MEDICINE, PHILOSOPHY, AND SOCRATES’ PROPOSALS
TO GLAUCON ABOUT Gumnastikhv IN REPUBLIC 403C–412Bin respect to household management, military service, or public offi ce.
The most important thing (To; mevgiston, 407b8) about the excessive
treatment of illness, says Socrates, is that it works against intellectual
virtue, against forms of learning (maqhvsei~) or of thought (ejnnohvsei~),
and against attentions to oneself (melevta~ pro;~ eJauto;n, 407b8– c1).
At this juncture, it is helpful to recall that Socrates earlier told
Glaucon: “A fi t body doesn’t by its own virtue make the soul good, but in-
stead the opposite is true, a good soul by its own virtue makes the body
as good as possible” (403d; see also 408e; Charmides 155 – 57). In a very
telling way, Socrates said to Glaucon of this thesis: “You should look into
it” (403d1). At this later point in the conversation Socrates tries to drive
the earlier point home by getting Glaucon to see that his own youthful
intemperance and preoccupation with physical athleticism is in danger
of preventing him from the achievement of that higher health that is vir-
tue of soul. Socrates’ present proposal concerning proper gumnastikhv
in the povli~ is meant, like the fi rst one, to give Glaucon himself another
opportunity for insight into the state of his own yuchv, another chance
for diagnostic self-recognition. All along, he has been condoning bad
gumnastikhv for a sick povli~ and, by implication, for the sick soul, his
own soul. Socrates intends to get Glaucon to see that it is imperative
to avoid “playing nursemaid to disease” both in legislating for the
povli~ and in governing his own life as a free citizen. For it is as easy
to confuse gumnastikhv with iatrikhv/ where the care of the soul is con-
cerned as where the care of the body is concerned. In both cases, the
confusion motivates one to pursue an all-absorbing and debilitating
regimen of behavior that is aimed at avoiding what is required for a
real approach toward health of soul, and at hiding from the real causes
of one’s behavioral-psychological problems.^35 Socrates attributes to
Asclepius the clear perception that no one has the leisure to be ill and
under treatment all his life, and insists that this is a truth as much about
rich people who seem to be happy (eujdaimovnwn dokouvntwn) as about
manual laborers (406c7– 8).^36
We are now in position to grasp a new aspect of the signifi cance
of Socrates’ original inspiration to take the povli~ as a model for the
yuchv, and not vice versa. It was not only because the “letters” of justice
are written larger in the povli~ than in the soul that he considered the
idea to be a godsend (368d). For a povli~ is by defi nition a self-governing
and independent thing. Socrates thinks of the individual yuchv as self-
governing, and so thinks any polity that encroaches too much on indi-
vidual self-governance and independence is an unhealthy polity. Had
he chosen to model the povli~ upon the yuchv, he would have come out
with an organic theory of the povli~. And there is danger that the anal-