Superphysics
Gorgias and Virtue
4 minutes • 803 words
PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE: Meno, Socrates, A Slave of Meno (Boy), Anytus.
Meno  |
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|---|---|
| Socrates | |
| Slave boy |  |
| Anytus |  |
Is virtue acquired by teaching or by practice? Or by what way? Does it come to man by nature?
There was a time when the Thessalians were famous among the other Hellenes only for their riches and their riding.
But now, they are equally famous for their wisdom, especially at Larisa, which is the native city of your friend Aristippus.
This is Gorgias’ doing. When he came there, the flower of the Aleuadae fell in love with his wisdom:
- your admirer Aristippus
- the other chiefs of the Thessalians
He taught you how to answer questions in a grand and bold style.
Any Hellene may ask him anything.
Here at Athens there is a dearth of wisdom and all wisdom seems to have emigrated from us to you.
If you asked any Athenian whether virtue was natural or acquired, he would laugh and say: ‘Foreigner, I do not even know what virtue is’. I myself live in this region of poverty and am as poor as the rest of the world.
Are you saying that you do not know what virtue is? Ami I to carry back this report of you to Thessaly?
Not only that. But I have never known of any one else who did know.
Then you have never met Gorgias when he was at Athens?
Yes, I have. I do not have a good memory. He did know about virtue. Please remind me of what he said. Or please tell me your own view
It’s easy. The virtue of a man is that he should:
- know how to administer the state and how to benefit his friends and harm his enemies
- be careful not to suffer harm himself.
The virtue of a woman is that she should:
- order her house, and keep what is indoors, and obey her husband.
Every age, every condition of life, young or old, male or female, bond or free, has a different virtue.
There are innumerable virtues, and no lack of definitions of them. Virtue is relative to the actions and ages of each of us in all that we do. The same may be said of vice, Socrates (Compare Arist. Pol.).
I asked for one virtue. But you present me with a swarm of them (Compare Theaet.), which are in your keeping.
Suppose that I carry on the figure of the swarm, and ask of you, What is the nature of the bee?
You answer that there are many kinds of bees. I reply: But do bees differ as bees, because there are many and different kinds of them; or are they not rather to be distinguished by some other quality, as for example beauty, size, or shape?
Bees do not differ from one another, as bees.
What is the quality in which they do not differ, but are all alike?
Of the virtues, however many and different they may be, they have all a common nature which makes them virtues. But ‘What is virtue?’
You say that there is one virtue of a man, another of a woman, another of a child, and so on. Does this apply only to virtue? Or would you say the same of health, size, and strength?
Or is the nature of health always the same, whether in man or woman?
Health is the same, both in man and woman.
This true of size and strength. If a woman is strong, she will be strong just as a man is strong.
Then virtue, as virtue, will be the same, whether in a child or in a grown-up person, in a woman or in a man?
No this case is different from the others.
But why? Were you not saying that the virtue of a man was to order a state, and the virtue of a woman was to order a house?
Can either house or state or anything be well ordered without temperance and without justice?
Then they who order a state or a house temperately or justly order them with temperance and justice?
Then both men and women, if they are to be good men and women, must have the same virtues of temperance and justice?
Can either a young man or an elder one be good, if they are intemperate and unjust?
They must be temperate and just.
Then all men are good in the same way, and by participation in the same virtues?
They surely would not have been good in the same way, unless their virtue had been the same?
The sameness of all virtue has been proven, try and remember what you and Gorgias say that virtue is.
