Avsnitt
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“‘Shall we assume, then, that … the bad is akin to the bad; the good to the good; and what is neither good nor bad to what is neither good nor bad?’
They said they thought it was so: each was akin to its counterpart.
‘In that case, boys,’ I said, ‘haven’t we fallen back into those first statements of ours about friendship, which we rejected, since one unjust man will be a friend to another unjust man, a bad man to another bad man, no less than one good man to another good man?’
‘It would appear so,’ they said. …
‘Then I don’t know what more to say.’
With that I was intending to provoke another of the older men into speaking. Just then, like evil spirits, Lysis’s and Menexenus’s tutors came over with the boys’ brothers, called to them, and told them to come home; it was already late. …
However, I did say, just as they were leaving, ‘Lysis and Menexenus, we’ve now made utter fools of ourselves, an old man like me and you, since these people will go away and say that we think that we’re friends of one another – for I consider myself one of your number – though we were not as yet able to find out precisely what a friend is.’”
(Lysis, 222c-223b)
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“‘All right then,’ I said. ‘Now that we’ve got as far as this, boys, let’s be careful not to be deceived.’ …
‘Let’s consider the following case: medicine, we say, is a friend for the sake of health.’
‘Yes.’
‘Is health a friend too, then?’
‘Of course.’
‘If it is a friend, it is so for the sake of something.’
‘Yes.’
‘And that something is a friend, if it is to be consistent with what we admitted earlier.’
‘Of course.’
‘And that too, in its turn, will be a friend for the sake of a friend?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well then, aren’t we bound to get tired going on like that and give up, or else arrive at some point of origin which will not refer us to yet another friend, but which will constitute the first thing that is a friend, for the sake of which we say that all the others too are friends?’
‘We are.’ …
“Admittedly, we do often say that we value gold and silver highly, but that hardly comes any nearer the truth. What we value most highly is that thing (whatever it may reveal itself as being) for the sake of which both gold and everything else that is procured are procured. Shall we settle for that?’
‘Of course.’”
(Lysis, 219c-220a)
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Saknas det avsnitt?
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“‘That’s why we’d say that those who are already wise, whether they are gods or men, no longer love wisdom, and that those who are so ignorant that they are bad do not love wisdom either, because no bad or stupid man loves wisdom.
So, we’re left with those who possess that bad thing, ignorance, but have not yet been rendered foolish or stupid by it, in that they still believe they don’t know what they don’t know.
Consequently those who are still neither good nor bad do, in fact, love wisdom; whereas all those who are bad, as well as all those who are good, do not, because, as we decided earlier in our discussion, neither is opposite the friend of opposite, nor like of like. Don’t your remember?’
‘Of course,’ they said.
‘So now, Lysis and Menexenus,’ I said, ‘we’ve done it! We’ve discovered what a friend is and what it is not. We say that in the soul, in the body and anywhere else, it is what is neither bad nor good that is the friend of the good because of the presence of bad.’
The two of them agreed wholeheartedly, admitting that it was so.”
(Lysis, 218a-218c)
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“‘Have you come across the writings of our wisest men, which say that like must always be friend to like? These are, of course, the men who discuss and write about nature and the universe.’
‘That’s true,’ he said.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘are they right?’
‘Possibly,’ he replied. …
[But] ‘We think that the closer one wicked man gets to another wicked man and the more he associates with him, the more he becomes hated by him, because he wrongs him; and it is, of course, impossible for wronger and wronged to be friends, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ he replied. …
‘Well then, in my opinion, Lysis, this is what people mean when they say, in their cryptic way, that like is friend to like: friendship exists only between good men, whereas the bad man never achieves true friendship with either a good or a bad man. Do you agree?’
He nodded assent.”
(Lysis, 214b-214d)
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“The justice that seeks nature’s goal is a utilitarian pledge of men not to harm each other or be harmed.
Nothing is either just or unjust in the eyes of those animals that have been unable to make agreements not to harm each other or be harmed. …
Justice was never an entity in itself. It is a kind of agreement not to harm or be harmed.
It is impossible for a person who underhandedly breaks the agreement not to harm or be harmed to feel sure that he will escape punishment, even though he manages to do so time after time; for up to the very end of his life he cannot be sure that he will actually escape.
In its general meaning, justice is the same for all because of its utility in the relations of men to each other, but in its specific application to countries and various other circumstances it does not follow that the same thing is just for all.
If somebody lays down a law and it does not prove to be of advantage in human relations, then such a law no longer has the true character of justice.”
(Leading Doctrines, 31-38)
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“Of all the things that wisdom provides for the happiness of the whole man, by far the most important is the acquisition of friendship.
It is the same judgment that has made us feel confident that nothing fearful is of long duration or everlasting, and that has seen personal security during our limited span of life most nearly perfected by friendship.”
