not only know that thing but also think of another thing they know in a different way. For example, if one sees the lyre of one's lover, they know the lyre and th image of the lover comes to mind, and to know a lyre is different knowledge from knowing a man. And seeing an image of a lyre can do the same. When the recollection is occasioned by things similar, one must also consider if the similarity to the recollected is deficient or complete. We say that Equality itself exists, but that it is different from things that appear to be equal, some sticks might appear to one to be equal and to another to be unequal but Equality itself never seems like Inequality. But seeing equal things is what makes us recollect Equality. As long as the sight of one thing makes you think of another, whether it be similar or dissimilar, it is recollection. But equal sticks is deficient to Equality itself, and whenever one thing tries to be like something else but is inferior, the person making this comparison must have knowledge of the latter.

These conceptions cannot come into our mind in any other way but through sense perception, for all these senses are the same, but we must have known about Equality before birth our senses begin at birth since they always fall short in striving to reach that which is Equal, and all other ideals. One of the two possibilities: either we are born with the knowledge of it and we know it throughout our life, or we are recollecting what was forgotten at birth when we learn; but a man who has knowledge can give an account of what he knows, but fear can give an accountof such things, so we must be recollecting. Therefore, our souls existed before our birth and they had intelligence.

76d If those realities we are always talking about exist, the Beautiful and the Good and all that kind of reality, then just as they exist so must our soul before birth. If these realities don't exist then this argument is futile. But sufficient proof that these realities exist has been given. But all this doesn't mean the soul exists after death. However, if you combine this argument with the one before it is proved, for the soul that exists before life must come from death.

77e try to persuade him ... than yourselves.

78b things that are composite are liable to split into its component parts, and noncomposite are not likely to, so things that always remain the same are most likely not to be composite. The Forms are uniform by themselves, remain the same and never change, whereas particulars are always in change. The latter are perceived with the senses, and the Forms can only be grasped with the reasoning power of the mind.

79a The invisible, then, always remains the same, whereas the visible never does. One part of us is body another is the soul. The body is visible, the soul invisible; so the soul is more like the invisible and the body is more liek the visible. When the soul investigates through the senses it is dragged by the body to that which isn't the same and the soul becomes dizzy and confused, and drunk-like. But when the soul investigates by itself it passes into the realm of what is pure, eternal and unchanging, and being akin to this, it says with these things and remains in the same state because it is in touch with things of its same kind, and this experience is wisdom. The nature of the divine is to rule, and the nature of the mortal is to be ruled. Nature orders the soul to rule the body. So the soul is most like the divine, deathless, intelligible, uniform, indissoluble, always the same as itself, whereas the body is most like the human, mortal, multiform, unintelligible, soluble and never consistently the same. So it is natural for the body to dissolbe easily, and the soul to be indissoluble or nearly so. The soul will then make its way to a kind, noble, pure, invisible Hades to the good and wise god there (says the superstition "god willing" in 80d) if it is pure when it leaves the body, if it had no willing association with the body in life but gathered itself together by itself, i.e. practiced philosophy in the right way which is training to die easily. The like itself-divine, immortal, wise and there it can be happy, having rid itself of confunsion, ignorance, fear, violent desires and the other human ills and "is said of the initiates" (by whom) spend their time with the gods. But if the soul is impure, having been bewitched by physical desires and pleasures to the point at which nothing seems to exist for it but the physical - which one can touch and see or eat and drink or make use of for sexual enjoyment, and if that soul is accustomed to hate, fear, and avoid that which is dim and invisible the soul can't escape pure and unalloyed, constant intercourse, and association with the body causes the physical to become ingrained in it, and makes it heavy and drags the soul to the visible region in fear of unseen and of Hades. [mentions ghosts 81d]

These ghosts are not of good men but inferior and forced to wander, paying the penalty for their previous bad upbringing, until they are born again into an character as they practiced in life, so that one carelessly practicing gluttony, violence, and drunkeness might beome something like a donkey. Plunderers and tyrants, and the unjust maybe things like wolves, hawks, etc. The happiest of those (those without philosophy or understanding) are those who [82a] practiced popular and social virtue (moderation and justice) developed by habit and practice, it is likely they join a social and gentle group like bees or ants or similar human group.

Only those who practiced philosophy and of pure soul will join the gods, that's why those who practice philosophy in the right way keep away from bodily passions, master them and do not surrender to them, it is not for fear of poverty or fear of dishonors those who care for the soul dismiss all these things. Philosophers know that the soul is imprisoned in the body and is forced to examine things through it like a cage and it wallows in every kind of ignorance, and that this incarceration is due to desires, so that the prisoner is contributing to his own incarceration most of all, which philosophers know is the worst feature of this imprisonment. Philosophers know that philosophy tries to free the soul by showing them that investigation through the eyes and other senses is full of deceit, and persuades the soul to withdraw [83a] from the senses in so far as it is not compelled to use them, and to trust only itself and whatever reality, existing by itself, the soul itself understands, and not to consider as true whatever it examines by other means, for this is different in different circumstances and is sensible and visible, whereas what the soul sees is intelligible and invisible. The soul of the true philosopher keeps away from pleasures and desires and pains as far as he can, he reflects that biolent pleasure or pain or passion does not cause only such evils as one might expect, such as one suffers when one has been sick or extravagant through desire, but the most extreme evil, thoughone does not reflect on this, which is that when the soul, of everyman, feels violent pleasure or pain in connection with some object it will inevitably believe that which causes such feelings must be very clear and true, which it is not, and ties the soul to the body. [the pure and the uniform]

It makes the soul believe that truth is what the body says it is. This is why the souls of genuine lovers of learning [84a] are moderate and brave. The soul of the philosopher acheives a calm from such emotions; it follows reason and contemplates the true, the divine, which is not the object of opinion, and that after death will arrive at what is akin and of the same kind, and escape from human evils. With this nuturing their is no fear that one would be annihilated at death.

84d Simmias and Cebes say they've wanted to ask S. a question but did not want to displease him in his present misfortune and S. laughs saying he doesn't consider it a misfortune. Says the swans sing most beautifully before death, but men, because of their fear of death, tell lies about the swans that they are lamenting. Says he serves the same god as they do and considers himself prophetic in the same way. Simmias says precise knowledge on that subject is impossible.

85c I believe ... divine doctrine.

