Complete Works (368 page)

In
Demodocus II–IV,
the narrator (we are probably meant to assume that he is Socrates) reports three conversations, between unnamed third parties, which call into question certain principles of common sense; he is left in doubt about these principles, a doubt which the reader is expected to share. The common-sense principles are plausible, but arguments in the other direction are developed in order to balance their plausibility and leave the reader with an open mind. This is a technique practiced by adherents of the Academy under the sceptical philosopher Arcesilaus and after, which suggests that the dialogues are from the middle of the third century
B.C.
,
or later.

D.S.H.

I

You invite me,
¹
Demodocus, to give you advice on the matters you are
[380]
meeting to discuss; but I am inclined rather to ask what is the point of your assembly and of the readiness of those who think to give you advice and of the vote which each of you intends to cast.

Suppose, on the one hand, that it is impossible to give good and informed advice on the matters you are meeting to discuss: then surely it is ridiculous [b] to meet to discuss matters on which it is impossible to give good advice. Suppose, on the other hand, that it
is
possible to give good and informed advice on such matters: then surely it would be absurd if there were no knowledge on the basis of which it is possible to give good and informed advice on these matters—and if there
is
some knowledge on the basis of which it is possible to give good advice about such matters, then there must be some people who in fact know how to give good advice on such matters; and if there
are
some people who know how to give advice on [c] the matters you are meeting to discuss, then necessarily in your own case either you know how to give advice on these matters, or you do not know how to do so, or else some of you know and others do not know. Now if you all know, why do you still need to meet to discuss the question? Each one of you is competent to give advice. If none of you know, then how can you discuss the question? And what will you gain from this assembly [d] if you
cannot
discuss the question? If some of you know and others do not know, and if the latter need advice, then—supposing that it is possible for a man of sense to give advice to those who are uninformed—surely
one
man is enough to give advice to those of you who lack knowledge?
²
For presumably those who know how to give advice all give the same advice, so that you ought to hear one man and then be done with it. But this is not what you are actually doing: rather, you want to hear several advisers. You are assuming that those who are undertaking to give you advice do not know about the matters on which they are giving advice; for if you assumed that your advisers did know, then you would be
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satisfied when you had heard just one of them. Now it is surely absurd to meet to hear people who do not know about these matters, with the thought that you will thereby gain something.

This, then, is what perplexes me about your assembly. As for the readiness of those who think to give you advice, there is the following perplexity.

Suppose that, although they are giving advice on the same matters, they do not give the same advice: then how can all of them be giving sound advice if they are not giving the advice given by someone who gives good [b] advice? And is it not absurd for people to be ready to give advice on matters about which they are uninformed? For if they are informed they will not choose to give advice which is not good. But if they give the same advice, why need they all give advice? It will be enough for one of them to give this advice.
³
Now surely it is absurd to be ready to do something which will gain nothing. Thus the readiness of those who are uninformed [c] cannot fail to be absurd, given what it is; while men of sense will not be ready in such a case, knowing as they do that any one of their number will have the same effect if he gives advice as he ought to. Hence I am at a loss to discover how
⁴
the readiness of those who think to give you advice can be anything but ridiculous.

I am particularly perplexed to grasp the point of the votes which you intend to cast. Are you judging men who know how to give advice?—No more than one of them will give advice, nor will they give different advice on the same matters. Hence you will not need to cast any votes about them. Or
⁵
are you judging men who are uninformed and do not give the [d] advice they should?—You ought not to allow such people, any more than madmen, to give advice. But if you are going to judge neither the informed nor the uninformed, then who
are
you judging?

In any case, why need other men give you advice at all if you are competent to judge such matters? And if you are not competent, what is the point of your votes? Surely it is ridiculous for you to meet to take advice, [e] which implies that you need advice and are
not
yourselves competent, and then, having met, to think that you ought to vote, which implies that you
are
competent to judge. For it can hardly be the case that as individuals you are ignorant and yet having met you become wise; or that in private you are perplexed and yet having come to the same place you are no longer perplexed but become competent to see what you ought to do—all this without learning from anyone or finding things out for yourselves. This is the most extraordinary thing of all: given that you cannot see what
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ought to be done, you will not be competent to judge anyone who gives you good advice on these matters. Nor will this adviser of yours, being just one man, say that he will teach you to see
⁶
what you ought to do and also to judge those who give you bad or good advice, given that he has so little time and you are so numerous—this would plainly be no less extraordinary than the previous supposition. But if neither the meeting nor your adviser makes you competent to judge, what is the use of your votes?

Surely your meeting is inconsistent with your voting and your voting [b] with the readiness of your advisers? For your meeting implies that you are not competent but need advisers, while the casting of votes implies that you do not need advisers but
are
capable of judging and of giving advice. And the readiness of your advisers implies that they have knowledge, while your casting votes implies that the advisers do not have knowledge.

Moreover, suppose that, after you had voted and after he had given [c] you advice on whatever you were voting about, someone were to ask whether you knew if the goal for the sake of which you intended to put into action what you had voted on would come about: I do not think that you would say that you did know. Again, if the goal for the sake of which you intend to act were to come about, do you know that it would be in your interest? I do not think that either you or your adviser would say that you do. And if someone were to ask you further whether
⁷
you thought that any man knew anything of these matters, I do not think you would admit that you did.

