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3,821 words

“Knowledge is not wisdom.”

—Frank Zappa

Plato’s Lovers is one of his shortest dialogues, but it deals with one of his weightiest topics: the nature of philosophy.

The setting is the school of Dionysus the grammarian. Socrates encounters two attractive young men from good families along with their two older male lovers. None of these characters are named.

The lovers are described as “rival” lovers, but ambiguously so. Was one of them also interested in the other’s lad? Or do they represent rival loves, i.e., rival ways of life?

When Socrates arrived, the young men were arguing about the natural philosophy of Anaxagoras or Oenopides. They were drawing circular diagrams and “holding their hands at angles to depict certain astronomical inclinations.”[1] They seemed to be taking it all quite seriously. According to Plato’s Phaedo, when Socrates was a young man, he himself was very interested in natural philosophy, Anaxagoras in particular.

Socrates sat down beside one of the lovers and nudged him, asking him what the lads were arguing about: “It must be something great and fine for them to be putting such serious effort into it” (132b). The lover scoffed: “Great and fine? They’re just babbling about things up in the sky and talking philosophical nonsense” (132b).

Socrates was astonished at this reply and asked why he found “the pursuit of philosophy . . . shameful” (132c).

At this point, the other lover piped up and said:

You’re wasting your time, Socrates, asking him whether he thinks philosophy is a shameful pursuit. Don’t you realize that he’s spent his whole life wrestling, stuffing himself with food, and sleeping? How could you expect him to give any answer other than that philosophy is shameful? (132c)

This lover spent all his time studying the liberal arts, whereas his rival spent all his time with athletics. Thus I shall refer to the first as the scholar and the second as the athlete.

Since the scholar “claimed to be the wiser,” Socrates stopped questioning the athlete and asked: “Do you think the pursuit of philosophy is fine, or not?”

At this point the two lads broke off arguing and turned their attention to Socrates and the rival lovers. Mindful of the audience, the scholar answered in a haughty manner that, “If I ever came to regard philosophy as shameful, I would no longer consider myself a human being; nor anybody else who felt that way!” (133a–b). As he spoke, he gestured toward the athlete and raised his voice, so the comparison was clear to his audience.

At this point Socrates asked the scholar if we can know that something is fine or shameful without first knowing the thing itself. The scholar said this was impossible, so Socrates asked him what philosophy is. The scholar answered:

What else but what Solon says it is? He says somewhere, ‘I continue to learn many things as I grow old.’³ And I agree with him that someone who wants to pursue philosophy, whether young or old, should always be learning one thing or another in order to learn as many things as possible in life. (133c)

In short, philosophy is “learning many things” (133c).

Socrates then offered a critique by first soliciting the premise that philosophy is not just fine but also good. The Greek for “fine” is “kalon,” and the Greek for “good” is “agathon.” This is significant, because the two words conjoined, the fine and good man, refer to the Greek idea of the gentleman, which is the scholar’s model for the philosopher. The scholar agreed. Socrates then asked him if other things like athletics are both fine and good. After a bit of sniping at his rival, the scholar agreed to this as well.

Having established a parallel between philosophy and athletics, Socrates asked, “Do you think athletics consists in doing lots of exercise?” The scholar replied, “Indeed, . . .  just as I think philosophy consists in learning many things” (133e). It seemed obvious to the scholar that getting in shape requires a lot of exercise, which is perhaps why he had never gotten into shape.

Socrates then asked the athlete if the scholar was correct. His response was scathing: “I thought even a pig would know . . . that it’s moderate exercise that produces good physical condition.” If a pig would know that, then surely “a man who doesn’t sleep . . . somebody who’s out of shape and scrawny from sitting around meditating”—in short, a man like the scholar—would know it too (134b). The lads snickered at this, while the scholar blushed.

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When Socrates asked if the scholar agreed that “it’s neither lots of exercise nor a little, but a moderate amount, that produces good physical condition,” the scholar was willing to grant the point to Socrates, although he also said that he would not grant the point to the athlete. Instead, he would argue it, because he thought he could win. The scholar, in short, is a bit of a sophist, since he would defend a false claim to one-up a rival if he could get away with it.

Socrates then established to the scholar’s satisfaction that not just with exercise but with food and all other matters connected with the care of the body, “the moderate is the most beneficial, neither a large nor a small amount” (134d).

The Socrates turned from the body to the soul, asking if the soul too is improved “from having moderate or immoderate amounts of things administered to it” (134d). Again, the scholar agreed that moderation is best.

