The five dialogues of plato pdf

Five Dialogues

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PLATO

Five Dialogues

Second Edition

Euthyphro Apology Crito Meno Phaedo

Translated by G. M. A. GRUBE

Revised by JOHN M. COOPER

Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. Indianapolis/Cambridge

Copyright © 2002 by Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.

All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Plato.

[Dialogues. English. Selections] Five Dialogues / Plato ; translated by G.M.A. Grube.—2nd ed. / revised

by John M. Cooper. p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references. Contents: Euthyphro—Apology—Crito—Meno—Phaedo. ISBN 0-87220-633-5 (pbk.)—ISBN 0-87220-634-3 (cloth) 1. Philosophy, Ancient. I. Grube, G.M.A. (George Maximilian

Anthony) II. Title. B358.G7813 2002 184—dc21 2002022754

ISBN-13: 978-0-87220-634-2 (cloth) ISBN-13: 978-0-87220-633-5 (pbk.)

e-ISBN: 978-1-60384-226-6 (Adobe e-book)

www.hackettpublishing.com
CONTENTS

Preface to the Second Edition vii

Introduction ix

Euthyphro 1

Apology 21

Crito 45

Meno 58

Phaedo 93

Suggestions for Further Reading 155

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PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

The translations of Plato’s Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, and Phaedo presented here are taken from Hackett Publishing Company’s epoch- making Plato, Complete Works (third printing, 2001), prepared under my editorship. In the revised form in which George Grube’s distin- guished translations appear here, they present Plato’s wonderfully vivid and moving—as well as challenging—portrayal of Socrates, and of the philosophic life, in clear, contemporary, down-to-earth English that nonetheless preserves and accurately conveys the nuances of Plato’s and Socrates’ philosophical ideas. For this new edition I have added a number of new footnotes explaining various places and events in Athens, features of Greek mythology, and the like, to which Socrates and his interlocutors make reference. At a number of places I have introduced further revisions in the translations.

John M. Cooper

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INTRODUCTION

At the time of his trial and execution in 399 b.c., Socrates was seventy years of age. He had lived through the Periclean age when Athens was at the pinnacle of her imperial power and her cultural ascendancy, then through twenty-five years of war with Sparta and the final defeat of Athens in 404, the oligarchic revolution that followed, and, finally, the restoration of democracy. For most of this time he was a well-known character, expounding his philosophy of life in the streets of Athens to anyone who cared to listen. His “mission,” which he explains in the Apology, was to expose the ignorance of those who thought themselves wise and to try to convince his fellow citizens that every man is responsi- ble for his own moral attitudes. The early dialogues of Plato, of which Euthyphro is a good example, show him seeking to define ethical terms and asking awkward questions. There is no reason to suppose that these questions were restricted to the life of the individual. Indeed, if he questioned the basic principles of democracy and adopted towards it anything like the attitude Plato attributes to him, it is no wonder that the restored democracy should consider him to have a bad influence on the young.

With the development of democracy and in the intellectual ferment of the fifth century, a need was felt for higher education. To satisfy it, there arose a number of traveling teachers who were called the Sophists. All of them taught rhetoric, the art of public speaking, which was a powerful weapon, since all the important decisions were made by the assemblies of adult male citizens or in the courts with very large juries. It is not surprising that Socrates was often confused with these Sophists in the public mind, for both of them were apt to question established and inherited values. But their differences were vital: the Sophists professed to put men on the road to success, whereas Socrates disclaimed that he taught anything; his conversations aimed at discovering the truth, at acquiring that knowledge and understanding of life and its values that he thought were the very basis of the good life and of philosophy, to him a moral as well as an intellectual pursuit. Hence his celebrated paradox that virtue is knowledge and that when men do wrong, it is only because they do not know any better. We are often told that in this theory Socrates ignored the will, but that is in part a misconception. The aim is not to choose the right but to become the sort of person who cannot choose the wrong and who no longer has

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any choice in the matter. This is what he sometimes expresses as becoming like a god, for the gods, as he puts it in Euthyphro (10d), love the pious (and so, the right) because it is right; they cannot do otherwise and no longer have any choice at all, and they cannot be the cause of evil.