[d] Now when the sort of matters about which you are giving advice are unclear to you, and when the voters and the advisers are uninformed, it stands to reason, as you yourselves will agree, that men often lose confidence and change their minds about whatever they took advice on and voted about. But such a thing ought not to happen to good men. For they know what the matters on which they are giving advice are like, and that those whom they have persuaded will surely attain
⁸
the goal for the sake of which they give advice, and that neither they nor those whom they [e] have persuaded will ever change their minds.

Thus I thought that it was proper
⁹
for a sensible man to give advice on topics of this sort and not on the matters on which you invite me to give advice. For advice on the former topics ends in success, nonsense on the latter in failure.

II

I witnessed a man upbraiding his companion because he believed the plaintiff when he had not heard the defendant but only the plaintiff. He said that he was doing something appalling: he was condemning the man
[383]
in advance
¹⁰
when he had neither witnessed the affair himself nor heard the man’s friends who had witnessed it and whose words he might reasonably trust; and, without hearing both sides he had rashly trusted
¹¹
the plaintiff. Justice required hearing the defendant, too, as well as the plaintiff, before giving praise or blame. How could anyone decide a case fairly or [b] judge men properly if he had not heard both parties? As with purple, or with gold coins, so with arguments it was good to judge by comparison. And why was time allotted to both parties, or why did the jurors swear to hear both impartially, unless the lawgiver had thought that cases would be more justly and better judged by the jurors in this way?

“You seem to me not even to have heard the popular saying.”

[c] “Which one?” he asked.

“ ‘O, never judge in a case until you have heard both the stories’.
¹²
This would hardly circulate so widely if it were not a right and proper saying. So I advise you,” he said, “in the future not to blame or praise men so rashly.”

His companion replied that it seemed quite clear to him that it would be absurd if it were impossible to tell whether one speaker was speaking truly or falsely and yet possible to tell whether two speakers were; or if [d] it were impossible to learn from someone who spoke the truth and yet possible to be instructed in the same matters by the same man together with someone else who spoke falsely; or if one man who spoke correctly and truly could not make clear what he was saying and yet two men, one of whom spoke falsely and not correctly, could make clear what the man who spoke correctly could not make clear.

“I am perplexed,” he said, “by the following point too: how will they ever make the matter clear? By being silent or by speaking? If they make it clear by being silent, then there will be no need to hear either, let alone both. If they both make it clear by speaking and yet certainly do not both [e] speak together (each is required to speak in turn), how can they both make it clear at the same time? If they are both to make it clear at the same time, then they will speak at the same time—and this is not allowed. Hence if they make it clear by speaking, it can only be that each of them makes it clear by speaking, and that when each of them speaks, each of them then makes it clear. Hence one will speak first and the other second, and one will make it clear first and the other second. Yet if each in turn makes the same thing clear, why do you still need to hear the later speaker? The matter will already have been cleared up by the man who spoke first.
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Moreover,” he said, “if both make it clear, then surely each of them makes it clear. For if one of a pair does not make something clear, how could they both make it clear? But if each of them makes it clear, plainly the one who
¹³
speaks first will also make it clear first. So isn’t it possible to tell how things stand after listening to him alone?”
¹⁴

When I heard them I myself was perplexed and could not come to a judgment—though the others who were present said that the first man spoke the truth. So help me with the matter if you can:
¹⁵
when one man [b] speaks can you assess what he says, or do you need his opponent too if you are to know whether he is telling the truth? Or is it unnecessary to hear both sides? What do you think?

III

The other day someone was criticizing a man because he had been unwilling to trust him and lend him money. The man who was being criticized was defending himself, and someone else who was present asked the critic [c] whether it was the man who did not trust him and lend him money who was in the wrong. “Or haven’t
you
gone wrong,” he said, “in not persuading him to lend to you?”

“Where did I go wrong?,” he replied.

“Who seems to you to go wrong,” he said, “—someone who fails to get what he wanted or someone who gets it?”

“Someone who fails,” he replied.

“And you failed,” he said, “since you wanted the loan, whereas he wanted not to give it and didn’t fail in that.”

“Yes,” he replied, “but, granted that he didn’t give me the money,
where
did I go wrong?”

“Well,” he said, “if you asked him for what you ought not to have [d] asked, then surely you realize that you were in the wrong, whereas he, who did not give it, was in the right. And if you asked him for what you ought to have asked, then surely in failing to get it you must have gone wrong.”

“Perhaps,” he replied. “But surely he was wrong in not trusting me?”

“Well,” he said, “if you had dealt with him as you should, you would not have gone wrong at all, would you?”

“No indeed.”

“In fact, then, you didn’t deal with him as you should.”

“Apparently not,” he said.

“So if he wasn’t persuaded because you didn’t deal with him as you [e] should, how can you justly criticize him?”

“I can’t say.”

“And can’t you say either that one needn’t be considerate to people who behave badly?”

“I can certainly say that,” he replied.

“But don’t those who don’t treat people as they should seem to you to behave badly?”

“They do,” he replied.

“Then what did he do wrong if he wasn’t considerate to you when you behaved badly?”

“Nothing at all, it seems,” he said.

“Then why on earth,” he said, “do men criticize one another in this way, blaming people they have not persuaded for not having been persuaded but never criticizing themselves in the least for not having persuaded
[385]
them?”

Someone else who was present said: “Suppose you’ve behaved well to someone and helped him, and then when you ask him to behave in the same way to you he refuses—surely in these circumstances you might reasonably blame him?”