At this point, Socrates asked, “And isn’t learning something that’s administered to the soul?” The scholar agreed. Socrates then concluded: “And so a moderate amount of learning is beneficial, but not a great deal of learning?” Again, the scholar agreed.

The unstated conclusion is that philosophy cannot be a lot of learning.

In Plato’s Euthydemus, Socrates argued that philosophy is the pursuit of wisdom, and wisdom is the ability to make right use of all things to promote happiness or well-being (eudaimonia). Part of “right use” is imposing the right measure on things: not too much or too little but just right.

If wisdom is what imposes measure on all things, then wisdom cannot be one of the things that requires measure to be imposed upon it. Knowledge needs wisdom to guide it, thus knowledge cannot be wisdom.

But there is one exception. The only knowledge that can be identified with wisdom is knowledge of right and wrong, for without it, we cannot make right use of anything.

At this point Socrates changed direction, asking about experts. The expert who determines what is good for the body would be a doctor or a physical trainer. The expert who knows how to cultivate a field would be a farmer. But who is the expert in the cultivation of the soul? At that point, the lovers were at a loss, so Socrates suggested asking the lads. But the response was not enthusiastic, so Socrates changed the subject. Based on dialogues like the Gorgias, however, we know what answer Socrates was fishing for: the expert in cultivating the soul is the philosopher.

On the assumption that a philosopher doesn’t need to learn everything or a lot of things, Socrates asked: “What would you guess are the main sorts of subjects that a philosopher needs to learn . . . ?” (135a). Here Socrates may be driving at the knowledge of good and evil.

But the scholar had something else in mind:

The finest and most proper sorts of learning are those from which one derives the most fame as a philosopher, and one acquires the most fame by appearing to be an expert in all the arts, or if not in all of them, in most of the really important ones, learning as much of them as is proper for a free man—that is, their theory, not their actual practice. (135?)

The scholar is clearly trying to articulate the concept of a “second order” form of knowledge. Here, first-order knowledge consists of the different arts. The Greek is techne (singular) and technai (plural). For convenience, I will simply call them arts. This approach was clearly suggested by Socrates’ questions about experts in cultivating the body, soil, and soul.

Arts are somehow the subject matter of philosophy, yet the philosopher is not an expert in any of them. The Socratic answer to this puzzle is that philosophy is the pursuit of wisdom, which ensures the right use of all things, including the arts, which left to their own devices are morally neutral. For instance, the surgeon is an expert in cutting and stitching human flesh, and the philosopher is the expert in guiding those skills toward good rather than evil ends.

The scholar, however, understands the distinction between philosophy and the arts on the model of the distinction between the wealthy gentleman of leisure and the humble, hard-working artisan. Gentleman are “free” men, meaning that other men—often slaves—work for them. Gentlemen have fine tastes and proper manners. They are also concerned with their reputation.

Thus, according to the scholar, the gentleman philosopher cultivates a reputation for expertise in all the arts, or if not all of them, then at least the most important. But gentlemen keep their hands clean, so they know about such skills in theory but not in grubby practice.

Of course the gentleman philosopher will not seem like an expert in the eyes of genuine experts. He will only seem like an expert in the eyes of the ignorant. In short, he’s something of a fraud.

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There is more than a tinge of sophistry here as well. The great sophist Gorgias in the dialogue of that name extolls rhetoric as an art for gentlemen who wish to keep their hands clean. Gorgias also extols the power of rhetoric to give the appearance of expertise in the eyes of the ignorant.

Socrates asked the scholar if the relationship of the different technical skills to philosophy is analogous to the relationship of workmen to master architects: “You can buy a workman [literally, for they were slaves] for five or six minas, but a master architect will cost you thousands of drachmas [to hire, for they were free men], and indeed there are few of them in all of Greece” (135b–c). The scholar agreed.

Here Socrates is introducing a new aspect of philosophy. The scholar’s gentleman-philosopher apparently has no technical expertise of his own. Nor does he do anything with such experts. He just talks about them and postures as learned before the crowd of non-experts. Socrates’ master builder, however, actually has an expertise which he uses to oversee and direct workmen to create something.

The idea of a master art that oversees and directs other arts brings us closer to the Platonic idea of wisdom. We encounter this idea in the Gorgias, where Gorgias extols rhetoric as the master art. We also encounter it in the Charmides, where Critias extols epistemology as a master science that can certify experts in other fields. I have described the idea of philosophy as the master art or science as a “technocratic” model of philosophy and society.