Simmias's objection is that S.'s is the same argument about harmony, lyre and strings, the harmony is invisible, the lyre and strings visible, and that the harmony must still exist if the strings are broken. That the body is a proper mixture of the cold and warm, dry and moist, etc. and so the soul must be destroyed when the attunement is destroyed. Cebes's objection is that the soul does not necessarily exist after death, for even though a soul might be more durable than a body which we see still exist for some time after death, a man is more durable than the clothes he wears but he perishes before he wears out his last clothes. So no one ever knows which death beings about the destruction of the soul, so any man who faces death with confidence is foolish unless he can prove the soul immortal.

88c So one must always fear for his soul. This argument caused the others to doubt S's previous argument and also what was going to be said, lest they be worthless as critics or the subject itself admitted of no certainty. (Perhaps this is to reflect the doubt on what comes after death).

89a I have certainly ... their argument.

89c there is a certain ... those extremes.

the similarity lies ... when I go. 91c

91d Death is the destruction of the soul. S. points out that if they believe that learning is recollection, and so our soul must have existed before death this is incompatible with a soul being a harmony in the body, for the body would not have existed before birth.

92d I adopted the ... accept it.

Composites or a harmony can't be in a different state than the elements of which it is composed, not act or acted upon differently than its elements, so that a harmony must be directed by its components. One soul can't be said to be more fully a soul than another. One soul has intelligence, virtue, and is good; another to have folly, wickedness, and to be bad, what does the theory that the soul is a harmony say these things which reside in the soul are? They couldn't be some other harmony or disharmony, for if they were then all souls of living creatures would be equally good and not be able to have any share in wickedness. And what part of man rules him but his soul? And it does so by following or opposing the affectations of the body , but if the soul was a harmony it would never be out of tune with the component elements, and the soul can lead a man who is hot and thirsty to not drink. It appears to rule the elements, of which one says it is composed holding converse with desires and passions and fears as if it were one thing talking to a different thing.

95b do not boast ... to make.

[Early theory of knowledge and method] 96a When I was a young ...

Now he says he doesn't believe he knows the cause of a unit coming to be things. He doesn't know what makes a number become 2. because you can get 2 from adding and dividing (from opposites).

97a [Anaxagoras and S.'s reaction to Mind as cause of all. S's method came to be to investigate what is best and worse to know how Mind would have caused things to be. This is final cause, and S expected him to go on to explain the common good for all, but Anaxagoras in his books gave no responsibility to Mind of the management of things, but made use of causes like air, and ether, and water, and other strange things; and causes of talking to them like sounds and air and hearing and many other things, but he neglected what S thinks are the true causes. For example, S remained in prison awaiting his death because of the reason that the Athenians condemned him and it seemed best and more honorable and right to endure the penalty the city ordered rather than to escape and run away, for his sinews and bones could have allowed him to flee if he had had the belief it was the best course.

Though one needs bones and sinews to do what one decides, it is absurd to call them causes and not that he has chosen the best course with his mind is the cause, and it is to speak carelessly and lazily. Like people groping in the dark, the majority of people appear to not be able to distinguish the real cause from that without which the cause would not be able to act as a cause, giving the wrong name to it. One man surrounds the earth with a vortex to make the Heavens keep it in place, another makes the air support it like a wide lid. They don't look for their being in the best place they could be put, and they don't believe it to have any divine force or that the truly good and "binding" binds and holds them together. But they believe that they will sometime discover a stronger and more immortal Atlas to hold everything together more. But S couldn't discover it for himself or learn it from another so he did the second best thing, he thought his soul would be blinded if he looked at things with his eyes or grasped them with his senses, so he tried investigating the truth through words. His method was to take as his hypothesis in each case the theory that seemed the most compelling and would consider as true whatever agreed with it and false whatever did not. S tries to explain this by saying he assumes the existence of the Forms of Beautiful, Good, Great, etc. If anything is beautiful besides the Beautiful it is because it shares in that Beautiful, and so on with everything. This is seen as a type of cause. He ignores it when some one tells him that a thing is beautiful because it has a bright color or shape or other such causes. He won't insist on the precise nature of the relationship of particular to Form.

The safe answer so that I think I shall never fall into error is simply to say it is through Beauty that beautiful things are beautiful. If someone is bigger by a head because of bigness and the smaller by smallness, but it is by the same head that the one is bigger and the other smaller, also a head is small so how is something made bigger by the small.

[S's method] 101d If someone attacks your hypothesis you would ignore him until you had examined whether the consequences from your hypothesis contradict each other or agree with one another.

And when you ... as I say.

So if Simias is taller than Socrates it is not because of his nature to be taller but because of the tallness he partakes of, and smallness he partakes of compared with the tallness of Phaedo. But Tallness will never be tall and short at the same time but one of two things must happens when shortness is introduced: either tallness retreats when the short approaches or it is destroyed. The opposite itself can never become opposite to itself, neither that in us nor that in nature. Cold and snow are different and so are hot and fire different, but snow will not admit the hot and remain what it was, but when hot approaches it will retreat or be destroyed. Odd exists but the number 3 exists and is also called odd (but odd isn't identical to 3). 1, 3, 5, and half of the numbers are odd, but are not the Odd. So not only do those opposites not admit each other, but this is also true of those things which, while not being opposite to each other yet always contain the opposites, and these do not admit that Form which is opposite to that which is in them, when it approaches they either perish or give way and not just opposite Forms but other opposite things as well. Three cannot become even, two is not the the opposite of three, three is not the opposite of Even, but Odd is the opposite of Even, so what kind of things, while not being opposite to something, yet do not admit the opposite.

That which brings along some opposite will not be admitted either.

So 3 still does not admit the Even. So now we have another safe but more sophisticated answer. That what makes a body hot is when fire comes into it. And what makes a body sick is when fever comes into it. And what makes a number Odd is when oneness comes in. And what makes a body living is when a soul comes in, and the opposite to life is death And that which does not admit death is the deathless, and the soul does not admite the opposite of that which it brings along, soul the soul is deathless and indestructible. If anything is deathless it is indestructible, for hardly anything could resist destruction if the deathless, which lasts forever, would admit destruction. All would agree that the god, and the Form of life itself, and anything that is deathless are never destroyed. So when death comes to a man, the mortal part of him dies but the soul retreats safely.

[method] 107b my low opinion of human weakness ... no further.

The soul requires our care for all time.

[judgment and afterlife] 107c If death were ... suited to it

Skill of Glaucus

but to prove them ... do so. 108d

Earth is a sphere and doesn't fall because the homogeneous nature of the heavens on all sides and the Earth's equipose holds it. For an object balanced in the middle of something homogeneous has no tendency to incline in one direction than any other. [Anaximenes]

109b those who discourse on these subjects call the ether.

