Practical Wisdom

“I put my questions to Lysis: ‘I suppose, Lysis, your father and mother love you very much?’

‘Of course,’ he replied.

‘Then they’d want you to be as happy as possible?’

‘Naturally.’

‘Do you think that a man is happy when he’s a slave and allowed to do nothing he desires?’

‘Heavens, no, I don’t,’ he said.

‘Then if your father and mother love you and desire your happiness, it’s absolutely clear that they must do their best to make you happy.’

‘Of course,’ he said.

‘So they let you do what you want and don’t scold you at all or stop you doing what you desire?’

‘Heavens, no, Socrates, there are lots and lots of things they stop me doing.’

…

‘So your father deliberately sets lots and lots of bosses and masters over you. But when you go home to your mother, she lets you do what you want with her wool or her loom when she’s weaving, so that she can see you perfectly content.’

Lysis laughed and said, ‘Heavens, Socrates, not only does she stop me, but I’d actually be beaten if I touched any of that.’

…

‘Well then, what have you done to make them behave so oddly and stop you being happy and doing what you want, and bring you up by keeping you all day long in a state of constant subjection to someone else and in short doing virtually nothing you desire.’

…

‘It’s because I’m not yet of age, Socrates,’ he said.

‘I’m not sure it’s that that stops you, Lysis, since both your father, Democrates, and your mother trust you to some extent, I imagine, without waiting until you’re of age. For example, when they want things read to them or written for them, I imagine they give that job to you before anyone else in the house. Don’t they?’

‘Of course,’ he replied.

…

‘So, Lysis, what on earth can be the reason for their not stopping you in those cases, whereas they do stop you in the ones we were speaking of just now?’

‘I suppose it’s because I know about those things but not the others,’ he replied.

‘Well,’ I said. ‘Excellent! So your father is not waiting for you to come of age to trust everything to you, but on the day he considers that you know better than himself, he’ll trust both himself and his property to you.’

‘I expect so,’ he said.”

(Lysis, 207d-209d)

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“We would have no need for natural science unless we were worried by apprehensiveness regarding the heavenly bodies, by anxiety about the meaning of death, and also by our failure to understand the limitations of pain and desire.

It is impossible to get rid of our anxieties about essentials if we do not understand the nature of the universe. … Hence it is impossible to enjoy our pleasures unadulterated without natural science. …

There is no advantage in gaining security with regard to other people if phenomena occurring above and beneath the earth – in a word, everything in the infinite universe – are objects of anxiety.”

(Leading Doctrines, 11, 12, and 13)

“If a man resists truths that are all too evident, in opposing him it is not easy to find an argument by which one may cause him to change his opinion. The reason for this is neither the man’s ability nor the teacher’s weakness; nay, when a man who has been trapped in an argument hardens to stone, how shall one any longer deal with him by argument? …

Do your senses tell you that you are awake? ‘No,’ he answers, ‘any more than they do when in dreams I have the impression that I am awake.’ Is there, then, no difference between these two impressions? ‘None.’ Can I argue with this man any longer? And what cautery or lancet shall I apply to him, to make him realize that he is deadened. …

One man does not notice the contradiction — he is in a bad way; another man notices it, indeed, but is not moved and does not improve — he is in a still worse state … and his reasoning faculty has been — I will not say cut away, but brutalized.”

(Discourses, I.5)

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“For my part, Brutus, I am perfectly persuaded that it is expedient for me to philosophize; for what can I do better, especially as I have no regular occupation? But I am not for limiting my philosophy to a few subjects; for philosophy is a matter in which it is difficult to acquire a little knowledge without acquainting yourself with many, or all its branches.

Philosophy would never have been in such esteem in Greece itself, if it had not been for the strength which it acquired from the contentions and disputations of the most learned men; and therefore I recommend all men who have abilities to follow my advice to snatch this art also from declining Greece, and to transport it to this city.

Let philosophy, then, derive its birth in Latin language from this time, and let us lend it our assistance, and bear patiently to be contradicted and refuted; and although those men may dislike such treatment who are bound and devoted to certain predetermined opinions, and are under such obligations to maintain them that they are forced, for the sake of consistency, to adhere to them even though they do not themselves wholly approve of them; we, on the other hand, who pursue only probabilities, and who cannot go beyond that which seems really likely, can confute others without obstinacy, and are prepared to be confuted ourselves without resentment.”

(Tusculan Disputations, II.1-2)

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“Virtue, then, is twofold, intellectual and moral. Both the coming-into-being and increase of intellectual virtue result mostly from teaching—hence it requires experience and time—whereas moral virtue is the result of habit, and so it is that moral virtue got its name [ēthikē] by a slight alteration of the term habit [ethos]. It is also clear, as a result, that none of the moral virtues are present in us by nature. …

For as regards those things we must learn how to do, we learn by doing them—for example, by building houses, people become house builders, and by playing the cithara, they become cithara players. So too, then, by doing just things we become just; moderate things, moderate; and courageous things, courageous. …

As a result of building houses well, people will be good house builders; but as a result of doing so badly, they will be bad ones. If this were not the case, there would be no need of a teacher, but everyone would come into being already good or bad. So too in the case of the virtues: by doing things in our interactions with human beings, some of us become just, others unjust; and by doing things in terrifying circumstances and by being habituated to feel fear or confidence, some of us become courageous, others cowards. …

It makes no small difference, then, whether one is habituated in this or that way straight from childhood but a very great difference—or rather the whole difference.”