(Leading Doctrines, 27-28)
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“It is necessary to take into account both the actual goal of life and the whole body of clear and distinct perceptions to which we refer our judgments. If we fail to do this, everything will be in disorder and confusion.
If you reject all sensations, you will not have any point of reference by which to judge even the ones you claim are false. …
If at any time you fail to refer each of your acts to nature’s standard, and turn off instead in some other direction when making a choice to avoid or pursue, your actions will not be consistent with your creed.”
(Leading Doctrines, 22-25)
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“Bodily pleasure is not enlarged once the pains brought on by need have been done away with; it is only diversified. And the limit of mental pleasure is established by rational reflection on pleasures themselves and those kindred emotions that once instilled extreme fear in human minds.
Infinite time contains no greater pleasure than does finite time, if one determines the limits of pleasure rationally. …
One who understands the limits of the good life knows that what eliminates the pains brought on by need and what makes the whole of life perfect is easily obtained, so that there is no need for enterprises that entail the struggle for success.”
(Leading Doctrines, 18-21)
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“The pleasure or pain that accompanies someone’s deeds ought to be taken as a sign of his characteristics: he who abstains from bodily pleasures and enjoys this very abstention is moderate, but he who is vexed in doing so is licentious; he who endures terrifying things and enjoys doing so, or at any rate is not pained by it, is courageous, but he who is pained thereby is a coward. …
For moral virtue is concerned with pleasures and pains: it is on account of the pleasure involved that we do base things, and it is on account of the pain that we abstain from noble ones. Thus one must be brought up in a certain way straight from childhood, as Plato asserts, so as to enjoy as well as to be pained by what one ought, for this is correct education. …
That [virtue and vice] are concerned with the same things might become manifest to us also from these considerations: there being three objects of choice and three of avoidance—the noble, the advantageous, and the pleasant together with their three contraries, the shameful, the harmful, and the painful—in all these the good person is apt to be correct, the bad person to err, but especially as regards pleasure.”
(Nicomachean Ethics, 2.3)
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“Ever since I was a boy I’ve always desired to acquire a certain thing. You know how different people desire different things: for example one man desires to acquire horses; another, to acquire dogs; another, gold; another, honors. I’m quite indifferent to those things, but I do passionately love acquiring friends. I’d rather get a good friend than the best quail or cock in the world. …
When I see you two, you and Lysis, I’m amazed, and think you must be very happy because, though you are so young, you’ve been able to acquire that possession quickly and easily: you’ve acquired Lysis as a friend so quickly and firmly; and he, you. Whereas I’m so far from acquiring one that I don’t even know how one man becomes the friend of another. That’s what I want to ask you about, in view of your experience.
Tell me, when a man loves someone, which is the friend of which? Is it the one who loves who is the friend of the one who is loved? Or is it the one who is loved who is the friend of the one who loves? Or is there no difference?
[After a spirited back and forth, Socrates concludes:]
Then, Menexenus, it would appear that what is loved is dear to what loves it whether it loves what loves it or whether it actually hates it. For example, some newly born children do not yet love, while others actually hate their mother or father when they are punished by them. None the less they are most dear to their parents at the time they actually hate them. …
That will mean, then, that we must allow exactly what we allowed earlier in our discussion, that a man is often the friend of what is not his friend, and often of what is actually his enemy, when he either loves what doesn’t love him, or loves what actually hates him; and that a man is often the enemy of what is not his enemy, or of what is actually his friend, when he either hates what does not hate him, or hates what actually loves him. …
‘Heavens, Socrates,’ he said, ‘I don’t know what to say.’
Can it be that we were not conducting our investigation properly at all, Menexenus?, I asked.”
(Lysis, 211d-213d)
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“The simplest means of procuring protection from other men (which is gained to a certain extent by deterrent force) is the security of quiet solitude and withdrawal from the mass of people. …
Nature’s wealth is restricted and easily won, while that of empty convention runs on to infinity. …
Bad luck strikes the sophisticated man in a few cases, but reason has directed the big, essential things, and for the duration of life it is and will be the guide.”
(Leading Doctrines, 14, 15, and 16)
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“Who is it, then, that has fitted this to that and that to this? And who is it that has fitted the sword to the scabbard, and the scabbard to the sword? No one? Assuredly from the very structure of all made objects we are accustomed to prove that the work is certainly the product of some artificer, and has not been constructed at random. …
And the male and the female, and the passion of each for intercourse with the other, and the faculty which makes use of the organs which have been constructed for this purpose, do these things not reveal their artificer either? …
Else let them explain to us what it is that produces each of these results, or how it is possible that objects so wonderful and so workmanlike should come into being at random and spontaneously.”