The water and mist and air are the sediment of the ether. Layers of Earth. Higher ones are better moving closer to the true light, true Heaven and true Earth, where we are is spoiled and eaten away but still superior to under the sea, and they couldn't "if his nature could endure to contemplate the new objects of the higher realms." Spherical ball, multicolored, higher realms have brighter more vivid colors.

109a-113d

The dead are lead by their guardian spirit after they have been judged as to whether they have lived a good and pious life. Average life people go to Acheron and embark on a vessel that takes them to the lake where they are purified by penalties for wrongdoings and rewarded for good deeds as each deserves. Those who committed great sacrilege or wicked or unlawful murders (enourmous crimes) are hurled into Tartarus never to emerge from it. Great but curable crimes like violence toward a parent in a fit of temper who have always felt remorese spend one year in Tartarus. The violators may beg for forgiveness to those they have wronged, if they are forgiven they may step out of the lake and punishment is over. The Pious move up to the surface of the Earth, philosophers go to even more beautiful places without a body. Make every effort to share in virtue and wisdom.

114d No sensible man would insist that these things are as I have described them, but I think it is fitting for a man to risk the belief for the risk is a noble one, that something like this is true.

[The cardinal virtues: moderation, righteousness, courage, freedom, and truth]

114e That is the reason ... truth.

115b but what I am always ... at this moment 115c

115e For you know well ... most customary.

116c During the time ... trouble for me.

116e It is natural for them ... refuse me.

117c I was weeping ... comrade.

117d What is this ... checked our tears.

118a Such was the ... upright.

Menexenus

234b Indeed, dying ... orators are.

235c but when you're ... no great feat.

Aspasia and Connus are S's two teachers, Aspasia of oratory, Connus of music.

236e What is required ... alive.

237a they became brave ... upbringing

Humans are the one creature that acknowledges justice and the gods. Something is a mother if it has the wellspring of its nourishment from within it. Earth is the mother of humans for it bears wheat and barley, the best nourishment for the human race.

238a And such testimonies ... woman earth.

238b For a polity molds ... opposite bad.

239a Equality of birth ... wisdom.

the fathers of these men ... deeds.

240d They showed the ... at Marathon.

241a The men there showed ... the barbarians.

241d The must be mentioned ... of the Greeks.

242a But when peace ... Greeks.

243d We were overcome ... own hands.

244e if one should ... enslaved themselves.

we found ourselves ... make peace!

[side not has Plataea, Eurymedon, Cyprus, Egypt, etc. and Tanagra]

246c do whatever you ... harmony without wishes. 248d.

Gorgias

An epideixis was a lecture regularly given by sophists as a public display of their oratorical prowess.

S says he wants to find out from Gorgias what his craft can accomplish and what he teaches. Ch asks P since G is knowledgable in a craft what is it and what should he be called.

448c Many among men ... best of them.

P answers Gorgias partakes of the most admirable of the crafts.

[Plato keeps using the phrase "of the things that are, which is the one that..."]

[Plato is wanting the interlocuter to narrow down from all these things that are to one thing, and most answers people give still apply to many things, so S's questions are to narrow it down to find out what the discussion is about]

S says P is good at giving speeches but hasn't answered the question. S points out that no one asked what G's craft is like but what it is and what G is to be called. G says he is an orator and to be able to teach it. G says that some answers must be given by way of long speeches, but that no one can say the same things more briefly then himself. S asks what is oratory concerned with, what is it knowledge of. G says speeches and how to speak, and to be wise about which they are speaking, but not all speeches like those that explain how sick people should be treated, but the medical craft makes people both have wisdom bout and to speak about the sick, so it is concerned with speeches too but about diseases, and each craft's speeches are about the object of the craft. S asks why aren't these other crafts called oratory since they are concerned with speeches. G says the distinction is that in the other crafts the knowledge consists in manual work, and oratory's activity and influence depend entirely on speeches, S says but they are about something that can be named, so what is the craft of oratory about? G says the greatest and best of human concerns. S says that statement is debatable and not clear yet.

451e "to enjoy good ... honestly rich."

A doctor would claim health is the greatest good. A physical trainer would claim being good looking and strong is the greatest good. A financial expert would claim wealth is the greatest good. So what is G's good? G says the ability to persuade is in fact the greatest good, the source of all freedom for human kind itself and also for each person the source of rule over others.

453c Its not you ... clear to us.

S says he still needs to know what this persuasion by oratory is and what its about. People who teach other subjects and crafts also instill persuasion and actually persuade others especially when he is teaching the subject. G says the persuasion he means is about justice and injustice and it takes place in law courts and assemblies.

454c I'm asking questions ... want to.

S and G agree to the distinction between to have learned (and learning) and to be convinced (and conviction). S says this is how you can tell you would anser that there is true and false conviction but there is not true and false knowledge. That shows they are different, but both those who have learned and those who are convinced have come to be persuaded.

So one type of persuasion provides conviction without knowledge the other type provides knowledge. G says the one of low courts dealing with justice and injustice is the conviction type. S asks if we study under G what sorts of things will we be able to advise the city on. G says the orators are the ones who give advice and whose views prevail on the matters of when to appoint other craftsmen, for instance, it was Themistocles and Pericles who advised on building the walls around Athens. G says oratory encompasses and subordinates to itself just about everything that can be accomplished. An orator can persuade others to have a medical procedure done when the doctor couldn't and between a doctor and an orator the one who has the ability to speak would be appointed doctor over any craftsman. G says one should not abuse this skill with others, [456d] like those who can fight, so the trainer is not at fault for the trainee's abuses. So the craft and its teachers are not wicked, those who misuse it are. The orator has the ability to speak against everyone on every subject and be more persuasive about anything he likes, but he doesn't have a reason to rob others of their professions. The orator should use his craft justly.

457c I take it that ... to such people.

457e I'm afraid to ... become clear.

What kind of man ... the discussion.

458c It may be ... correctly.

G's claim is that he is able to make an orator out of anyone, capable of persuading (not teaching) in a gathering about all subjects better than a person who practices the craft, a gathering of those who don't have knowledge since one wouldn't be more persuasive than a doctor with those who have knowledge. So the one without knowledge is more persuasive than the one with knowledge among those without knowledge. [459d,e] S asks if an orator can persuade the same on the just and the unjust, what is admirable and shameful, what's good and bad without knowledge or do they need to learn it before. G says he can teach these things as well. S says it is necessary for an orator to know what is just and unjust. If a man who has learned music is a musician, then by this line of reasoning a man who has learned what is just is a just man. An orator is necessarily just and so will never want to do what is unjust.

461a I was surprised ... let it drop.

461c Who do you ... teach others?

