Dialogues · Chapter
Eryxias explained
Socrates, Eryxias, Erasistratus, and Critias debate the nature of wealth, questioning whether it is a good or an evil, and exploring its relation to virtue and need.
What happens
Socrates, Eryxias, Erasistratus, and Critias debate the nature of wealth, questioning whether it is a good or an evil, and exploring its relation to virtue and need. The dialogue examines the relativity of wealth, the role of arts and sciences in acquiring it, and the distinction between necessary and unnecessary desires.
Themes in this chapter
Knowledge and Ignorance
The dialogue explores the relationship between wealth and wisdom, questioning whether the wisest are necessarily the richest, and examining the role of knowledge in acquiring and using wealth.
Education and Virtue
The discussion touches on how wealth can be used for virtuous ends, such as acquiring medicine to enable hearing, which in turn can aid in learning virtue.
Characters to notice
- Socrates
Leads the discussion on wealth and virtue, challenging assumptions and guiding the argument.
- Eryxias
Participates in the debate, initially asserting that wealth is a good, but later shows discomfort with Socrates' arguments.
- Erasistratus
Recently returned from Sicily, introduces the topic of wealth by describing a rich Sicilian, and engages in the initial exchange.
- Critias
Argues that wealth can be bad for some men, and engages in a dialectical exchange with Eryxias and Socrates.
Key passages
“That, Socrates, is the richest man in all Italy and Sicily. For who has larger estates or more land at his disposal to cultivate if he please? And they are of a quality, too, finer than any other land in Hellas. Moreover, he has all the things which go to make up wealth, slaves and horses innumerable, gold and silver without end.”
Erasistratus points out a Syracusan envoy as the wealthiest man in Italy and Sicily, describing his vast lands, slaves, horses, and precious metals.
This introduces the central question of what constitutes true wealth.
“I believe, Socrates, that if you were forced to speak the truth, you would declare that you were richer than Callias the son of Hipponicus. And yet, although you claimed to be wiser about things of real importance, you would not any the more be richer than he.”
Eryxias accuses Socrates of sophistry, suggesting that Socrates might claim to be richer than Callias while being obviously poorer.
Highlights the tension between conventional wealth and Socratic wisdom.
“For what man of sense could ever be persuaded that the wisest and the richest are the same? The truth is that we are discussing the subject of riches, and my notion is that we should argue respecting the honest and dishonest means of acquiring them, and, generally, whether they are a good thing or a bad.”
Eryxias insists that the discussion should focus on whether wealth is good or bad, and how it is acquired, rather than on abstract identifications of wisdom and wealth.
Shifts the debate to ethical considerations of wealth.
“But can that which is evil be useful for virtue? ... It is not therefore necessary that the means by which we obtain what is useful for a certain object should always be useful for the same object: for it seems that bad actions may sometimes serve good purposes?”
Socrates questions whether evil means can ever be useful for virtue, concluding that the means to an end are not necessarily useful for that end.
Explores the complex relationship between means and ends in moral reasoning.