The translations in this volume give the full Platonic account of the drama of Socrates’ trial and death and provide vivid presentations of Socrates’ discussions with his friends and younger contemporaries on the nature of piety, the justice of obedience to state authority, the relation between philosophical knowledge and human virtue, and the wonders, as well as the demands, of the life devoted to philosophy. The references to the coming trial and its charges in Euthyphro are a kind of introduction to this drama. The Apology is Plato’s version of Socrates’ speech to the jury in his own defense. In Crito we find Socrates refusing to save his life by escaping into exile. Meno shows Socrates debating in his characteristic way with Meno on the nature and teachability of human virtue (goodness), and also examining Meno’s slave-boy on a question of geometry, in order to prove the preexistence of our souls and our ability to learn (“recollect”) truths by rigorously examining our own opinions. Phaedo gives an account of his discussion with his friends in prison on the last day of his life, mostly on the question of the immortality of the soul.

The influence of Socrates on his contemporaries can hardly be exaggerated, especially on Plato but not on Plato alone, for a number of authors wrote on Socrates in the early fourth century b.c. And his influence on later philosophers, largely through Plato, was also very great. This impact, on his contemporaries at least, was due not only to his theories but in large measure to his character and personality, that serenely self-confident personality that emerges so vividly from Plato’s writings, and in particular from his account of Socrates’ trial, imprison- ment, and execution.

NOTE: With few exceptions, this translation follows Burnet’s Oxford text.

G. M. A. Grube

EUTHYPHRO

Euthyphro is surprised to meet Socrates near the king-archon’s court, for Socrates is not the kind of man to have business with courts of justice. Socrates explains that he is under indictment by one Meletus for corrupting the young and for not believing in the gods in whom the city believes. After a brief discussion of this, Socrates inquires about Euthyphro’s business at court and is told that he is prosecuting his own father for the murder of a laborer who is himself a murderer. His family and friends believe his course of action to be impious, but Euthyphro explains that in this they are mistaken and reveal their ignorance of the nature of piety. This naturally leads Socrates to ask, What is piety? And the rest of the dialogue is devoted to a search for a definition of piety, illustrating the Socratic search for universal definitions of ethical terms, to which a number of early Platonic dialogues are devoted. As usual, no definition is found that satisfies Socrates.

The Greek term hosion means, in the first instance, the knowledge of the proper ritual in prayer and sacrifice and of course its performance (as Euthyphro himself defines it in 14b). But obviously Euthyphro uses it in the much wider sense of pious conduct generally (e.g., his own), and in that sense the word is practically equivalent to righteousness (the justice of the Republic), the transition being by way of conduct pleasing to the gods.

Besides being an excellent example of the early, so-called Socratic dialogues, Euthyphro contains several passages with important philosophical implications. These include those in which Socrates speaks of the one Form, presented by all the actions that we call pious (5d), as well as the one in which we are told that the gods love what is pious because it is pious; it is not pious because the gods love it (10d). Another passage clarifies the difference between genus and species (11e–12d).

G.M.A.G.

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Euthyphro:1 What’s new, Socrates, to make you leave your usual2 haunts in the Lyceum and spend your time here by the king-archon’s court?2 Surely you are not prosecuting anyone before the king-archon as I am?

Socrates: The Athenians do not call this a prosecution but an indictment, Euthyphro.

Euthyphro: What is this you say? Someone must have indicted you,b for you are not going to tell me that you have indicted someone else.

Socrates: No indeed. Euthyphro: But someone else has indicted you? Socrates: Quite so. Euthyphro: Who is he? Socrates: I do not really know him myself, Euthyphro. He is appar-

ently young and unknown. They call him Meletus, I believe. He belongs to the Pitthean deme,3 if you know anyone from that deme called Meletus, with long hair, not much of a beard, and a rather aquiline nose.

Euthyphro: I don’t know him, Socrates. What charge does he bring against you?

1. We know nothing about Euthyphro except what we can gather from this dialogue. He is obviously a professional priest who considers himself an expert on ritual and on piety generally and, it seems, is generally so considered. One Euthyphro is mentioned in Plato’s Cratylus (396d) who is given to enthousi- asmos, inspiration or possession, but we cannot be sure that it is the same person. 2. The Lyceum was an outdoor gymnasium, just outside the walls of Athens, where teenage young men engaged in exercises and athletic competitions. Socrates and other intellectuals carried on discussions with them there and exhibited their skills. See the beginnings of Plato’s Euthydemus and Lysis, and the last paragraph of Symposium. The king-archon, one of the nine principal magistrates of Athens, had the responsibility to oversee religious rituals and purifications, and as such had oversight of legal cases involving alleged offenses against the Olympian gods, whose worship was a civic function—it was regarded as a serious offense to offend them. 3. A deme was, in effect, one of the constituent villages of Attica, the territory whose center was the city of Athens (though Athens itself was divided into demes, too). Athenian citizens had first of all to be enrolled and recognized as citizens in their demes.