(Nicomachean Ethics, II.1)

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“SOCRATES: Now, Nicias, could you explain it to us again from the beginning? You know we started our discussion by considering bravery as a part of goodness?

NICIAS: Yes, I do.

SOCRATES: So you did agree with our answer that it’s a part, and hence that there are other parts, which are known collectively as goodness, didn’t you?

NICIAS: Yes, of course.

SOCRATES: Now, you mean the same by these parts as I do, don’t you? For me, besides bravery, the list includes self-control, fairness and other similar qualities. Isn’t it the same for you?

NICIAS: Certainly. …

SOCRATES: [But] bravery can’t only be knowledge of what is fearful and what is encouraging, because like other kinds of knowledge it understands not only the future stages of good and evil, but also the present and the past.

NICIAS: Apparently so.

SOCRATES: So the answer you gave us, Nicias, covers only about a third part of bravery, whereas we asked what bravery is as a whole. And so now, it seems, on your own admission, bravery is knowledge not only of what is fearful and what is encouraging, but according to the way you describe it now, of pretty well the whole subject of good and evil, regardless of time. Does that reflect your change of mind, or would you put it differently, Nicias?

NICIAS: No, That’s how it seems to me, Socrates. …

SOCRATES: So, What you’re now describing, Nicias, won’t be a part of goodness, but goodness in its entirety.

NICIAS: So it seems.

SOCRATES: But we did say that bravery is only one of the parts of goodness.

NICIAS: Yes, we did.

SOCRATES: But what you’re now describing appears not to be so.

NICIAS: No, it seems not.

SOCRATES: So we’ve not discovered what bravery is, Nicias.

NICIAS: No, apparently not.”

(Laches, 198a-199e)

“What is the work of virtue? Serenity. Who, then, is making progress? The man who has read many treatises of Chrysippus? What, is virtue no more than this — to have gained a knowledge of Chrysippus? For if it is this, progress is confessedly nothing else than a knowledge of many of the works of Chrysippus. …

And where is your work? In desire and aversion, that you may not miss what you desire and encounter what you would avoid; in choice and in refusal, that you may commit no fault therein; in giving and withholding assent of judgement, that you may not be deceived. …

Suppose, for example, that in talking to an athlete I said, ‘Show me your shoulders,’ and then he answered, ‘Look at my jumping-weights.’ Go hang, you and your jumping-weights! What I want to see is the effect of the jumping-weights. …

And so never look for your work in one place and your progress in another.”

(Discourses, I.4)

“Any means by which it is possible to procure freedom from fearing other people is a natural good.

Some people have desired to gain reputation and to be well regarded, thinking in this way to gain protection from others. If the lives of such people are secure, they have acquired a natural blessing; but if they are not, they do not possess what they originally reached for by natural instinct.

No pleasure is bad in itself. But the things that make for pleasure in certain cases entail disturbances many times greater than the pleasures themselves.”

(Leading Doctrines, 6, 7, and 8)

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“The opinion of Socrates respecting this matter is clearly stated in the book which treats of his death, of which we have already said so much; for when he had discussed the immortality of the soul, and when the time of his dying was approaching rapidly, being asked by Crito how he would be buried, ‘I have taken a great deal of pains,’ said he, ‘my friends, to no purpose, for I have not convinced our Crito that I shall fly from hence, and leave no part of me behind. Notwithstanding, Crito, if you can overtake me, wheresoever you get hold of me, bury me as you please: but believe me, none of you will be able to catch me when I have flown away from hence.’

That was excellently said, inasmuch as he allows his friend to do as he pleased, and yet shows his indifference about anything of this kind.

Diogenes was rougher, though of the same opinion; but in his character of a Cynic he expressed himself in a somewhat harsher manner; he ordered himself to be thrown anywhere without being buried. And when his friends replied, ‘What! to the birds and beasts?’ ‘By no means,’ said he; ‘place my staff near me, that I may drive them away.’ ‘How can you do that,’ they answer, ‘for you will not perceive them?’ ‘How am I then injured by being torn by those animals, if I have no sensation?’ …

With regard to the body, it is clear that, whether the soul live or die, it has no sensation.”

(Tusculan Disputations, I.43)

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“Of the non-rational [component of the soul], one part seems to be that which is held in common and vegetative—I mean that which causes nutrition and growth. For someone could posit that such a capacity of the soul is in all things that are nourished. …

A certain virtue belonging to this capacity, then, appears to be common and not distinctive of a human being. …

Yet there seems to be also a certain other nature of the soul that is non-rational, although it does share in reason in a way. For in the case of the self-restrained person and of the one lacking self-restraint, we praise their reason and that part of their soul possessing reason, since it correctly exhorts them toward the best things. But there appears to be something else in them that is by nature contrary to reason, which does battle with and strains against reason. …

It appears, therefore, that the non-rational part is twofold, for the vegetative part has nothing in common with reason; but that part characterized by desire, and by longing in general, shares somehow in reason inasmuch as it heeds it and is apt to be obedient to its commands.”

(Nicomachean Ethics, I.13)