Dialogue on Labels and Truth

Setting: Socrates meets Glaucon under the portico of a square, where the latter is examining, irritated, a tablet covered in inscriptions.

SOCRATES: Glaucon, I see you frowning. What troubles you?

GLAUCON: I have discovered, Socrates, that a poet whose work I dearly love holds political opinions I find repugnant. And another, whose ideas I share as a brother would, writes dreadful verses. I feel I must choose one and renounce the other.

SOCRATES: Tell me: when you eat from a fig tree, do you judge the fruit by its taste, or by the opinions of the farmer?

GLAUCON: By its taste.

SOCRATES: And if the farmer is a wicked man, but his figs are sweet, will you stop eating them?

GLAUCON: No, for the fig has nothing to do with the man’s wickedness.

SOCRATES: Then does the work, once made, live on its own, or does it depend at every instant on whoever made it?

GLAUCON: It lives on its own.

SOCRATES: So we may judge the fig by what it is, without being obliged to praise the farmer in everything. And conversely: the fact that a man is virtuous will not make a bitter fig sweet. Mix these things up, Glaucon, and you lose twice: you lose the taste of good figs, and you lose the clarity to judge the man.

GLAUCON: I understand. But there is yet another thing on this tablet that bothers me. It is written about me: “Glaucon is a fool.”

SOCRATES: Just that?

GLAUCON: Just that.

SOCRATES: And if I said to you: “Glaucon, you are a fool because, calculating the price of three amphorae of oil, you multiplied by two and lost a drachma,” what would you do?

GLAUCON: I would check whether it is true, and, if it were, I would correct the error.

SOCRATES: And if I merely said “you are a fool,” and nothing more?

GLAUCON: I would not know what to correct, nor whether there is anything to correct.

SOCRATES: So one statement hands you a reason, a path. The other hands you nothing but a thrown stone. Tell me: would you entrust your horse to a man who holds out his hand for the reins without saying who he is?

GLAUCON: Never.

SOCRATES: And your judgment of yourself, a thing far more valuable than a horse, will you hand it to whoever labels you without saying why?

GLAUCON: I would be more of a fool than he accuses me of being.

SOCRATES: Then keep this rule: the accusation without a reason is chaff in the wind, ignore it. The accusation with a reason is a seed that may sprout in you, examine it. But mark this well, Glaucon: no one can examine for you. Not I, not the author of the tablet, not the crowd in the square.

GLAUCON: How so, Socrates?

SOCRATES: I mean that the work of weighing reasons, accepting what holds and discarding what does not, is yours and yours alone. And this is not only true of men, Glaucon. It is true of everything you encounter: a law imposed on you, advice you receive, a decision you must make in your house or in your city. In all of them, someone will want to think for you.

GLAUCON: And if I err by deciding alone?

SOCRATES: You will err. And that is what distinguishes the free man from the slave: the free man carries the consequences of what he concludes. If you decide well, you will reap. If you decide badly, you will lose. But in either case you will have learned something no one can learn for you.

GLAUCON: And the one who prefers that another decide in his place?

SOCRATES: He lives a borrowed life. When something goes right, the merit will not be his. When something goes wrong, he will blame the other, and learn nothing, for the error was not properly his own. It is the worst of conditions, Glaucon: that of the man who never fails because he never dared to judge.

GLAUCON: Then freedom comes at the price of responsibility.

SOCRATES: That is its price, and also its dignity. Examine every work, every accusation, every situation. Always ask for the reasons. Decide. And when the consequence comes, sweet or bitter, receive it as your own. It is the only road to truly becoming someone.

..then Socrates straightened his cloak, Glaucon turned the tablet to face the wall, and the two went for a beer.

Glossary

• amphorae: ancient vessels used to store liquids such as wine and oil
• drachma: a coin used in ancient Greece
• portico: a columned entrance at the front of a building

Note

Reading the Greek texts means not treating them as mere discursive constructions, but as records of an effective perception of reality, guided by the attempt to grasp the essence and inner workings of the objects of nature.

When I read Plato’s Republic, I knew I did not have, and perhaps still do not have, enough grounding to make the most of it. Even so, I felt it was a reading worth doing. I want to reread it soon, precisely to see how the experience of a work changes as we mature as readers.