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Then we agreed, it seems, by your account—if philosophizing means having knowledge of the arts in the way you describe—that philosophers are wicked and useless so long as there are arts among mankind. But I expect they are not so really, my friend, and that philosophizing is not just having a concernment in the arts or spending one’s life in meddlesome stooping and prying and accumulation of learning, but something else; because I imagined that this life was actually a disgrace, and that people who concerned themselves with the arts were called sordid. βάναυσος expresses the peculiar contempt felt by Greek gentlemen for the work of artisans and even artists. Manual labor was the business of slaves and persons who were unfit for military and political life. But we shall know more definitely whether this statement of mine is true, if you will answer me this: What men know how to punish horses rightly? Is it those who make them into the best horses, or some other men?
137
Those who make them into the best horses.
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Or again, is it not the men who know how to make dogs into the best dogs that know also how to punish them rightly?
137
Yes.
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Then it is the same art that makes them into the best dogs and punishes them rightly?
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It appears so to me, he replied.
137
Again, is the art that makes them into the best ones and punishes them rightly the same as that which knows the good and the bad ones, or is it some other?
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The same, he said.
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Then in the case of men also will you be prepared to agree that the art which makes them into the best men is that which punishes them rightly and distinguishes the good and the bad ones?
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Certainly, he said.
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And that which does this to one, does it also to many, and that which does it to many, does it also to one?
137
Yes.
137
And so it is also with horses and everything else?
137
I agree.
137
Then what is the knowledge which rightly punishes the licentious and law-breaking people in our cities? Is it not judicature?
137
Yes.
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And is it any other art than this that you call justice?
