"And so some clever fellow, a Sicilian perhaps or Italian, writing in allegory, by a slight perversion of language named this part of the soul a jar, because it can be swayed and easily persuaded, and the foolish he called the uninitiate, and that part of the soul in foolish people where the desires reside--the uncontrolled and nonretentive part--he likened to a leaky jar, because it can never be filled."
— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)
Author
Work Title
Date
c. 387 B.C.
Metaphor
"And so some clever fellow, a Sicilian perhaps or Italian, writing in allegory, by a slight perversion of language named this part of the soul a jar, because it can be swayed and easily persuaded, and the foolish he called the uninitiate, and that part of the soul in foolish people where the desires reside--the uncontrolled and nonretentive part--he likened to a leaky jar, because it can never be filled."
Metaphor in Context
Socrates: Well, life as you describe it is a strange affair. I ahould not be surprised, you know, if Euripides was right when he said, 'Who knows, if life be death, and death be life?' And perhaps we are actually dead, for I once heard one of our wise men say that we are now dead and that our body is a tomb, and that that part of the soul in which dwell the desires is of a nature to be swayed and to shift to and fro. And so some clever fellow, a Sicilian perhaps or Italian, writing in allegory, by a slight perversion of language named this part of the soul a jar, becuase it can be swayed and easily persuaded, and the foolish he called the uninitiate, and that part of the soul in foolish people where the desires reside--the uncontrolled and nonretentive part--he likened to a leaky jar, because it can never be filled. And in opposition to you, Callicles, he shows that of those in Hades-- the unseen world he means--these uninitiate must be most unhappy, for they will carry water to pour into a perforated jar in a similarly perforated sieve. And by the sieve, my informant told me, he means the soul, and the soul of the foolish he compared to a sieve, because it is perforated through lack of belief and forgetfulness is unable to hold anything. These ideas may naturally seem somewhat absurd, but they reveal what I want to put before you, to persuade you to change and admit that orderly folk are happier than the undisciplined, or even if I offer may such allegories, will you not withdraw an inch?
(492e-493d, pp. 274-275)
(492e-493d, pp. 274-275)
Categories
Provenance
Reading Paul S. MacDonald's History of the Concept of Mind: Speculations About Soul, Mind and Spirit from Homer to Hume (Aldershot, Hants: Ashgate, 2003): 43.
Citation
Hamilton, E. and Cairns, H., Eds. The Collected Dialogues of Plato. Bollingen Series. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978.
Date of Entry
06/07/2003
Date of Review
05/14/2007
