Socrate karterikos (Platone, Simposio 216c-221d)

This paper focuses on a famous passage of Plato’s Symposium (216c-221b) which deals with Socrates’s endurance (karteria). I argue that Plato counterposes Socrates’s karteria to Alcibiades’s lack of karteria, and that the paideutic tension of the passage relies precisely on this counterposition. A core feature of Plato’s account of Socratic karteria is its connection to practical wisdom (phronesis): endurance can become a virtue only if it is accompanied by understanding. Socrates’s uniqueness depends on the combination of karteria and phronesis, which becomes most evident in the episodes of his rescues of Alcibiades and Laches (220d-221a). This link between karteria and phronesis reminds of Antisthenes, who claims that a virtuous life requires not only effort (philoponia) and self-restraint (enkrateia), but also wisdom (sophia) and education (paideia) (SSR V A 126 and 208). Xenophon has a different view: according to him, only enkrateia leads to knowledge and wisdom, while karteria does not (Mem. 1.5.4-5 and 4.8.11). Plato’s account of karteria seems therefore much closer to Antisthenes than to Xenophon.