Ruling oneself
SocratesWhat then? What of themselves, my dear friend? Are they in some way rulers, or ruled?
CalliclesWhat do you mean?
SocratesI mean each one as ruler of himself. Or is there no need at all for that, for a man to rule himself, but only to rule the others?
CalliclesHow do you mean, ruler of himself?
SocratesNothing elaborate, but just what the many mean: being temperate and master of himself, ruling the pleasures and desires within him.
CalliclesHow sweet you are: by the temperate you mean the simpletons.
SocratesHow so? There is no one who would not see that this is not what I mean.
CalliclesCertainly they are, very much so, Socrates. For how could a human being become happy while he is a slave to anyone at all? No, this is what is fine and just by nature, and I am telling it to you now, speaking frankly: whoever is going to live rightly must let his own desires be as great as possible and not restrain them, and these, at their greatest, he must be able to serve through courage and intelligence, and give them their fill of whatever his desire is for at any moment.
But this, I think, the many are not able to do. So they blame such men out of shame, hiding their own powerlessness, and they say that unrestraint is shameful, if you please, just as I was saying earlier, enslaving the people who are better in nature; and since they are not able themselves to procure for their pleasures their fill, they praise temperance and justice because of their own unmanliness. For those to whom it fell from the start either to be sons of kings or to be able by their own nature to procure some rule, or a tyranny, or a dominion—what in truth could be more shameful and worse than temperance and justice for these people, who, when they may enjoy good things and nothing stands in their way, would themselves bring in a master over themselves: the law and the talk and the censure of the many?
Or how would they not be made wretched by that fine thing, justice and temperance, allotting no more to their own friends than to their enemies, and that while they rule in their own city? But the truth, Socrates, which you say you pursue, is this: luxury, unrestraint and freedom, when they have backing—that is virtue and happiness; and the rest, these embellishments, men’s compacts against nature, are nonsense and worth nothing.