Protagoras

Symposium

Cratylus

384b "fine things are very difficult"

Prodicus's fifty drachma course. Hermogenes and Cratylus have been arguing and invite Socrates to join. Hermogenes maintains that no name belongs to a thing by nature but only by rules of convention, whether community or personal, and usage, whether communal or personal even if for a moment, or switch around other common names without limit to number. He says he can't conceive any other way that names could be correct, and he cites how different people call the same things by different names.

a note on the side of the page reads "use of craftsman analogy and generalization"

385e, 386c He quotes Protagoras and gives refutation

386b plenty bad not many good

386d Euthydemus's doctrine, absolutism concluded. In every action we will perform it correctly only by doing X in accordance with the nature of X and using the natural tool for X. A true statement is one that says of things that are that they are, and falsity is saying of things that are that they are not. A true statement's parts are true and true parts make the whole true. A name is the smallest part of a statement. Names are tools that divide things according to their natures, first established by a rule-setter who is crafted in using words as tools, which is said to be the most rare craftsman.

389a

interesting use of form and material at 389b, though craftsmen use the same form suited to a things nature, they may use slightly different material, this explains why different languages have different words. And the proficient user is the best judge of the craftsman's work, in the case of language that would be the dialectician who must supervise the rule-maker.

392c men are wiser than women.

398a in relation to the Republic guardians

398b good people are not any different from wise ones.

399a Socrates's funny line

391a "I don't have a position on this...at least this much is clearer than before, that names do possess some sort of natural correctness and it isn't every man who knows how to name things well."

391b,c says the way to learn the correctness are from those who know: sophists and poets.

391d-399a he takes names and compares them with the meanings of closely related words; sometimes adding letters, sometimes removing them.

399c Human is defined by investigation or reason of things they see and observe things closely.

399d,e body and soul distinction and description of what the soul does.

400a Soul in nature, soul is the source of movement in bodies, "psyche" is the word that he comes up with to mean supports and sustains ? nature.

400c description of body; mention of Orpheus, with Hindu ties?

400d back to dieties' names; "the first...no others."

401a interesting distinction between the thing and how we deal with it.

401b the first name givers weren't ordinary people, but lofty thinkers and subtle reasoners.

400d Heraclitus's doctrine; agnostic remark

400e use of "nonsense" and "absurd" and "plausible"

402a Heraclitus's quote and maybe some context for them.

402b Homer and Orpheus are thought to have held earlier the Heraclitean doctrine.

403b Some conjecture on the fear of Pluto and death.

403c "Of the shackles...stronger, Socrates."

403d,e People don't escape Hades because they are restrained by the strongest of shackles, desire to associate with the company of one whom will make them a better person - Pluto is a philosopher, "unwilling to associate...him"

405c "Heavens moving around the poles" shows awareness that the Earth is round.

406c Wine makes most drinkers think they understand when they don't

408c,d stuff about speech, truth, and falsity

409a,b Anaxagoras's theory

409e Some words have been taken from other languages

411b,c flowing nature in relation to mental terms

411d lots of definitions

412 lots more important stuff.

everything that hinders movement and motion is a vice.

416c,d thought is what gave things names and uses names now too, and all works performed by thought are praiseworthy, like medicine and carpentry, therefore, wisdom is beautiful since it performs the works that we say are beautiful.

417a What is advantageous is the movement of a soul in accord with the movement of things (412a)

417b the good penetrates everything so it has the power to regulate everything. It does not allow (417c) things to remain at rest, it makes motion unceasing and immortal and is the fastest of things that are.

418a reference to Hymn of Athena

418a,b,c changing, omitting letters, even names can come to mean the opposite of what they once did, changing letters to make words sound better or more grandiose.

419a concern with the name giver not contradicting himself, and good terms are used for what orders and moves, which is always praised, while what restrains and shackles is found fault with.

419d "Lightheartedness" is the movement of the soul that well accords with that of things. "Appetite" derives from the (419e) power that opposes the spiritual part of the soul. "Desire" derives from what most drives the soul's flow, it flows (420b) with a rush and sets on things, thus violently dragging the soul because of the rush of its flow. "Eros" flows in through the eyes.

420c Thinking is in harmony with opinion. The motion of the soul towards things as they really are, trying to hit a target.

421b falsehood is likened to one who is asleep

421c A name has a foreign origin when we don't know what it signifies, or not recoverable because they are so old and changed.

421d "Once we're in the competition, we're allowed no excuses."

421e and 422a,b One can keep looking for the origin of names but should arrive at an elemental name, one not composed out of other names, but which makes up other names.

422c,d there is one kind of correctness of names, whether primary or derivate, in its expressing the nature of one of the things that are. If the primary names are indeed names they must make the things that are as clear as possible to us, and this is (423b) done by making our voice, tongue, and mouth imitate the thing, (423c) but the problem with this conclusion is that people who imitate sheep or dogs are not naming them in doing so.

Meno

pg. 370 Knowledge is not true opinion, the knowledge comes from questioning oneself.

Recollection of knowledge from past life

Great quote on pg 371 in middle of page

The soul has forever been in a state of knowledge, therefore the soul must be immortal

Can virtue be taught? They progress without defining virtue but by answering the question by use of a hypothesis. The only thing that is taught is knowledge, so is virtue a type of knowledge? Virtue is good. If knowledge embraces everything that is good then it embraces virtue.

Virtue makes us good, good things are advantageous, so virtue is advantageous. But the determining factor that makes something advantageous is right use. Everything that the human spirit undertakes or suffers will lead to happiness when guided by wisdom but to the opposite when guided by folly. So virtue must be a sort of wisdom. The goodness of nonspiritual assets depends on our spiritual character, which depends on wisdom. So the advantageous element is wisdom and since virtue is advantageous, virtue in whole or in part is wisdom, so good men cannot be good by nature, and if there were we would be able to identify them at an early age. If something is sound it must always be so.

If virtue can be taught then there must be teachers and students of it. and if there aren't teachers and students then something can't be taught. And Socrates claims that he has looked but can't find them.

pg 378 Fathers and sons where the father was seen as virtuous and the sons not.

Prodicus pg 380

There is no other discipline which the supposed possessors of knowledge are divided upon whether it can be taught. And if people are so confused about a subject they can't be correctly said to be teachers, and since there are no teachers there are no students, and so can't be taught

good is profitable or useful or advantageous

true opinion is as good a guide as knowledge for the purpose of acting rightly

Knowledge is reasoned true opinion

pg 382 Plato knows that right opinion and knowledge are different.