(Discourses, 1.6)
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“This is the effect of philosophy, which is the medicine of our souls: it banishes all groundless apprehensions, frees us from desires, and drives away fears: but it has not the same influence over all people; it is of very great influence when it falls in with a disposition well adapted to it. …
For how few philosophers will you meet with, whose life and manners are conformable to the dictates of reason! who look on their profession, not as a means of displaying their learning, but as a rule for their own practice! who follow their own precepts, and comply with their own decrees. …
For just as if one who professed to teach grammar should speak with impropriety, or a master of music sing out of tune, such conduct has the worst appearance in these people, because they blunder in the very particular with which they profess that they are well acquainted. So philosophers who err in the conduct of their life are the more infamous because they are erring in the very thing which they pretend to teach, and, while they lay down rules to regulate life by, they are irregular in their own life.”
(Tusculan Disputations, 2.4)
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“Now, since the present subject is taken up, not for the sake of contemplation, as are others—for we are conducting an examination, not so that we may know what virtue is, but so that we may become good, since otherwise there would be no benefit from it—it is necessary to examine matters pertaining to actions, that is, how one ought to perform them. For these actions have authoritative control over what sorts of characteristics come into being, just as we have said. …
This, then, is the first thing that must be contemplated. Such things [as the virtues] are naturally destroyed through deficiency and excess, just as we see in the case of strength and health. …
Excessive as well as deficient gymnastic exercises destroy strength, and, similarly, both drink and food destroy health as they increase or decrease in quantity, whereas the proportionate amounts create, increase, and preserve health. So it is too with moderation, courage, and the other virtues: he who avoids and fears all things and endures nothing becomes a coward, and he who generally fears nothing but advances toward all things becomes reckless. Similarly, he who enjoys every pleasure and abstains from none becomes licentious; but he who avoids every pleasure, as the boorish do, is a sort of insensible person. Moderation and courage are indeed destroyed by excess and deficiency, but they are preserved by the mean.
Strength comes into being as a result of taking much nourishment and enduring many exertions, and he who is strong would especially be able to do just these things. So too in the case of the virtues, for as a result of abstaining from pleasures, we become moderate; and by so becoming, we are especially able to abstain from them. Similar is the case of courage as well: by being habituated to disdain frightening things and to endure them, we become courageous, and by so becoming, we will be especially able to endure frightening things.”
(Nicomachean Ethics, 2.2)
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“I put my questions to Lysis: ‘I suppose, Lysis, your father and mother love you very much?’
‘Of course,’ he replied.
‘Then they’d want you to be as happy as possible?’
‘Naturally.’
‘Do you think that a man is happy when he’s a slave and allowed to do nothing he desires?’
‘Heavens, no, I don’t,’ he said.
‘Then if your father and mother love you and desire your happiness, it’s absolutely clear that they must do their best to make you happy.’
‘Of course,’ he said.
‘So they let you do what you want and don’t scold you at all or stop you doing what you desire?’
‘Heavens, no, Socrates, there are lots and lots of things they stop me doing.’
…
‘So your father deliberately sets lots and lots of bosses and masters over you. But when you go home to your mother, she lets you do what you want with her wool or her loom when she’s weaving, so that she can see you perfectly content.’
Lysis laughed and said, ‘Heavens, Socrates, not only does she stop me, but I’d actually be beaten if I touched any of that.’
…
‘Well then, what have you done to make them behave so oddly and stop you being happy and doing what you want, and bring you up by keeping you all day long in a state of constant subjection to someone else and in short doing virtually nothing you desire.’
…
‘It’s because I’m not yet of age, Socrates,’ he said.
‘I’m not sure it’s that that stops you, Lysis, since both your father, Democrates, and your mother trust you to some extent, I imagine, without waiting until you’re of age. For example, when they want things read to them or written for them, I imagine they give that job to you before anyone else in the house. Don’t they?’
‘Of course,’ he replied.
…
‘So, Lysis, what on earth can be the reason for their not stopping you in those cases, whereas they do stop you in the ones we were speaking of just now?’
‘I suppose it’s because I know about those things but not the others,’ he replied.
‘Well,’ I said. ‘Excellent! So your father is not waiting for you to come of age to trust everything to you, but on the day he considers that you know better than himself, he’ll trust both himself and his property to you.’
‘I expect so,’ he said.”
(Lysis, 207d-209d)
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“We would have no need for natural science unless we were worried by apprehensiveness regarding the heavenly bodies, by anxiety about the meaning of death, and also by our failure to understand the limitations of pain and desire.
It is impossible to get rid of our anxieties about essentials if we do not understand the nature of the universe. … Hence it is impossible to enjoy our pleasures unadulterated without natural science. …
There is no advantage in gaining security with regard to other people if phenomena occurring above and beneath the earth – in a word, everything in the infinite universe – are objects of anxiety.”
