How far to pursue wisdom
SocratesBut you have all these things that the others do not have: for you have been adequately educated, as many Athenians would say, and you are well-disposed to me. What is my evidence? I’ll tell you. I know, Callicles, that the four of you have become partners in wisdom—you, Tisander of Aphidnae, Andron son of Androtion and Nausicydes of Cholargus; and once I overheard you deliberating how far wisdom should be practised, and I know that some such opinion as this won the day among you: not to be eager to philosophise to the point of precision; rather, you urged one another to take care not to become wiser than you should be and so be ruined without noticing it. So since I hear you giving me the very same advice as you gave your own closest companions, that is adequate evidence for me that you are truly well-disposed to me.
And indeed, you say yourself that you are the sort to speak frankly and not be ashamed, and the speech you were making a little earlier agrees with you. So this, clearly, is how things now stand on these matters: if you agree with me on anything in our discussion, that will already have been adequately tested by me and by you, and there will no longer be any need to take it to another touchstone. For you would never have conceded it through lack of wisdom, nor through an excess of shame, nor again would you concede it to deceive me: you are my friend, as you say yourself. So in reality my agreement and yours will already have reached the goal of truth. And of all inquiries the finest, Callicles, is the one into the very things you reproached me for: what sort of man one ought to be, and what one ought to pursue, and up to what point, both when older and when younger.
For if there is anything in my own life that I am not doing rightly, you may be sure of this: I do not go wrong willingly, but through my own ignorance. So, as you have begun to admonish me, don’t give up, but show me adequately what it is that I ought to pursue, and how I could acquire it; and if you catch me agreeing with you now, but at a later time not doing the same things I agreed to, consider me an utter dolt, and never admonish me again afterwards, as someone worth nothing. But go back over it for me from the beginning: how do you say it stands with the just, you and Pindar—with what is just by nature? That the superior should carry off by force what belongs to the inferior, that the better should rule over the worse, and that the worthier should have more than the lesser? You don’t say the just is something else, do you, or do I remember rightly?
CalliclesWell, that’s what I said then, and it’s what I say now.