Phaedrus — Plato
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p. 99that your view ? or do you think that knowledge is a noble and commanding thing, which cannot be overcome, and will not allow a man, if he only knows the difference of good and evil, to do anything which is contrary to knowledge, but that wisdom will have strength to help him ? [Protagoras holds the latter view, for he believes that wisdom and knowledge are the highest of human things.
He is not inclined to trouble himself about the opinion of the common people. Socrates, however, has a purpose in showing how it is that mankind in general have come to have a wrong opinion of knowledge. The error, he claims, arises from a mistaken notion of pleasure and pain, good and evil.
That it is* impossible for a man who has knowledge of good and evil, to do evil, will be clear when we understand the true relations of pleasure, pain, good and evil. The common saying that men are overcome by pleasure implies that pleasures are sometimes evil. Now, are the pleasures of eating and drinking, for example, by which men are said to be overcome, evil simply because they are pleasant ? No one would claim this.
All will agree that they are evil solely on account of their evil consequences— because they produce disease, pain, poverty and the like, in the future. Moreover, disease with its accompanying ills, deprives men of many pleasures greater than those of eating and drinking. So in all cases when we say men are overcome by pleasure, we mean that they are overcome by a lesser pleasure. In a similar way, painful things are sometimes spoken of as good.
Burning, cutting and starving, as employed by the physician, though they occasion the greatest immediate suffering, are good because they bring afterwards health, power, and wealth. Since even pain is good when it takes away greater pain or brings pleasure, and since pleasure is evil only when it ends in pain or deprives us of greater pleasure, we are justified in saying that pleasure is good and pain evil.
Thus it becomes clear how it is impossible for a man knowingly to do evil, for every man wishes to be happy and to have as much pleasure and as little pain in life a possible.] If you weigh pleasures against pleasures, you of course take the more and greater ; or if you weigh pains against pains, lOO PLATO THE TEACHER you take the fewer and the less ; or if pleasures against pains, then you choose that course of action in which the painful is exceeded by the pleasant, whether the distant by the near or the near by the distant ; and you avoid that course of action in which the pleasant is exceeded by the painful. [When we make the many choices in life whereby we endeavor to attain a sum of pleasures greater than the sum of pains, what is to be our guide to right choice ?
In the physical world, objects appear greater when near and smaller when remote, and we need some standard of measurement in order to judge truly of their size. We have seen that the same is true in the case of pleasures and pains. Distance affects their apparent size.
We are in danger of being deceived by appearance, and our only salvation lies in an ability to measure pleasures and pains and judge rightly of their true size and relation.] Is not the power of appearance that deceiving art which makes us wander up and down and take the things at one time of which we repent at another, both in our actions and in our choice of things great and small ?
But the art of measurement is that which would do away with the effect of appearances, and, showing the truth, would fairf teach the soul at last to find rest in the truth, and would thus save our life. [Since this sort of measuring is clearly one kind of knowledge, we see that knowledge is the mighty and ruling principle in human life.
Ignorance must then be the origin of all evil, for no one will knowingly pursue a course of evil which leads to pain when he knows the path of good to pleasure. Hippias, Prodicus, and Protagoras agree with this conclusion. Socrates now returns to re-examine the virtue of courage in the light of what has just been said about knowledge. Fear is defined as expectation of evil.
A man will not voluntarily pursue what he fears, for no one will voluntarily pursue what he thinks to be evil. Ignorance causes a man to judge that to be evil which is not evil. The cowardly man is he who through ignorance fears that which is really not evil. For example, the coward refiises to go to war because he forms a wrong estimate of what is good, honorable, and pleasurable.
PROTAGORAS lOI The courageous man goes to war, because he knows it will bring future honor and good ; and for these he is willing to bear the present pain. Thus we see courage is knowledge and cowardice is ignorance. The five virtues which Protagoras at first held to be different in nature are proven to be one — wisdom.'^ Protagoras is reluctant to assent.
Socrates closes the narration of the dialogue as follows :] My only object, I said, in continuing the discussion, has been the desire to ascertain the relations of virtue and the essential nature of virtue ; for if this were clear, I am very . sure that the other controversy which has been carried on at great length by both of us — you affirming and I denying that virtue can be taught — would also have become clear.
The result of our discussion appears to me to be singular.
For if the argument has a human voice, that voice would be heard laughing at us and saying : Protagoras and Socrates, you are strange beings ; there are you who were saying that virtue cannot be taught, contradicting yourself now in the attempt to show that all things are knowledge, including justice, and temperance, and courage — which tends to show that virtue can certainly be taught ; for if virtue were other than knowledge, as Protagoras attempted to show, then clearly virtue cannot be taught ; but if virtue is entirely knowledge, as you, Socrates, are seeking to show, then I cannot but suppose that virtue is capable of being taught.
Protagoras, on the other hand, who started by saying that it might be taught, is now eager to show that it is anything rather than knowledge ; and if this is true, it must be quite incapable of being taught. Now I, Protagoras, perceiving this terrible confusion of ideas, have a great desire that they should be cleared up.
And I should like to carry on the discussion until we ascertain what virtue is, and whether capable of being taught or not, lest haply Epimetheus should trip us up and deceive us in the argument, as he forgot to provide for us in the story ; and I prefer •» " He (Socrates) defines all the particular virtues in such a way as to make them consist in knowledgje of some kind, the difference between them being determined by the difference of their objects.
He is pious who knows what is right toward God ; he is just who knows what is right toward men ; he is brave who knows how to treat dangers properly ; he is prudent and wise who knows how to use what is good and noble, and how to avoid what is evil In a word, all virtues are referred to wisdom or knowledge, which are one and the same." — Zeller's Socrates, Chap. VII.
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