Body and Soul in Ancient Philosophy

94
Anthony A. Long
What may we infer from the Gorgias concerning Plato’s idea of rationality?
Socrates in the dialogue has argued that injustice presupposes
ignorance about one’s own good because injustice involves a disorderly
and uncontrolled self; a self that is to flourish, on this view, needs to be
regulated and duly proportioned. By appealing to geometrical equality
and connecting it with sophrôsynÞ, Plato implies (1) that sophrôsynÞ consists
in a measured, balanced, and moderated mentality; (2) that that
mentality is the essential condition of happiness; and (3) that it is equivalent
to wisdom and the application of intelligence. Thus the Gorgias adumbrates
the great teaching programme of the Republic whose would-be
guardians need mathematical training in order to facilitate the rule of
reason over their lives and those of their fellow citizens.
In this mathematical agenda Plato went far beyond anything proposed
by Heraclitus. Yet, we may wonder what it was that authorized
Plato to suppose that mathematics has an intrinsic connexion with morality.
13 Outside the Greek context this connexion is likely to appear
quite bizarre. What did these two domains (so different from one another
from our modern perspective) have in common, in Plato’s eyes? The
answer suggested in numerous Platonic contexts is proportion or measure.
In the myth of divine judgment with which Plato concludes the
Gorgias, Socrates offers a graphic description of a tyrant’s soul (524e):
[The divine judge] saw nothing healthy in the soul, but that it was … filled
with scars from false oaths and injustice … and everything crooked from
lying and deception, and nothing straight, from being reared without
truth. And he saw that, from power and luxury and excess and failure to
control actions, this soul was brimming over with disproportion and ugliness.
… jate?dem oqd³m rci³r cm t/rxuw/r, !kk± … oqk_m lestµm rp¹ 1pioqji_m
ja· !dij¸ar … ja· p²mta sjoki± rp¹xe¼dour ja· !kafome¸ar ja· oqd³m eqh»
di± t¹ %meu !kghe¸ar tehq²vhai· ja· rp¹1nous¸ar ja· tquv/r ja·vbqeyr ja·
!jqat¸ar t_m pq²neym !sulletq¸ar te ja· aQswqºtgtor c´lousam tµm
xuwµm eWdem.
We are so accustomed to Plato’s pairing of truth and beauty that it is
tempting to accept this association without reflecting on its conceptual
assumptions. Yet once one thinks about it, the question of its meaning
clamours for elucidation. Truth in the sense of mere fact is often ugly.
What makes truth beautiful, according to the passage I have just quoted,
is to be sought from the following cluster of ideas – health, honesty, jus-
13 See Burnyeat 2000 for brilliant suggestions in response to this question.