MEDICINE, PHILOSOPHY, AND SOCRATES’ PROPOSALS
TO GLAUCON ABOUT Gumnastikhv IN REPUBLIC 403C–412Bguard and preserve a luxurious and enfl amed (flegmaivnousan, 372e8)
povli~. (Socrates in the earlier context drew attention to how the custom-
ary lifestyle in the enfl amed povli~ involves “prostitutes and pastries”
[373a3 – 4] and a great need for doctors [373d1].)
On the political level, confusing gumnastikhv with iatrikhv/ has dev-
astating consequences. It results in mapping out a way of life in which
diseases are allowed to proliferate but in which their symptoms are so
controlled that their energy-draining and potentially deadly character
is hidden from consciousness. Instead of legislating for the mainte-
nance of virtue and prevention of vice, legislators attempt to keep social
disorders within manageable limits by means of complex legislation.
They communicate the message that vice is to be regulated but not pre-
vented, and fail to educate for virtue by laying down a regimen of sound
laws. They provide elaborate and ongoing treatments of the symptoms
of vices in such a way that the vices themselves are never diagnosed
as such or acknowledged. Judges or jurors (dikavstai)^32 (or attorneys),
on the other hand, try to remake long-standing and well-tested laws by
reinterpreting them in strained and radical ways, becoming themselves
legislators instead of working to restore social health by making wise
applications of good laws. Wrongdoers become their own advocates and
“take pride in being clever at doing injustice and then exploiting every
loophole and trick, writhing and twisting their way through every es-
cape hatch, in order to escape conviction” (405b5– c3).
Socrates comes back to his point about the bad results of mixing
gumnastikhv with iatrikhv/ in a conversation with Adeimantus at 423d–
427a. One of the primary motifs of that conversation is that the most
important function of statutes is to provide for good education and up-
bringing (paideivan... kai; trofhvn, 423e5). Properly reared children,
maintains Socrates, become mevtrioi who easily see (diovyontai) for
themselves the right ways to behave (423e5– 7). It isn’t appropriate to
impose orders upon persons who are fi ne and good, because such per-
sons will easily fi nd out for themselves whatever needs to be legislated
(4 25 a7– e2). Vicious men, on the other hand, will “spend their lives en-
acting a lot of laws, and then amending them, believing that in this way
they will attain the best” (425e5– 7). Adeimantus agrees with the point,
at least in a verbal way, saying that such men
live like those sick people who, through licentiousness, aren’t will-
ing to abandon their harmful way of life... their medical treatment
achieves nothing, except that their illness becomes worse and more
complicated, and they’re always hoping that someone will recommend
some new medicine to cure them. (425e8– 426a4; trans. Grube)