Knowledge and right opinion are acquired, not innate

So virtue cannot be taught and is not knowledge. So leaders are not eminent due to knowledge so they must employ well-aimed conjecture.

Virtue is not acquired by nature or teaching but by divine dispensation

Late Middle

The Republic (The Regime) - On Justice

Phaedrus

Parmenides

my book speaks against those who try to make fun of it by claiming that, if the all is one, many absurdities and self-contradictions result from that argument. Accordingly, my book speaks against those who assert the many and pays them back in kind with something for good measure, since it aims to make clear that their hypothesis, if it is many, would, if someone examined the matter thoroughly, suffer consequences even more absurd than those suffered by the hypothesis of its being one. In that competitive spirit, then, I wrote the book when I was a young man... you think it was written not out of a young man's competitiveness, but out of a mature man's vainglory. 128d-e

Theaetetus

pg 851 T gives examples of things known. S asks what is knowledge itself and that using the word knowledge to define itself does no good. What is the single character or formula?

pg 854 The ignorant world describes me as an eccentric person who reduces people to hopeless perplexity.

pg 856 No divinity is ever ill disposed toward man, nor is any unkindness in me for throwing out their foolish notions, I am doing them a favor, I am not permitted to acquiesce in falsehood and suppress the truth. Knowledge is proposed as nothing but perception, relativism S says this declares that nothing is one thing just by itself or of any definite sort, nor can it be called by some definite name. This suggests that they don't have "being" but are always becoming.

pg 860 A sense of wonder is the mark of the philosopher, it has no other origin. The unitiate (?) the people who believe that nothing is real save what they can grasp with their hands and that actions or processes or anything invisible can count as real. They sound like a very hard and repellent sort of people. Remarkably crude.

pg. 860 If everything is becoming and nothing is one thing but is both tall and short, how is this reconcilable with something only becoming shorter by losing or gaining bulk.

There are two kinds of motion: one has the power of acting, the other of being acted upon. These create offspring in pairs; something perceived and the other perception but neither of these has any being just by itself. But dreams and madness are false perceptions. What evidence is there that I am not dreaming right now?

pg. 866 S finally is finished laying out the Heraclitus and Protagoras theory.

Relativism claims that the animals have just as much wisdom as any man, so why does Protagoras teach?

pg. 870 Plato rejects knowing as perceiving because a man who sees something can also be said to know it, but when he no longer sees it and just remembers it he does not know it, and that is a "monstrous" conlcusion. He sees it as an impossibility. Then he says he has been too hasty with this argument.

The question is asked, "Can someone not know what he knows? When you know a thing, do you also not know it?" It is said this is impossible, but if knowing is perceiving one can perceive something with one eye and not perceive it with the other, so this would be knowing and not knowing.

Then he speaks as though Protagoras was clarifying his position, saying the person is a different person he can know and not know if things are changing, and that one can be wiser because one state is better than another, though not truer, however, it is still held that whatever practices seem right and laudable to any particular state are so for that state. People search out teachers and teachers teach us if they have wisdom all these men hold that ignorance and wisdom exist among them. Various people have various judgements on things.

pg. 876 Famous refutation

Countries make laws that they believe will be advantageous and they are often wrong. Different people believe different things will happen, but it is seen as absurd that it would come to pass as more than one thing.

pg. 879 great quote on philosophers.

pg. 886 Begins to take on Heraclitus. Establishes two types of change: alteration and local movement. Which Plato thinks Heraclitus would say both are in constant change since otherwise he would have to say everything is both at rest and change.

So we can never say something is white, and we can't speak of seeing or hearing or perceiving or has a property in any way since all is changing. And that means that we either say that something is both so and not so or use "becoming", but actually our phrases should cease to have the same meaning.

If the perceptions are perceived by the mind through their unique bodily organs and the one organ senses uniquely, what perceives similarity and difference, existence and nonexistence, unity and numbers, etc.? The mind perceives them, as well as good and bad, honorable and dishonorable. It is impossible to reach truth when one cannot reach existence, and if a man cannot reach the truth of something he can't know it, so knowledge does not reside in the impressions but our reflection on them because each perception's existence and uniqueness is only apprehended by reflection, and so perception has no part in apprehending truth since it has no part in apprehending existence. So knowledge must be found in what goes on when the mind is occupied with things itself.

T suggests knowledge is true judgement

"We shall be less inclined to imagine we know something of which we know nothing whatever, and that surely is a reward not to be despised."

pg. 898, 899 Plato suggests some instances where error in judgment seem possible and some that seem impossible all dealing with the misfitting of thought to perception.

pg. 902 He thinks that error in 5+7=12 in one's head militates against his previous suggestions because a man at the same time knows and does not know the same thing, so false judgement must not be the misfitting of thought to perception.

pg. 903 S then proposes a shameless approach of describing what knowledge is like even though the whole inquiry was to find out what knowledge is and they have been using the word the whole time.

pg. 904 Aviary analogy

pg. 906 Aviary example is dismissed

pg. 908 true belief is not knowledge; but true belief with account is proposed. There are first elements that cannot be analyzed and no account can be given of them, they can only be named, and nothing should be attached to it either like existence, etc. A description is a combination of these names. Accounts depend on this complex description, but this then refutes our notion of knowledge for how could one know complexes without knowing its constituents?

pg. 914 What does account mean? And from our experience elements yield better knowledge than complexes. Account could mean 3 things: the ability to mirror something with language, but almost anyone can speak so it can't be this; going all through the elements to arrive at the whole.

pg. 916 The second is dismissed; the last is being able to name a completely unique and distinguishing feature.

pg. 919 good quote

Late

Timaeus

Critias

Sophist

The method of collection and division

216b He says ... just.

216c He is divine ... insane. 216d

217c or to do it ... it alone. 217d

218c V. says he thinks they should begin the investigation by investigating the sophist and giving a clear account of what he is. At the beginning they only have the name in common, and maybe they each asked it for a different thing. In every case people need to be in agreement about the thing itself by means of a verbal explanation, but it isn't easy to grasp the tribe (kind) one is searching for, so to work out an important issue well one should practice on unimportant, easier issues first.

218c As the talk ... more promising.

Expertise as a whole consists of two types: (acquisition or production) any sort of caring for any mortal body (like farming), and caring for things fabricated (called equipment); and there's imitation. But when you bring anything into being that wasn't in being before we say you're a producer and the thing is produced, all under the heading of production.

219c Next considerthe whole type that has to do with learning, recognition, commerce, combat, and hunting, which don't create anything. They take things that are or have come into being, and they take possession of some of them with words and actions, and they keep other things from being taken possession of. It is apporpriate to call all the parts of this type acquisition. There are two types of expertise in acquisition: mutually willing exchange, through gifts and wages and purchase; and bringing things into possession by actions or words.

