(Transl. Jackson, Lycos & Tarrant 1998)
Music with proper sentiments
From Lecture 6.11: “each person should stick to his own steps in the process, the doctor to medical tasks, the engineer to engineering matters, the musician to his own tasks—so that he should not only have concern for sentiments, since music is directed towards men, not towards irrational animals—though even irrational creatures delight in a tune: shepherds for instance use one tune to drive the sheep to grazing, and another to summon them and bring them into one place. So one should not practise music in this narrow sense, but the sentiments should be urbane and not the mythical things they say about the gods, nor the sorts of things they say about weeping heroes. For not even in the case of men should you recite songs about their eating meat and drinking wine, since these songs suit those who live like grazing-beasts. In every case let each man take care of his own proper task and not lay hands on someone else’s. Otherwise confusion is bound to occur.”
Believability of evidence
From the Gorgias: “occasionally a man may actually be crushed by the number and reputation of the false witnesses brought against him. And so now you will find almost everybody, Athenians and foreigners, in agreement with you on the points you state, if you like to bring forward witnesses against the truth of what I say: if you like, there is Nicias, son of Niceratus, with his brothers, whose tripods are standing in a row in the Dionysium” (transl. Lamb)
From Lecture 19.7: “these were so famous that they stood in the temple. He wants to show that however famous they are, we should not believe them without due examination.”
Wrongdoing and blame
From Lecture 24.3: "We must understand that some men go wrong, while others do not. And some of those who go wrong cease [their wrongdoing], while others do not. And some of those who cease [their wrongdoing] put the blame on themselves and criticize themselves, while others lay the blame elsewhere. Those who do not go wrong at all are godlike. Those who go wrong and do not cease [their wrongdoing] are diametrically opposed to them and are the most wretched. All of those who cease [their wrongdoing] and on ceasing put the blame on themselves go wrong to a lesser degree. Those who lay the blame elsewhere go wrong to a greater degree, postulating divine causes for their wrongdoing, as Homer (Il. 19.87) says:
'But Zeus, and Fate, and the holy-wandering Erinys.'
So we should put the blame on ourselves, and turn back towards the better path."
Are some incorrigible?
From Lecture 24.5: "'incurable'? What? Is he punished eternally, and is never freed [of the evil]? No, punishment is not eternal, presuming that God wants to turn us towards the good, whereas whatever pays the penalty eternally is eternally in a state contrary to nature. [This is] especially [so] if we are being turned around so that we may lead a sensible life in the future; so punishment will be pointless if we are punished eternally. We shall learn in the myth how eternal punishment beneath the earth is spoken of: that there are cycles which he calls 'aeons', and that one must submit [to punishment] for the duration of these so as to be healed."
Divinely-constituted life and happiness
From Lecture 23.6: “suppose there is someone who from beginning to end lives a well constituted life, and someone else who to begin with in his youth conducts himself in an unseemly way, but later is converted and practises a divinely constituted life - are the two of them equally happy or not? We say that their well-being is the same, save that the one who lived well from the beginning has it to a greater degree, whereas the other does not have it in the same way.”
The divinely-inspired lover
From Lecture 25.3: “Note that Socrates, as he says in the Alcibiades and more perfectly in the Phaedrus, was a lover inspired by God. And [a lover] inspired by God differs from a vulgar [lover] in that the divinely inspired lover aims at the soul and does everything to turn the beloved towards the good, whereas the vulgar one, if truth be told, hates and does not love.”
Spells and incantations
From Lecture 26.2: "So he says 'Injustice is base according to those who established the conventions, to prevent the stronger from overpowering the weaker. For this reason the weaker cast spells and incantations upon the stronger and tell them they must not commit injustice, to keep them from committing injustice."
Law and nature come from the gods
From Lecture 26.3: “‘Yet nature knows this [injustice] is fine. So too among irrational animals we see that the stronger are better off than the weaker-the stronger eat up those weaker than them and thus stay alive'. […] So it is up to Socrates to show that good law [nomos] coincides with nature. Note that both come from God, and intelligence and nature are founded upon each other and the greater of the two is intelligence. Intelligence is nomos; because that's why it is named nomos, short for 'what dispenses to each his due'. And so we must not mock well-established laws, for we must not use violence against the weaker.”
Philosophy and divine pleasures
From Lecture 26.15: “'And in human pleasures' (484d5): he speaks both truly and falsely. He speaks truly of the pleasures that he follows, for of such pleasures philosophy is in truth without experience, but of divine pleasures, the ones that lead to virtue, it has the most experience of all.”
Thales’ accident
From Lecture 26.16: “'They prove themselves ridiculous' (484e1): for indeed they will be laughed at by the foolish. So too Thales while walking about and with his mind on the heavens and astronomy fell into a well. And a Thracian woman said to him 'This man does not know the things on earth and seeks to know the things of heaven'. We must not attend to such people, even if they box our ears, but direct ourselves up towards the divine.”
Who is untroubled?
