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“And, my friend, that the ones who believe the latter can’t specify what sort of
intelligence, but are forced to end up claiming it’s about the good.”
“It’s very ridiculous,” he said.
“How could it be otherwise,” I said, “if after reproaching us because we don’t
know what’s good they turn around and speak to us as though we do know? Because
they claim that it’s intelligence about the good as though we for our part understand
what they mean when they pronounce the name of the good.”
“That’s very true,” he said.
“And what about the people who define the good as pleasure? Are they any less
full of inconsistency than the others? Aren’t they also forced to admit that there are bad
pleasures?”
“Emphatically so.”
“So I guess they turn out to be conceding that the same things that are good are
also bad. Isn’t that so?”
“Certainly.”
“Then isn’t it clear that the disagreements about it are vast and many?”
“How could it not be clear?”
“And what about this? Isn’t it clear that many people would choose the things that
seem to be just and beautiful, and even when they aren’t, would still do them, possess them,
and have the seeming, though no one is content to possess what seems good, but people
seek the things that are good, and in that case everyone has contempt for the seeming?”
“Very much so,” he said.
“So this is exactly what every soul pursues, for the sake of which it does everything,
having a sense that it’s something but at a loss and unable to get an adequate grasp of what
it is, or even have the reliable sort of trust it has about other things; because of this it misses
out even on any benefit there may have been in the other things. On such a matter, of such
great importance, are we claiming that even the best people in the city, the ones in whose
hands we’re going to put everything, have to be in the dark in this way?”
“Not in the least,” he said.
“I imagine anyway,” I said, “that when there’s ignorance of the way in which just
and beautiful things are good, they won’t have gotten a guardian for themselves who’s
worth much of anything, in someone who’s ignorant of that, and I have a premonition
that no one’s going to discern them adequately before that.”
“You’re very good at premonitions,” he said.
“Then won’t our polity be perfectly ordered if that sort of guardian does watch
over it, one who knows these things?”
“Necessarily,” he said. “But you in particular, Socrates, do you claim the good is
knowledge or pleasure or some other thing besides these?”
“That’s a man for you,” I said; “you’ve done a beautiful job of making it plain all
along that the way things seem to others about these things won’t be good enough for you.”
“But it doesn’t seem just to me either, Socrates,” he said, “to be able to state the
opinions of others but not one’s own, when one has been concerned about these things
for such a long time.”
“Well does it seem to you to be just,” I said, “to talk about things one doesn’t
know as though one knew them?”
“Not by any means as though one knew them,” he said, “but certainly it’s just to
be willing to say what one thinks as something one thinks.”
“What?” I said, “Haven’t you noticed about opinions without knowledge that
they’re all ugly? The best of them are blind. Or do people who hold any true opinion
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