219e Possession consists of combat and hunting. Hunting: of living things and of lifeless things. Hunting of animals: land animals and those that swim. Things that swim: wings and underwater. Fishing: with nets and by striking. Striking: torch hunting and hooking. Hooking: spearing and angling. Angling was what they were searching for as their easier practice. V. says now they're in agreement about the angler's expertise, not just to its name, in addition they've also sufficiently grapsed a verbal explanation concerning the thing itself. V. also adds that the name angling is derived by its similarity to the action. That's a completely adequate demonstration.

221c Now back to the Sophists using that as a model. First question is whether the sophist is a layman or completely and truly an expert. Because the word sopist means wise he has to be the kind of person that the name sophist indicates and so has a kind of expertise. V. says he recognizes that the sophist and angrier belong to the same kind, both hunters. So taking the same taxonomical kinds up to hunters but now considering land hunters. Land hunters hunt: tame things and wild ones. Either there are no tame animals, or humans are wild or human beings are tame animals. Hunting tame animals: hunting by force (piracy, enslavement, tyranny, war) and persuasion (legal oratory, political oratory, conversation in one whole). Persuasion: private and public. Private hunting: earns wages and gives gifts (expertise in love). Wage earners: flattery (expertise in pleasing people, being agreeable, uses only pleasure as its bait, and earns only its room and beard) and sophisty (actually earns money, claims to deal with people for the sake of virtue, hunting of rich, prominent young men) 223a.

The sophist has a diverse expertise, and appears to have a different type from what was said. Sophistry's Second appearance: acquistion: hunting and exchanging. Exchanging: giving and selling. Selling: selling makes and purveyors. Purveyor: retail and wholesale. Wholesaling: nourishment or use of the body and soul. Soul: for amusement and serious purposes. Use by the soul for serious purposes: art of display and knowledge. Knowledge: of virtue and expertise selling. So sophistry's second appearance shows it to be selling things for the soul dealing in woods and learning that have to do with virtue, but thirdly one would still be a sophist either by retailing things that others make or by selling things that he makes himself, and whether he sells knowledge from city to city or is a resident.

225a Fifth definition of Sophist starts. Combat was part of acquisition. Combat: competition and fighting. Fighting: violence and controversy. Controversy: forensic (one long public speech directed against another and deals with justice and injustice) and disputation (private discussions chopped into questions and answers). Disputation: Controversy about contracts and isn't carried on in any systematic or expert way, and debate (that done expertly and involves controversy about general issues, including what's just and unjust). Fifth Definition ends.

Debating: what doesn't make money, chatter (a result of the pleasure a person gets from the activity, and involves neglecting his own livelihood, but its style is unpleasant to most people who hear it), and the sophist (what does make money from debates between individuals). The beast is complex and can't be caught with one hand. There is a single kind of expertise involved in filtering, straining, winnowing, carding, spinning, weaving, and others (all are kinds of dividing) the single name for the single kind of experience is discrimination. Discrimination: cleansing (separating the worse from the better), and separating like from like. Cleansing: nonliving and living. Cleansing the living: cleansing the way cleansing the Living: outside, and cleansing the inside. Cleansing the inside body: gymnastics and medicine. Wikedness in the soul is different from virtue it is discord and sickness of the soul, and cleansing was said to remove what's bad. Badness that affects the soul: bodily sickness, and ugliness. Sickness and discord are the same thing. Discord is just dissension among things that are naturally of the same kind, and arises out of some kind of corruption. And ugliness is precisely a consistently unattractive sort of disproportion. People in poor condition have dissension in their souls between beliefs and desires, anger and pleasures, reason and pains, and all of those things with each other.

228d No soul is willingly ignorant of anything. Ignorance occurs when a soul tries for the truth, but swerves from understanding, missing its mark. Between proportion and disproportion, the latter would cause missing the mark. So the ignorant soul is ugly and out of proportion. Badness that affects the soul: wickedness and ignorance (but if it occurs only in a person's soul they aren't willing to agree its a form of badness). In the body there are two forms of expertise that deals with those conditions, gymnastics for ugliness and medicine for sickness.

229a Correction is the most appropriate of all kinds of expertise for treating insolence, injustice, and cowardice, so teaching is the best treatment for all kinds of ignorance. The type of ignorance overshadowing all the other types is what probably causes all the mistakes we make when we think, thinking you know when you don't, called lack of learning. Education is the part of teaching that gets rid of it.

229c Not knowing ... think.

Education: admonition (scolding or gently encouraging also when one does something wrong), and refutation.

(Socratic Method) The time-honored method of scolding and encouraging, forefathers used it especially on their sons, and many still use it on them nowadays when they do something wrong. Some people seem to have an argument that lack of learning is always involuntary, and that if someone thinks his wise he'll never be willing to learn anything about what he thinks he's clever at, and so they think admonition is a lot of work that doesn't do much good, so they have another way to get rid of the belief in one's own wisdom by cross examining someone when he thinks he's saying something though he's saying nothing. His opinions will vary inconsistently and the former will scutinize them collect his opinions, put them side by side, and show that they conflict with each other at the same time on the same subjects in relation to the same things and in the same respects. The person being examined sees this, gets angry at themselves, and become calmer toward others. They lose their inflated and rigid beliefs about themselves that way, and no loss is pleasanter to hear or has a more lasting effect on them. The people who cleanse the soul think it won't get any advantage from any learning until someone shames it by refuting it, removes the opinions that interfere with learning, and exhibits it cleansed, believing that it knows only those things it does know, nothing more. So refutation is the most important and principal kind of cleansing. One has to be clean and beautiful in these ways in order to be really happy. So let's say the refutation of the empty belief in one's own wisdom is nothing other than sophistry. End of sixth definition.

231a But there is a ... distinction. 231b

231c The saying that ... right.

231d Review

Statesman

Philebus

Laws

Clitophon

Clitophon syas he questioned the pupils of Socrates about what comes next. What exactly is the skill which concerns the virtue of the soul? One companion said "justice", each one says something different. Clitophon responds that each study has two results: makes more men with that skill and produces something. So what does justice produce? Each companion said something different but Clitophon says no one gives a specific product of justice. One companion said it is to produce friendship within cities, real friendship is always good and never bad and is an agreement in knowledge incapable with children or animals. But we dont know what the agreement in justice aims at. When he asked Socrates, S. says justice is to hurt one's enemies and help one's friends, but later it turned out that the just man never harms anyone, since everything he does is for the benefit of all. Clitophon concludes that S. is better than anyone at turning a man to the pursuit of virtue but maybe that's all he can do. One's ability to praise justice so well does not make one any more knowledgable about it. So S. either doesn't know justice or he won't share it.

