Can Virtue Be Taught?
- intro.1
This slight and possibly fragmentary essay, or declamation, makes no considerable addition to the theory of knowledge. Virtue is assumed to be an art; since the practice of all other arts is unsuccessful without instruction, Virtue (ἀρετή), or the Good Life (τὸ εὖ ζῆν), or Prudence (φρόνησις) - for Plutarch appears to equate the three - must be learned, if we are to be successful in the dependent arts. Plutarch appeals as usual to common sense, but does not take the trouble to prove any of his assumptions; yet the work, even in its present mutilated state, is a graceful exercise in popular philosophy.
- intro.2
While Plutarch’s slipshod and half-defined position is not directly contrary to that of Plato (e.g. in the Meno), it must be observed that two pupils of Socrates, Crito and Simon, wrote works with the titles, οὐκ ἐκ τοῦ μαθεῖν οἱ ἀγαθοί (That Men are not made Good by Instruction) and Περὶ ἀρετῆς ὅτι οὐ διδακτόν (That Virtue cannot be Taught), respectively. Whether these books differed radically from the Platonic or Socratic position, as developed in the Meno and the Republic, cannot be argued here.
- intro.3
We must note in passing that G. Siefert (Commentationes Ienenses, 1896, pp. 102-105) held that Plutarch wrote this work in connexion with the De Fortuna (see the parallels recorded in the notes) and that it is not mutilated, but unfinished. This is quite possible.
- intro.4
The text is very uncertain, for although the essay appears in several important classes of MSS., they differ considerably among themselves. The text which must serve as the basis of the present translation is only presented with the greatest hesitation.
- intro.5
The work appears as No. 180 in the Lamprias catalogue, where it bears the title Περὶ ἀρετῆς εἰ διδκτέον ἡ ἀρετή.
- 1.1
When we discuss Virtue we debate the question whether Prudence, Justice, and the Good Life can be taught; then we are surprised that the achievements of orators, pilots, musicians, architects, and farmers are past counting, whereas good men is only a name and a mere term, like Centaurs, Giants, or Cyclopes! And it is impossible to find any deed that is faultless as regards its virtue, or any character undefiled by passion, or any life untouched by dishonour; but even if Nature does spontaneously produce something that is excellent, this excellence is obscured by much that is foreign to it, like wheat mixed with wild and impure stuff. Men learn to play the harp, to dance and to read, to farm and to ride the horse; they learn to put on shoes and to don garments, they are taught to pour wine and to bake meat. All these things it is impossible to do properly without instruction; but shall that for the attainment of which all these things are done, that is, the Good Life, be unteachable, irrational, requiring no skill, and fortuitous?
- 2.1
O mortal men! Why do we assert that virtue is unteachable, and thus make it non-existent? For if learning begets virtue, the prevention of learning destroys it. Yet truly, as Plato says, just because a foot of verse is out of measure with the lyre and fails to harmonize with it, brother does not war with brother, nor does friend quarrel with friend, nor do states conceive hatred toward other states and wreak upon each other the most extreme injuries and suffer them as well; nor can anyone say that civil strife has ever broken out in a state over a question of accent, as, for instance, whether we should read Telchines or Telchines, nor that a quarrel has ever arisen in a household between husband and wife as to which is the warp and which the woof. Yet, for all that, no one, unless he has received instruction, would attempt to handle a loom or a book or a lyre, though he would suffer no great harm if he did so, but he is merely afraid of becoming ridiculous (for, as Heracleitus says, It is better to conceal ignorance); but everyone thinks that without instruction he will handle successfully a home, a marriage, a commonwealth, a magistracy - though he has not learned how to get along with wife, or servant, or fellow-citizen, or subject, or ruler!
- 2.2
Diogenes, when he saw a child eating sweet-meats, gave the boy’s tutor a cuff, rightly judging the fault to be, not that of him who had not learned, but of him who had not taught. Then, when it is impossible to eat and drink politely in company if one has not learned from childhood, as Aristophanes says, Not to laugh like a clown, nor dainties gulp down, nor to cross one leg on the other; yet can men enter without censure the fellowship of a household, a city, a marriage, a way of life, a magistracy, if they have not learned how they should get along with fellow-beings? When Aristippus was asked by someone, So you are everywhere, it seems, aren’t you? Well then, he replied with a laugh, I am wasting my fare, if indeed I am everywhere. Why, then, would you also not say, If men do not become better by teaching, the fee given to their tutors is wasted? For these are the first to receive the child when it has been weaned and, just as nurses mould its body with their hands, so tutors by the habits they inculcate train the child’s character to take a first step, as it were, on the path of virtue. So the Spartan, when he was asked what he effected by his teaching, said, I make honourable things pleasant to children. And yet what do tutors teach? To walk in the public streets with lowered head; to touch salt-fish with but one finger, but fresh fish, bread, and meat with two; to sit in such and such a posture; in such and such a way to wear their cloaks.
- 3.1
What then? He who says that the physician’s art concerns itself with rashes and hang-nails, but not with pleurisy or fever or inflammation of the brain, in what does he differ from one who says that schools and lectures and precepts are for instruction in trifling and childish duties, but that for the great and supreme duties there is only brute knocking about and accident? For just as he is ridiculous who declares that one must be taught before pulling at the oar, but may steer the boat even without having learned; so one who grants that the other arts are acquired by learning, but deprives virtue of this, appears to be acting directly contrary to the practice of the Scythians. For the Scythians, as Herodotus says, blind their slaves that these may hand over the cream to themselves; but such a man as this gives Reason, like an eye, as it were, to the subservient and ancillary arts, while denying it to virtue.
- 3.2
Yet when Callias, son of Charias, asked the general Iphicrates, Who are you? Bowman, targeteer, horseman, or hoplite? Iphicrates replied, None of these, but the one who commands them all. Ridiculous, therefore, is the man who declares that the art of using the bow, or of fighting in heavy armour, or of manipulating the sling, or of riding a horse may be taught, but that the art of commanding and leading an army comes as it chances and to whom it chances without previous instruction! Surely he is yet more ridiculous who affirms that prudence alone cannot be taught, for without prudence there can be no gain or profit from the other arts. But if prudence is in command, the principle which orders all the arts, which assigns each person to a place of usefulness, what joy, for instance, can one have at a banquet, though the servants are welltrained and have learned to Carve the meat and roast it well and pour the wine, if there be no system nor order in the servitors?
Perseus Greek. CTS URN tlg0007.tlg093.perseus-eng3. Via the Perseus Digital Library / Open Greek and Latin TEI corpora. Licence: Available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Source.