MEDICINE, PHILOSOPHY, AND SOCRATES’ PROPOSALS
TO GLAUCON ABOUT Gumnastikhv IN REPUBLIC 403C–412Bmaking use not of their own experiences (oujk ejmpeiriva/ oijkeiva/) but of
knowledge (ejpisthvmh/, 409b8).
The streetwise person who has committed many injustices, on the
other hand, remains ignorant of sound character (ajgnown uJgie;~ h\qo~, 409d1) because he has no paradigm (paravdeigma) of it in himself. Yet because he usually meets other vicious people, he seems to be ver y clever, to have a healthy mind and sound judgment, both to himself and oth- ers, just as many people carry diseases in their bodies of which they are unaware. Vice never comes to know anything about itself or about virtue (ponhriva me;n ga;r ajrethvn te kai; auJth;n ou[potΔ a]n gnoivh, 409d7– 8).^40 Socrates twice mentions mental paradeivgmata in this section in order to bring to light the important effects of one’s own experiences upon one’s intellectual capacities. He says that guileless people are eas- ily deceived at fi rst because they have in themselves (ejn eJautoi~, 409b1)
no experiences of doing injustice to serve as paradeivgmata to guide
their dealings with the unjust. And he says that the unjust person is con-
demned to ignorance of healthy character (uJgie;~ h\qo~) because he has
no paravdeigma of this healthy character in himself. Then too, he says
that whereas the guileless person can eventually get an ejpisthvmh that
will enable him to recognize what sort of thing evil is by nature (409b8),
and will also get episthvmh of himself (409d9), the vicious person will
never know anything about virtue or about himself. “Virtue will in the
course of time,” he says, “if natural endowments are improved by educa-
tion, get hold of knowledge [ejpisthvmhn, 409d9] both of herself and of
vice.” Why does Socrates think this?
The key to understanding Socrates here is provided in the pas-
sage in the Phaedo that we discussed in the fi rst section of this paper. In
that passage Socrates drew for Phaedo a connection between the misan-
thrope and the hater of lovgo~. The misanthrope, lacking skill in human
affairs and often betrayed by people, comes to hate and mistrust every-
one, just as the hater of lovgo~, lacking skill in lovgo~ and disappointed by
lovgo~, comes to hate and distrust it. The hater of lovgo~ does not blame
himself or his own lack of skill, but rather shifts the blame to the lovgo~
and spends the rest of his life deprived of knowledge and truth. Unable
to understand his own lack of health, he deprives himself of the means
to become sound again. According to Socrates, the remedy for misan-
thropy is to develop a skill for judging character so as to withhold com-
plete trust from less than healthy persons, and the remedy for hatred
of lovgo~ is to develop an ability to use it with rhetorical and dialectical
skill. But here in the Republic, Socrates is teaching Glaucon that a life
of injustice bars one from availing oneself of either of these remedies.
Doing injustice and experiencing it in oneself makes one distrustful of