(Leading Doctrines, 11, 12, and 13)
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“If a man resists truths that are all too evident, in opposing him it is not easy to find an argument by which one may cause him to change his opinion. The reason for this is neither the man’s ability nor the teacher’s weakness; nay, when a man who has been trapped in an argument hardens to stone, how shall one any longer deal with him by argument? …
Do your senses tell you that you are awake? ‘No,’ he answers, ‘any more than they do when in dreams I have the impression that I am awake.’ Is there, then, no difference between these two impressions? ‘None.’ Can I argue with this man any longer? And what cautery or lancet shall I apply to him, to make him realize that he is deadened. …
One man does not notice the contradiction — he is in a bad way; another man notices it, indeed, but is not moved and does not improve — he is in a still worse state … and his reasoning faculty has been — I will not say cut away, but brutalized.”
(Discourses, I.5)
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“For my part, Brutus, I am perfectly persuaded that it is expedient for me to philosophize; for what can I do better, especially as I have no regular occupation? But I am not for limiting my philosophy to a few subjects; for philosophy is a matter in which it is difficult to acquire a little knowledge without acquainting yourself with many, or all its branches.
Philosophy would never have been in such esteem in Greece itself, if it had not been for the strength which it acquired from the contentions and disputations of the most learned men; and therefore I recommend all men who have abilities to follow my advice to snatch this art also from declining Greece, and to transport it to this city.
Let philosophy, then, derive its birth in Latin language from this time, and let us lend it our assistance, and bear patiently to be contradicted and refuted; and although those men may dislike such treatment who are bound and devoted to certain predetermined opinions, and are under such obligations to maintain them that they are forced, for the sake of consistency, to adhere to them even though they do not themselves wholly approve of them; we, on the other hand, who pursue only probabilities, and who cannot go beyond that which seems really likely, can confute others without obstinacy, and are prepared to be confuted ourselves without resentment.”
(Tusculan Disputations, II.1-2)
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“Virtue, then, is twofold, intellectual and moral. Both the coming-into-being and increase of intellectual virtue result mostly from teaching—hence it requires experience and time—whereas moral virtue is the result of habit, and so it is that moral virtue got its name [ēthikē] by a slight alteration of the term habit [ethos]. It is also clear, as a result, that none of the moral virtues are present in us by nature. …
For as regards those things we must learn how to do, we learn by doing them—for example, by building houses, people become house builders, and by playing the cithara, they become cithara players. So too, then, by doing just things we become just; moderate things, moderate; and courageous things, courageous. …
As a result of building houses well, people will be good house builders; but as a result of doing so badly, they will be bad ones. If this were not the case, there would be no need of a teacher, but everyone would come into being already good or bad. So too in the case of the virtues: by doing things in our interactions with human beings, some of us become just, others unjust; and by doing things in terrifying circumstances and by being habituated to feel fear or confidence, some of us become courageous, others cowards. …
It makes no small difference, then, whether one is habituated in this or that way straight from childhood but a very great difference—or rather the whole difference.”
(Nicomachean Ethics, II.1)
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“SOCRATES: Now, Nicias, could you explain it to us again from the beginning? You know we started our discussion by considering bravery as a part of goodness?
NICIAS: Yes, I do.
SOCRATES: So you did agree with our answer that it’s a part, and hence that there are other parts, which are known collectively as goodness, didn’t you?
NICIAS: Yes, of course.
SOCRATES: Now, you mean the same by these parts as I do, don’t you? For me, besides bravery, the list includes self-control, fairness and other similar qualities. Isn’t it the same for you?
NICIAS: Certainly. …
SOCRATES: [But] bravery can’t only be knowledge of what is fearful and what is encouraging, because like other kinds of knowledge it understands not only the future stages of good and evil, but also the present and the past.
NICIAS: Apparently so.
SOCRATES: So the answer you gave us, Nicias, covers only about a third part of bravery, whereas we asked what bravery is as a whole. And so now, it seems, on your own admission, bravery is knowledge not only of what is fearful and what is encouraging, but according to the way you describe it now, of pretty well the whole subject of good and evil, regardless of time. Does that reflect your change of mind, or would you put it differently, Nicias?
NICIAS: No, That’s how it seems to me, Socrates. …
SOCRATES: So, What you’re now describing, Nicias, won’t be a part of goodness, but goodness in its entirety.
NICIAS: So it seems.
SOCRATES: But we did say that bravery is only one of the parts of goodness.
NICIAS: Yes, we did.
SOCRATES: But what you’re now describing appears not to be so.
NICIAS: No, it seems not.
SOCRATES: So we’ve not discovered what bravery is, Nicias.
NICIAS: No, apparently not.”
(Laches, 198a-199e)
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