Quotation
Last reviewed:
“A good person should look to nothing other than whether what they do is right or wrong.”
Socrates · Socratic · Ancient · 399 BCE
What does it mean?
The mainstream reading is that a good person decides by right and wrong, not by the odds of death or survival. A competing reading says the line, cut free of that contrast, sounds like a ban on any practical calculation, which the paragraph does not require. It sits in Apology 28d, where Socrates compares himself to Achilles choosing a short life over disgrace. The post he will not leave is the one philosophy, or the god, has given him.
Did Socrates really say this?
The library’s label is Paraphrase or translation. Plato's report of Socrates in the Apology. The English follows the sense of G. M. A. Grube's translation and keeps only the test of right and wrong.
Where it comes from
Plato, Apology 28b
Approximate date: 399 BCE.
How to use it
A whistleblowing decision at work, or a refusal to fiddle a timesheet, often arrives with a calculation about the mortgage. He does not say the mortgage is imaginary. He says it is the wrong first question if you are trying to be a good person, and the right-or-wrong question has to be able to survive the odds.
A mindset reading
The habit is to notice when risk has replaced rightness as the standard. Calculation of consequences can still inform what 'right' means in a messy case. It cannot, on this speech, be the only thing you look at when the cost is your own safety.
Understand the philosophy
Socrates is answering the charge that he should be ashamed of an occupation that might get him killed. A good person, agathos, is someone whose standard is justice rather than self-preservation. He uses the soldiers at Potidaea and Achilles as models of staying at a post. The philosophical post, he will say, was assigned by the god.
- ethics
- virtue
FAQ
What does it mean?
The mainstream reading is that a good person decides by right and wrong, not by the odds of death or survival. A competing reading says the line, cut free of that contrast, sounds like a ban on any practical calculation, which the paragraph does not require. It sits in Apology 28d, where Socrates compares himself to Achilles choosing a short life over disgrace. The post he will not leave is the one philosophy, or the god, has given him.
Did Socrates really say this?
Paraphrase or translation. Plato's report of Socrates in the Apology. The English follows the sense of G. M. A. Grube's translation and keeps only the test of right and wrong.
Which work is it in?
Plato, Apology 28b Approximate date: 399 BCE.