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Today I will talk about a certain passage in Apology by Plato. Apology by Plato illustrates Socrates delivering his defense to the jury of Athens. Socrates explains that he is hated by many because of a certain divine task that he was given to by the god, Apollo. This occupation of Socrates is crucial to understanding lines 30b2-4. That selection of text can be interpreted in two different ways. One of the ways of understanding the passage is more consistent with a particular consequence of Socrates’ occupation and is therefore more likely to be the correct interpretation. In this paper, I will present the details of Socrates’ divine task and show how it causes critical problems with one of the interpretations of 30b2-4, resulting in the other interpretation becoming the more attractive choice.
Lines 30b2-4 can be interpreted as saying, “Wealth does not bring about excellence, but excellence makes wealth and everything else good for men, both individually and collectively,” or, “Wealth does not bring about excellence, but excellence brings about wealth and all other public and private blessings for men.” The first interpretation (I will refer to it as “Interpretation A”), says that excellence, or, in context of the text, virtue, is what makes having money, health, knowledge, and other factors of life beneficial to an individual. This also goes to say that without excellence, those things, such as money, would be harmful. This entails that one should always seek excellence before everything else because without excellence nothing is good. The other way of understanding 30b2-4 (I will refer to it as “Interpretation B”) says something completely different from Interpretation A. Interpretation B translates the passage to mean that excellence is what causes blessings such as wealth, health, and knowledge to come into being. By defining wealth as a blessing it is implied that wealth in itself is a good thing. This contrasts with Interpretation A, which states that it is excellence that makes things such as wealth good. The key difference between Interpretation A and Interpretation B is that understanding the text through Interpretation A means things such as wealth are good only when one has excellence and reading the text through Interpretation B means that things such as wealth are innately good but it is through excellence that they come to be. Because I have reached the word count I will continue tomorrow.
Lines 30b2-4 can be interpreted as saying, “Wealth does not bring about excellence, but excellence makes wealth and everything else good for men, both individually and collectively,” or, “Wealth does not bring about excellence, but excellence brings about wealth and all other public and private blessings for men.” The first interpretation (I will refer to it as “Interpretation A”), says that excellence, or, in context of the text, virtue, is what makes having money, health, knowledge, and other factors of life beneficial to an individual. This also goes to say that without excellence, those things, such as money, would be harmful. This entails that one should always seek excellence before everything else because without excellence nothing is good. The other way of understanding 30b2-4 (I will refer to it as “Interpretation B”) says something completely different from Interpretation A. Interpretation B translates the passage to mean that excellence is what causes blessings such as wealth, health, and knowledge to come into being. By defining wealth as a blessing it is implied that wealth in itself is a good thing. This contrasts with Interpretation A, which states that it is excellence that makes things such as wealth good. The key difference between Interpretation A and Interpretation B is that understanding the text through Interpretation A means things such as wealth are good only when one has excellence and reading the text through Interpretation B means that things such as wealth are innately good but it is through excellence that they come to be. Because I have reached the word count I will continue tomorrow.