But even a master art falls short of what philosophy truly is. This is because all arts—even master arts—are still morally neutral. If rhetoric is the master art, it can help you sell the services of a doctor, but it cannot ensure that his skills will be used rightly. If epistemology is the master art, it can help distinguish real doctors from quacks, but it cannot ensure that the doctor uses his skills rightly.

Socrates then returns to the question of the philosopher’s technical expertise, asking “if it wasn’t impossible to learn even two of the arts so thoroughly, let alone several important ones” (135c). It is interesting that Socrates says “even two,” which leaves open the possibility that philosophy itself is just one art.

The ability to make right use of all things is definitely like an art because it is practical, but it is not morally neutral. The ability to make right use of all things is definitely like knowledge, because it knows the distinction between good and evil. But it not like any other knowledge, because it doesn’t need to worry about being applied rightly. It is always good under any circumstances.

The scholar replies by refining his gentlemanly model of philosophy:

You mustn’t think I’m saying, Socrates . . . that the philosopher needs to understand each art as thoroughly as the man who makes it his profession. He needs to understand it only as far as is reasonable for a free and educated man, so that he can follow the explanations offered by the tradesman better than everyone else present, and can add his own opinion; that way, he always appears to be the most accomplished and the wisest of those present whenever the arts are discussed or practiced. (135d)

The scholar reemphasizes that the philosopher is a “free” man not a worker. He also reemphasizes the importance of seeming to be wise in the eyes of laymen. But he adds an element of substance, namely that the philosopher will be better able to follow the explanations offered by craftsmen than other laymen because unlike laymen, he will have a smattering of knowledge about many different arts.

Socrates then suggested that the gentleman philosopher is like a pentathlete, who competes in five different sports. Pentathletes are inferior to experts in any of the five sports they compete in, but they are still superior to non-athletes. In like manner, philosophers “In knowledge of the arts . . . rank behind those who place first [the experts], but as runners-up they remain superior to the rest [the non-experts]” (136a).

The scholar agrees, emphasizing that the philosopher “is just the sort of man not to be enslaved to any one thing, nor to have worked anything out in such detail that, by concentrating on only that one thing, as do the tradesmen, he is left behind in all the others, but has touched on everything to a moderate extent.” (136a–b). In short, the gentleman philosopher is a learned dilettante, a jack of all trades, master of none.

At this point, Socrates offered a critique. The scholar has already claimed that the philosopher is good. So Socrates asked him “if good people are useful” and “bad people are useless” (136b). The scholar agreed and claimed that philosophers are not just useful but “extremely useful” (136c).

But what is the use of a gentleman philosopher? He has no expertise of his own. He merely has an impressive smattering of knowledge of many different fields of expertise. But in each field he is inferior to the experts. If one were sick, one would trust a doctor, not a philosopher. If one were lost at sea, one would trust a navigator, not a philosopher.

The scholar agrees with each step of this argument, so Socrates sums it up:

We agreed that philosophy is fine, that philosophers are good, that good men are useful, and that bad men are useless; on the other hand, we agreed that philosophers are of no use whenever there are tradesmen, and that tradesmen are always to be found. . . . If philosophy consists, as you suggest, in knowledge of arts, then philosophers are bad and useless, as long as there are men with arts. (137a–b).

At this point, Socrates drops any coyness and flatly states that “philosophers are not like that,” namely useless dilettantes, and “philosophy does not consist in stooping to a concern with arts nor in learning many things but in something quite different.” At this point, Socrates actually uses the scholar’s gentlemanly snobbery against him: “I thought that [concern with the arts and learning many things] was actually dishonorable, and that people who pursued the arts were called vulgar” (137c).

Second, he lays out his “quite different” concept of philosophy by first establishing a connection between knowledge of the good and the ability to discipline. With horses, dogs, and human beings, “it’s the same art that both makes better and properly disciplines” (137c). This art, moreover, is the same as the one that “distinguishes between the good ones and the bad ones” (137c).

For Plato, good and evil are equivalent to the health and sickness of the soul, so knowledge of good and evil is based on knowledge of the soul.

Socrates then adds that “an art that can do this with one can also do it with many, and vice versa” (137d). Thus what which “properly disciplines the undisciplined and lawless people in cities” is “knowledge of the law” (137d) which is the same as “justice” (137d). Justice is one of Plato’s cardinal virtues. The Greek term is “dikaiosyne,” which is the most comprehensive form of justice and can also be translated as “righteousness.”

At this point, Socrates introduces another of his cardinal virtues, moderation (sophrosyne) which is inherently connected with self-knowledge. The man who knows other human beings are good or bad must be able to know if he himself is good or bad. Then Socrates quotes the oracle of Apollo at Delphi as the authority for establishing that self-knowledge is the same as the virtue of sophrosyne, which was a widely accepted opinion among the Greeks.