Other

Protagoras vs. Socrates (courage, temperance, wisdom, holiness, justice)

1. Virtue is a composite whole with parts.

16) Parts of a face => independent of one another (Protagoras)

17) Parts of a whole => unity of virtues C=T=W=H=J (where all the equal signs actually have three lines)

2. Virtue is one thing => unity of virtue C=T=W=H=J (regular equal lines)

Justice is Just; Holiness is Holy; If Justice is completely different from holiness, holiness is unjust,Justice is unholy

Wisdom is opposed to folly; Appearance is opposed to folly; One Thing has contrary; Therefore, Wisdom=Temperance

Courage=Knowledge of what is and is not to be feared. So courage is knowledge. Courage is part of virtue.

Plato pg 930 first long paragraph

Letters

Epigrams

3. The fates decreed tears to Hecuba and the women of Troy right from their birth; but for you, Dion, the gods spilled your widespread hopes upon the ground after you had triumphed in the doing of noble deeds. And so in your spacious homeland you lie honored by your fellow citizens, O Dion, you who made my heart mad with love. - Greek Anthology vii 99

4. Now, when I have but whispered that Alexis is beautiful, he is the observed of all observers. O my heart, why show dogs a bone? You'll be sorry for it afterwards: was it not so that we lost Phaedrus? - Greek Anthology vii 100

7. I throw the apple at you, and if you are willing to love me, take it and share your girlhood with me; but if your thoughts are what I pray they are not, even then take it, and consider how short-lived is beauty. - Greek Anthology v 79

8. I am an apple; one who loves you throws me at you. Say yes, Xanthippe; we fade, both you and I. - Greek Anthology v 80

11. I, Lais, who laughed so disdainfully at Greece and once kept a swarm of young lovers at my door, dedicate this mirror to the Paphian - for I do not wish to see me as I am, and cannot see me as I was. - Greek Anthology vi 1

14. I am the tomb of a ship's captain; the tomb opposite is a farmer's: for beneath the land and beneath the sea is the same place of Death. - Greek Anthology vii 265

Generally Thought Not by Plato

Second Alcibiades

The gods grant some prayers and not others and say yes to some people and no to others. There is a great need for caution for you might be praying unawares for great evils when you think you are asking for goods, like Oedipus praying for his sons to take up arms to settle their inheritance. A says madness is the opposite of wisdom. Some people are wise and some are stupid, and some are mad. Some are healthy, others sick, but not the same people, and everyone is either of those. A also thinks one is either wise or stupid without anything in between, and that one thing can only have one distinct opposite. S points out that means stupidity and madness are the same thing. A and S say in their city the wise are in a minority and most people are stupid. S says they couldn't live comfortably in a city with so many madmen and would have been beaten and subjected to every madman's trick by now, but they haven't. A notices its wrong, S says look at it another way: some people are sick but they mustn't necessarily have gout or fever or eye ache because there are many diseases besides these. Eye ache is always a sickness but sickness isn't always an eye ache. Two heads are better than one. They are not all alike or have the same symptoms, each one works according to its own nature, but they are all none the less diseases. The same is true of workman. In the same way people have shared out stupidity among themselves. Those who have the largest share are called madmen. those with a smaller share are called fools or asses, or euphemistically big-hearted, simple, innocent, naive, or dumb. A says the wise are those who know what should be dones and said, and the stupid are those who know neither of these. S says those who know neither of these things will say and do what they ought not, without knowing that this is what they are saying and doing, like Oedipus. Many people pray for things that are bad for them in the belief that they are good. Suppose the god you were going to pray to showed up and promised you would be the ruler of the world you would go home thinking you had the greatest of goods and be happy, but you wouldn't give your life in exchange for those things since they would then be no use. You also wouldn't want them if you were going to make a bad and harmful use of them.

pg 600 141c So you see ... speak up.

A says he has observed that the cause of very many human evils is ignorance, it deceives us into doing and praying for the greatest evils.

pg. 601 143a One thing ... for the best.

S points out that it might be wrong to blame ignorance in such general terms, and should specify what it is ignorance of. In certain states to certain people it is a good.

pg. 601 142b just as ignorance ... a good.

S points out a horrendous act like Orestes or Alcmaeon killing their mothers and gets A to agree they wouldn't have done it if they had known what was best to do, so that it is ignorance of the best that is a bad thing, and not only for oneself but for everyone else. S gives A a scenario clarifying that he isn't suggesting A would ever wish to kill Pericles but to just suppose that he thought the worst thing was the best thing - that's a thought that might at any time occur to someone who is ignorant of what is really best. But if A thought Pericles was someone else he wouldn't kill him since his intention was only to kill a particular person, it would be better not to know that person he sees is Pericles. It follow from the fact that there are some things which, for certain people in certain states, it is better not to know than to know, that, in general, it seems that if someone lacks knowledge of what is best, the possession of other skills will only rarely help, but in most cases it will harm their possessor. When we are about to do something we must first believe we know what we are keen to say and do. Orators must think they know how to give us advice on certain topics. You call some wise and some stupid, and call most people stupid, in each of these cases you make use of a criterion. A man who knows how to give advice but does not know what advice is best to give or when it is best to give it is not wise. So we want the person who knows how to do something but also has the knowledge of what is best, which is knowledge of utility, is wise and a reliable counselor for himself and for the state. Someone good at riding is a good rider, boxing a good boxer, but without knowledge of what is best, when or on whom it was better for them them to exercise their skills is would result in a miserable state. If they were all competing with each other for honors "each one assigning precedence in political matters to his own sphere of excellence", what is best according to the scope of his own skill - while he may be wrong about what is best for the state and himself, since he has not used his intelligence but put his trust in mere seeming. But if someone does what he thinks he knows and has knowledge of utility he is a boon to the state and to himself. Most people have been mistaken about what is best, so for most people it is an advantage neither to know nor to think they know anything if they are going to do themselves more harm than good by rushing to do what they think they know, trusting mere seeming. So other skills, if ignorant of what's best, are more often than not harmful to their possessors. So if the life of a soul or a state is to go aright, the knowledge of what is best must be trusted completely. For without this, the stronger the winds of fortune blow towards the acquisition of wealth or health and strength, etc., the greater the errors to which these things will necessarily lead. Even a polymath is in trouble if he is led by any of his skills and lacks true knowledge of the good. "he knew a lot of things but knew them all wrong." Poets speak enigmatically, poetry is enigmatic by its nature, and not everyone can take it in.

pg. 606 148a I would have ... your prayers.