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EUTHYPHRO 3

Socrates: What charge? A not ignoble one I think, for it is no small c thing for a young man to have knowledge of such an important subject. He says he knows how our young men are corrupted and who corrupts them. He is likely to be wise, and when he sees my ignorance corrupting his contemporaries, he proceeds to accuse me to the city as to their mother. I think he is the only one of our public men to start out the d right way, for it is right to care first that the young should be as good as possible, just as a good farmer is likely to take care of the young plants first, and of the others later. So, too, Meletus first gets rid of us who corrupt the young shoots, as he says, and then afterwards he will 3 obviously take care of the older ones and become a source of great blessings for the city, as seems likely to happen to one who started out this way.

Euthyphro: I could wish this were true, Socrates, but I fear the opposite may happen. He seems to me to start out by harming the very heart of the city by attempting to wrong you. Tell me, what does he say you do to corrupt the young?

Socrates: Strange things, to hear him tell it, for he says that I am b a maker of gods, and on the ground that I create new gods while not believing in the old gods, he has indicted me for their sake, as he puts it.

Euthyphro: I understand, Socrates. This is because you say that the divine sign keeps coming to you.4 So he has written this indictment against you as one who makes innovations in religious matters, and he comes to court to slander you, knowing that such things are easily misrepresented to the crowd. The same is true in my case. Whenever c I speak of divine matters in the assembly5 and foretell the future, they laugh me down as if I were crazy; and yet I have foretold nothing that did not happen. Nevertheless, they envy all of us who do this. One need not worry about them, but meet them head-on.

Socrates: My dear Euthyphro, to be laughed at does not matter perhaps, for the Athenians do not mind anyone they think clever, as

4. In Plato, Socrates always speaks of his divine sign or voice as intervening to prevent him from doing or saying something (e.g., Apology 31d), but never positively. The popular view was that it enabled him to foretell the future, and Euthyphro here represents that view. Note, however, that Socrates dissociates himself from “you prophets” (3e). 5. The assembly was the final decision-making body of the Athenian democracy. All adult males could attend and vote.

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long as he does not teach his own wisdom, but if they think that he makes others to be like himself they get angry, whether through envy,d as you say, or for some other reason.

Euthyphro: I have certainly no desire to test their feelings towards me in this matter.

Socrates: Perhaps you seem to make yourself but rarely available, and not be willing to teach your own wisdom, but I’m afraid that 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 then they were intending to laugh at me, as you say they laugh at you, there would be nothing unpleasante in their spending their time in court laughing and jesting, but if they are going to be serious, the outcome is not clear except to you prophets.

Euthyphro: Perhaps it will come to nothing, Socrates, and you will fight your case as you think best, as I think I will mine.

Socrates: What is your case, Euthyphro? Are you the defendant or the prosecutor?

Euthyphro: The prosecutor. Socrates: Whom do you prosecute?

Euthyphro: One whom I am thought crazy to prosecute.4 Socrates: Are you pursuing someone who will easily escape you? Euthyphro: Far from it, for he is quite old. Socrates: Who is it? Euthyphro: My father. Socrates: My dear sir! Your own father? Euthyphro: Certainly. Socrates: What is the charge? What is the case about? Euthyphro: Murder, Socrates. Socrates: Good heavens! Certainly, Euthyphro, most men would

not know how they could do this and be right. It is not the part ofb anyone to do this, but of one who is far advanced in wisdom.

Euthyphro: Yes, by Zeus, Socrates, that is so. Socrates: Is then the man your father killed one of your relatives?

Or is that obvious, for you would not prosecute your father for the murder of a stranger.

EUTHYPHRO 5

Euthyphro: It is ridiculous, Socrates, for you to think that it makes any difference whether the victim is a stranger or a relative. One should only watch whether the killer acted justly or not; if he acted justly, let him go, but if not, one should prosecute, if, that is to say, the killer c shares your hearth and table. The pollution is the same if you knowingly keep company with such a man and do not cleanse yourself and him by bringing him to justice. The victim was a dependent of mine, and when we were farming in Naxos he was a servant of ours.6 He killed one of our household slaves in drunken anger, so my father bound him hand and foot and threw him in a ditch, then sent a man here to inquire from the priest what should be done. During that time he gave d no thought or care to the bound man, as being a killer, and it was no matter if he died, which he did. Hunger and cold and his bonds caused his death before the messenger came back from the seer. Both my father and my other relatives are angry that I am prosecuting my father for murder on behalf of a murderer when he hadn’t even killed him, they say, and even if he had, the dead man does not deserve a thought, since he was a killer. For, they say, it is impious for a son to prosecute e his father for murder. But their ideas of the divine attitude to piety and impiety are wrong, Socrates.

