Dialogue on the Master and Practice

Setting: Socrates is walking near the palaestra when Glaucon hurries out of it, dust still on his shoulders and visibly upset.

SOCRATES: Glaucon, you leave the palaestra like a man fleeing a fire. What happened?

GLAUCON: An argument, Socrates. The young men mocked old Ikkos, who teaches the wrestlers there. They said: “how can a man who never won at Olympia teach anyone to win?”. And I confess I laughed along with them, but now something bothers me.

SOCRATES: What bothers you?

GLAUCON: Ikkos trained three champions. None of his disciples ever asked about his crowns, and all of them left crowned. How can that be?

SOCRATES: Tell me: does the charioteer who wins the race win by his own eyes, or by the eyes of the horse?

GLAUCON: By his own, I suppose.

SOCRATES: And the man in the stands who notices that the charioteer takes the turn too early and loses half a length, does he himself need to know how to drive the chariot?

GLAUCON: Perhaps not. Seeing the error and performing the right move seem to be different things.

SOCRATES: Then you have already found two arts where you thought there was one. There is the art of doing, which lives in the hands and the legs, and there is the art of seeing and explaining, which lives in the eyes and in speech. Could the fastest runner in Athens tell you why he is fast?

GLAUCON: I doubt it. I once asked one of them and he only answered: “I have been running since I was a boy”.

SOCRATES: There is a man who knows and does not know that he knows. Put him to teaching and he will tell his pupils “run since you are boys”, and he will have taught nothing. And Ikkos, who may never have thrown an opponent, has watched ten thousand men fall and can name the cause of every fall. Which of the two will form the champion?

GLAUCON: Ikkos, it seems. Then it is settled: whoever teaches need not excel at what he teaches.

SOCRATES: Do not run so fast, Glaucon, or you will stumble like the charioteer at the turn. Answer me: would you agree to learn to swim from a man who has never entered the water?

GLAUCON: By no means!

SOCRATES: And why not, if a moment ago we agreed that teaching and doing are distinct arts?

GLAUCON: Because… that man would not know the water. He would speak of the sea as one speaks of a country never visited.

SOCRATES: Very well. Then distinguish with me: it is one thing to demand that the master be the best of practitioners; it is another to demand that he know from the inside what he teaches. Ikkos wrestled, fell, tasted the sand in his mouth. He did not gather crowns, but he gathered the knowledge of wrestling. What he lacks is glory; what he has is the science.

GLAUCON: But then why do we demand the crowns, Socrates? Why is the first question we ask a master “what have you won?”, and not “what do you understand?”.

SOCRATES: Because crowns can be counted on the fingers, and understanding cannot be counted. The hurried man prefers the proof the eyes verify in an instant to the proof that demands acquaintance and time. The crown is a label hung on the chest, and we have talked before, on another occasion, about how much labels spare us the work of thinking.

GLAUCON: Then are we wrong to demand practical reputation from those who teach?

SOCRATES: We are wrong and we are right, Glaucon, and that is what I ask you not to simplify. We are right, because practical reputation is a clue: whoever has done it probably knows it. We are wrong, because we take the clue for proof: whoever has done it may not know how to explain it, and whoever explains it may have known the thing without ever shining at it. The crown proves the man won; it does not prove he knows why he won, and even less that he knows how to make another win.

GLAUCON: And does the reverse also hold? Does the absence of a crown not prove ignorance?

SOCRATES: Just as the absence of wealth does not prove laziness, nor the absence of a beard prove youth. But note: it does not prove wisdom either. There are masters without crowns who are like Ikkos, and there are masters without crowns who are like the dry man teaching swimming. The absence of the label only gives back to you the work the label promised to spare: that of examining.

GLAUCON: And how do I examine, Socrates? If not by the master’s victories, then by what?

SOCRATES: By the fruits that are properly his own. The fruits of the wrestler are the falls he causes; the fruits of the master are the wrestlers he forms. Ask the master not “what have you won?”, but “who has learned from you, and what did they become?”. And ask yourself, as you listen to him: “do I understand more now than before?”. If the answer is yes, you have a master before you, whether he has a hundred crowns or none.

GLAUCON: Still, something in me resists. When the master also performs with excellence, is he not better?

SOCRATES: Perhaps he is rarer, Glaucon, as rare as a horse that is both beautiful and fast. When you find a man who does with excellence and explains with clarity, honor him, for nature has been generous twice. But do not make that double generosity the measure of all: you would demand of every horse that it be the most beautiful and the fastest, and you would be left on foot.

GLAUCON: So, in the end, is it right or wrong to demand of the one who teaches the reputation of the one who performs?

SOCRATES: That scale, Glaucon, is not mine to carry; it is carried by each person who chooses whom to trust with their learning. I only show you the weights: on one side, the honest clue that practice gives; on the other, the injustice of measuring one art with the ruler of another. Weigh them yourself, with every master you meet, and distrust whoever sells you the ready answer, including me, who never won a single bout and spend my days teaching in the square.

..then Glaucon fell silent, and Socrates smiled at his own example..

Glossary

• palaestra: a school of wrestling and physical exercise in ancient Greece
• charioteer: the driver of a horse-drawn racing chariot
• Olympia: the sanctuary where the ancient Olympic Games were held
• Ikkos: inspired by Ikkos of Tarentum, athlete and later a celebrated Greek trainer

Note

Does the one who teaches need to master, in practice, what they teach? The answer seems obvious, but maybe it is not. We tend to demand from those who teach the résumé of those who perform, as if the ability to explain were an inevitable consequence of experience. Yet there are those who never reached the greatest feats and still teach with clarity and depth. Likewise, there are extraordinary practitioners unable to transmit what they do.

Perhaps practical experience is a strong indication of competence, but not definitive proof of the ability to teach. And the absence of that experience is not enough, by itself, to invalidate a good master. Between practice and teaching there is a relationship, but not an identity. The question remains open: what, after all, qualifies someone to teach? Maybe the only certainty is the Socratic lesson that clues are not enough and that examining each case remains work without shortcuts.