148c the Spartans take ... lap of the gods.

149c we should ... should not.

[story of the Athenians frustration and perplexity about their sacrificing more and being more devoted to the gods but the Spartans were prospering more]

150a Gods and men ... and men.

150d It takes time ... and men.

Hipparchus

F says the greedy are those who think its a good idea to profit from things of no value, they are unscrupulous and wicked people overcome by a profit, knowing that the things from which they profit are of no value, yet their shamelessness makes them dare to be greedy. S gets him to agree that the greedy person knows about the value of the thing from which he thinks it is good idea to profit. "thinking it's a good idea to profit" means one ought to profit. S points out that any man who takes up a job will not expect to profit from using materials he knows have no value: ex. a farmer won't expect to profit from planting known worthless crops, horsemen won't expect to profit from knowingly feeding has horse worthless food, a ships captain won't expect profit from knowingly using worthless parts or his ship; in short, no craftsman or sensible man expects to profit from worthless tools. S points out that none of these people would be greedy as F defined greedy, so it would seem that no one is greedy. F says greedy people are those whose greed gives them an insatiable desire to profit even from things that are actually quite pretty, and of little or no value. S clarifies that the greedy must be ignorant that such things have no value but must think they are valuable, since it was just agreed that they wouldn't if they know the things have no value. Greedy people love to make a profit, which is the opposite of a loss, and there is no one for whom it is a good thing to suffer loss, loss is harmful and thus bad, profit is the opposite of loss so it is good, so those who love the good are greedy. F agrees that he loves all good things and doesn't love the bad, S agrees and says he thinks everyone else would agree, and if profit is good, then by F's definition everyone is greedy. F says the greedy person is the one who is concerned with and thinks its a good idea to profit from things which vituous people would never dare to profit from. S says profit is to be benefited, everyone always wants good things, so even good people want every kind of profit. F says some profits cause harm (loss), so people suffer loss from loss and from wicked profit. F agrees that nothing virtuous and good is wicked, and profit is the opposite of loss, which is bad, and the opposite of bad is good, so profit is good and can't be wicked, but he accuses S of deceiving him and turning him upside down in these arguments.

pg. 613 228b it wouldn't ... wise man.

228c He did these ... so great a man. 229b

S says he is willing to let F take back anything he wants in the discussion. F keeps that all men desire good things, that loss is bad, and that profit is opposite to loss. F takes back that profit is always good and says some profit is good and some profit is bad. S uses an analogy that some food is good and some bad, but one is no more food than the other, and so with everything else that when some things of the same sort come to be good and others bad, the one does not differ from the other in that respect by which they are the same, so both wicked profit and virtuous profit are both profit, neither one is more profit than the other. S now asks what is in both of them that is actually the same, that which is actually profit? F calls profit every possession that one has acquired either by spending nothing, or by spending less and receiving more, but acquiring a bad possession at all is not profit but a loss. Getting sick on a free feast is not profit, but getting healthy from the feast is profitting. S points out he has come back around to saying that profit appears to be good and loss bad. S brings up the question of if it is a profit that you get more silver for a lesser amount of gold, so they must add the notion of value to profit. So silver is not as valuable though there is more of it than gold, and gold, although there is less, is of equal value. Value, then, is what brings profit, whether it is small or large, and what has no value brings no profit. Valuable to possess means beneficial, which is good, so they arrive there once again. The argument forces them to agree that all gains, small and large are good, and that all vituous people want all good things. F also said that wicked people love profits, so all people are greedy.

pg. 617 232c So, therefore .... greedy himself.

Rival Lovers

Theages

pg. 628 121b Socrates, all living ... it is that he wants. 122d

Theages wants to become wise, and thinks those who know whatever they know about are called wise. Whereas the wisdom by which people do a particular skill, like steer ships, which is the helmsman's skill. T wants the wisdom of the skill of how to direct all the people in the city, which he supposes is called tyranny, or at least over as many as possible.

pg. 630 123a He knows it ... helmsman skill.

pg. 632 125b Euripides' line "wise company makes wise tyrants."

S asks wise in what? T doesn't know, but he believes all people would want to become a tyrant over all people or as many as possible, or perhaps even to become a god. He doesn't want to rule over them with violence the way tyrants do, but rule over those who voluntarily submit the way men of good repute do, like Themistocles, Pericles, and Cimon did. If you want to become wise in a skill you have to go to those who are outstanding at those things, so it seems that T should go to outstanding politicians who work with their own city all the time and many others, conducting business with both Greek and foreign cities. Theages knows that Socrates argues that the sons of politicians are no better than the sons of the shoemakers (Alcibiades 118d-119a; Meno 93a-94e; Protagoras 319e-320b), so he'd be foolish if he thought that one of those men would give his wisdom to him while not being any help to his own son, if he could have even been helpful to anyone else at all in these matters.

pg. 634 127a So now ... someone else.

pg. 635 127d for I don't ... my case.

128a it wouldn't be reasonable ... or present.

On Justice

On Virtue

Halcyon

Sisyphus

Demodocus

Minos

Eryxias

Axiochus

pg 1735 364b My father has ... a little.

365a Axiochus, what's ... old minds a second childhood. 367b

S says the gods, who understand the human condition, give a quick release from life if they hold you in the highest regard, and gives some examples of good men who die early when the best was prayed for them, or who were loved by the gods.

367d Such is the ... man is. Illiad

368a And he who ... misery. - Euripides, Cresphontes

368a What pursuit or ... that is not to be 370a.

S argues that a mortal nature would not have arisen to such lofty accomplishments [and he gives an interesting list] unless there was some divine spirit in the soul which gives it comprehension and insight into such vast subjects. We pass away into immortality with purer enjoyment of good things, without pain, no ? , freed from this prison cell and grief, struggle, old age, and will acquire tranquility and undisturbed peace and rest untroubled by anything bad, surveying Nature and practicing philosophy, not for a crowd of spectators, but in the bountiful midst of Truth. Gobrya's account, a Persian sage, says the soul goes to the Place Unseen, a place under the earth, souls are judged on their deeds, good people go to Heaven with a description of its pleasures (mentions Eleusian mysteries), the wicked go to Erebus and Chaos to be punished for eternity with some descriptions. S claims to only know by argument that every soul is immortal and when removed from this place, free from pain. Whatever the case you ought to be happy if you have lived piously.

Epinomis