Socrates then argues that justice and moderation are the same: “So the way we understand how to discipline properly is justice, and the way we evaluate ourselves and others is moderation. . . So justice and moderation are one and the same” (138a–b).

But in what sense are they the same? They are the same because they are rooted in knowledge of good and evil. They are different insofar as justice applies this knowledge to improving others, whereas moderation applies the same knowledge to evaluating oneself and others.

Punishing the unjust is one part of good government, which is the work of “statecraft” (138b). When statecraft is exercised by one man, he is called a king or a tyrant, and he rules by the kingly or tyrannical art, which Socrates identifies with the aforementioned arts: statecraft and the art of punishment, as well as the virtues of justice and moderation.

Socrates then adds that we call the head of a well-governed household a “head of the household” and “master of slaves,” adding that he governs well through justice (138c).

At this point, Socrates sums up:

So they are all the same, it seems: king, tyrant, statesman, head of the household, master of slaves, moderate man, and just man. And they are all one art: kingly, tyrannical, political, managerial and household arts, and justice and moderation. (138c)

In what sense are kings, tyrants, statesmen, heads of households, and masters of slaves the same? They are overseers empowered to rule others based on the knowledge of good and evil.

In what sense are they just and moderate? These virtues just are their knowledge of the good, which gives them the ability to rule justly.

Note that here the tyrant is identified with the king, the just man, and the moderate man. Plato argues in the Republic that kings are characterized by justice and tyrants by injustice. In the Greater Alcibiades, Gorgias, Charmides, and Republic, Plato argues that the virtue of moderation is anti-tyrannical. But in the Laws, Plato holds out the hope that tyrants can be virtuous if properly educated. Plato’s extensive dealings with the tyrants of Syracuse were also based on the assumption that tyrants can become good rulers.[2]

In what sense are the arts of the king, tyrant, stateman, and household manager the same? They all rule men based on knowledge of good and evil.

In what sense are justice and moderation arts at all? They are arts insofar as they are practical, but they are not arts insofar as they know the good, whereas arts are morally neutral.

But where does philosophy fit in? Clearly it is hiding around here somewhere.

First, Socrates gets the scholar to agree that, if it is  shameful for a philosopher to be unable to understand or comment on what a doctor or any other artisan says about his area of expertise, it would also be shameful for a philosopher to be in the same position when a judge or a king speaks about justice. But the philosopher remains as ignorant of justice as he is of medicine. He is still a learned dilettante, with no expertise of his own.

At this point, Socrates asks if the philosopher should remain a non-expert in matters of justice. Should he cede control of his own household to an expert, or would he himself “administer justice and discipline” (138e)? This appeals to the scholar’s aristocratic idea of the philosopher. A true aristocrat is a free man, certainly within his own household, so of course he would insist on remaining in charge.

Then Socrates asks the scholar if a philosopher were asked by his friends to settle a dispute or asked by the city to investigate or pass judgment on something, whether it would be honorable for him to defer to an expert. Again, given his aristocratic concept of the philosopher, the scholar says no. No aristocrat would pass off these duties to another. The philosopher would take the lead.

At this point, however, we have another problem. If the philosopher acts like any other aristocrat, that doesn’t tell us what makes him distinct. The answer, of course, is that the philosopher is an expert in right and wrong based on knowledge of the human soul and what makes it sick and healthy.

But this is not made explicit. Instead, Socrates’ final conclusion merely states a negative: “So for us to say, my friend, that philosophy consists in learning many things and busying oneself with arts, would be very far from the truth” (139a).

Indeed, the philosopher cannot be a gentlemanly dilettante. What gentleman would settle for being second-best in everything? Instead, the philosopher must be a gentlemanly winner. He must take first place in something, namely in the art of ruling. But to do so, he must become an expert in justice and moderation. In short, rulers must become philosophers.

When Socrates states his conclusion, “the wise fellow was ashamed at what he’d said before and fell silent, while the unlearned one said that I was right; and the others approved of what I’d said” (139a). Whereas at the beginning of the conversation, the scholar merely thought himself wise, at the end of the conversation, he is genuinely wiser by being stripped of his illusions.

Notes

[1] I will quote Jeffrey Mitscheling’s translation, Rival Lovers, Plato, Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997), with some modifications.

[2] See “Why Plato Befriended Tyrants,” the Introduction to Greg Johnson, Tyranny and Wisdom: Plato’s Greater Alcibiades and Gorgias (San Francisco: Counter-Currents, 2025).