From Lecture 27.1: “Observe that it is either those who are superior to us, divine beings for instance, or those who are in all respects totally ignorant, who do not have difficulties.”
The ideal state
From Lecture 32.5: “For how could
they have been statesmen who lived under a democracy, a disorderly
constitutional system which has rulers who are chosen by lot and at random
instead of upright men, and not under an aristocracy, in which Plato urges
rulers to be educated in literature and gymnastics and mathematics, so that
they lack personal interests but secure sustenance from the subjects of their
aristocratic rule, and so that the rulers call the ruled 'sustainers' and the
ruled call the rulers 'preservers'. Since they are the best and preserve the
city, they resemble God, and it would not be unjust, although they are godlike,
for them to descend to the affairs of the city. For the city was what makes
them thus, and they must repay the cost of their upbringing to the city. That
is the reason [the orators] were called servants.”
Are material things relevant?
From Lecture 38.2-3: “Aristides, that controversialist and specialist in lengthy quibbles, misleads himself in these matters with false inference (though he can't mislead Socrates), and says 'Apparently wealth is extremely bad as it preserves us from death and provides what we need, and so is health too. And, in addition to this, are we to be ungrateful to the gods, because it's them who have indulged us with life and keep us safe?'
We say, then, that Aristides does not know the nature of things. There are different grades of good, for there is good in wealth, there is good in the body, and there is good in the soul. It is fine to use all [three] for a good [purpose], but we must attend in particular to the good of the soul, and less to the good to do with the body, and still less to the good to do with possessions. So we acknowledge a debt of gratitude to those who give us wealth and to doctors who heal us and to teachers who teach us and benefit the soul - but not the same debt to all of them, but most to those who make the soul healthy, and less to the doctors, and still less to financiers. For indeed Plato himself praises wealth that is orderly and says 'There is a wealth that is blind, but also one that is dear-sighted, if it comes along with wisdom'. Observe that he says 'along with' and 'comes', so that it should not follow wisdom at a distance but close at hand. And [Aristides] said that we [Platonists] are not grateful to the gods for granting us being: note how absurdly he speaks. For God granted us being together with well being, since God did not want us to live basely. For instance he gave us being together with the common notions, so we might aim at the good, and for this reason, namely well being, he gave us rational souls, that we might have the power to turn toward the better. Hence we should choose well-being rather than [simply] being."
Responsibility and blame
From Lecture 39.1: "For as I have said (24.3), we should blame ourselves and nothing else (or better still neither oneself nor anything else). For destiny is nothing other than the revolution of the heavens, since by such and such a motion of the heavenly bodies things in our world are led along. So do not think that it is impossible to die except at the call of destiny. For it is possible, just as long as our moral purpose forces it through, for even destiny is dependent on providence. And to put it simply, some of the things that come about are in our power, and some are not. We should therefore desire what is in our power, e.g. temperance and the other virtues. For if we desire what is not in our power, e.g. wealth, kingship, and the like, we are wasting our time, and are like those who in their dreams think they are flying. And furthermore we should avoid things in our power, e.g. intemperance, folly, and injustice, for we cannot avert things that are not in our power. For instance a man is wasting his time if he seeks to protect his friend from death or punishment, since these things are not in our power."
The common notions shared by all humans
From Lecture 39.6: "God has sowed in us the seeds of the common notions, so that we should not be utterly lost."
Inappropriate uses of mythology
From Lecture 40.3: "Furthermore he criticizes bad pleasure, with an attack on the Cretans. For they said 'We should be slaves to pleasure, for the gods frequently resort to it. And if Zeus', they say, 'took pleasure in Ganymede, then we also ought to imitate him'. [Plato] replies '[To justify] your disgraceful acts you have treated the myth as a factual account'. For this is a myth, since there could not be sexual union for a God, [least of all] unlawful union. But through this [myth] it is signified that a certain Ganymede raised himself towards the divine, and so, it is said, he also dined with them and was their wine-bearer, meaning that he came to have an immaterial and divine constitution, free from any unpleasantness."
State and deity
From Lecture 42.2: “there should not be democracy but rather aristocracy. Note that not only man, but also the city, is a universe in miniature. So if the city is a universe in miniature, men should resemble the universe. For a city, as Demosthenes also says (18.88), is not institutions but people. He says ‘When I speak of the city, I mean you’. So we should imitate the entire universe, and in that entire universe there is a single ruler. Who is this? It is God, seeing that
No good thing is the rule of many Lords; one Lord may there be.
Hence it should not be a multitude of ordinary people who rule, but one prudent and true statesman. If somebody says ‘But this is monarchy, nor aristocracy, and that is not the same thing’, reply as the philosopher Ammonius did, ‘[…] the ruler needs to be one either in number or in life. […]’ Democracy is ineffective in all cases, and a man who belongs to a democratically governed state needs a God who would deliver him from the greatest evils, as Socrates was protected by God and remained godlike and more hardened to it.”
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