Socrates: Whereas, by Zeus, Euthyphro, you think that your knowl- edge of the divine, and of piety and impiety, is so accurate that, when those things happened as you say, you have no fear of having acted impiously in bringing your father to trial?

Euthyphro: I should be of no use, Socrates, and Euthyphro would not be superior to the majority of men, if I did not have accurate 5 knowledge of all such things.

Socrates: It is indeed most important, my admirable Euthyphro, that I should become your pupil, and as regards this indictment, chal- lenge Meletus about these very things and say to him: that in the past too I considered knowledge about the divine to be most important, and that now that he says that I am guilty of improvising and innovating about the gods I have become your pupil. I would say to him: “If, Meletus, you agree that Euthyphro is wise in these matters, consider b me, too, to have the right beliefs and do not bring me to trial. If you

6. Naxos is a large island in the Aegean Sea southeast of Athens, where Athens had appropriated land and settled many of its citizens under its imperial rule in the mid–fifth century B.C.

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do not think so, then prosecute that teacher of mine, not me, for corrupting the older men, me and his own father, by teaching me and by exhorting and punishing him.” If he is not convinced, and does not discharge me or indict you instead of me, I shall repeat the same challenge in court.

Euthyphro: Yes, by Zeus, Socrates, and, if he should try to indict me, I think I would find his weak spots and the talk in court would bec about him rather than about me.

Socrates: It is because I realize this that I am eager to become your pupil, my dear friend. I know that other people as well as this Meletus do not even seem to notice you, whereas he sees me so sharply and clearly that he indicts me for ungodliness. So tell me now, by Zeus, what you just now maintained you clearly knew: what kind of thing do you say that godliness and ungodliness are, both as regards murder andd other things; or is the pious not the same and alike in every action, and the impious the opposite of all that is pious and like itself, and everything that is to be impious presents us with one form7 or appearance insofar as it is impious?

Euthyphro: Most certainly, Socrates. Socrates: Tell me then, what is the pious, and what the impious,

do you say? Euthyphro: I say that the pious is to do what I am doing now, to

prosecute the wrongdoer, be it about murder or temple robbery or anything else, whether the wrongdoer is your father or your mother ore anyone else; not to prosecute is impious. And observe, Socrates, that I can cite powerful evidence that the law is so. I have already said to others that such actions are right, not to favor the ungodly, whoever they are. These people themselves believe that Zeus is the best and most just of the gods, yet they agree that he bound his father because6

7. This is the kind of passage that makes it easier for us to follow the transition from Socrates’ universal definitions to the Platonic theory of separately existent eternal universal Forms. The words eidos and idea, the technical terms for the Platonic Forms, commonly mean physical stature or bodily appearance. As we apply a common epithet, in this case pious, to different actions or things, these must have a common characteristic, present a common appearance or form, to justify the use of the same term, but in the early dialogues, as here, it seems to be thought of as immanent in the particulars and without separate existence. The same is true of 6d where the word “form” is also used.

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EUTHYPHRO 7

he unjustly swallowed his sons, and that he in turn castrated his father for similar reasons. But they are angry with me because I am prosecuting my father for his wrongdoing. They contradict themselves in what they say about the gods and about me.

Socrates: Indeed, Euthyphro, this is the reason why I am a defen- dant in the case, because I find it hard to accept things like that being said about the gods, and it is likely to be the reason why I shall be told I do wrong. Now, however, if you, who have full knowledge of such things, share their opinions, then we must agree with them, too, it b would seem. For what are we to say, we who agree that we ourselves have no knowledge of them? Tell me, by the god of friendship, do you really believe these things are true?

Euthyphro: Yes, Socrates, and so are even more surprising things, of which the majority has no knowledge.

Socrates: And do you believe that there really is war among the gods, and terrible enmities and battles, and other such things as are told by the poets, and other sacred stories such as are embroidered by good writers and by representations of which the robe of the goddess c is adorned when it is carried up to the Acropolis?8 Are we to say these things are true, Euthyphro?

Euthyphro: Not only these, Socrates, but, as I was saying just now, I will, if you wish, relate many other things about the gods which I know will amaze you.