Key Arguments

• Socrates identifies the danger explicitly: ‘Lest we become misologists, he replied, no worse thing can happen to a man than this. For as there are misanthropists or haters of men, there are also misologists or haters of ideas, and both spring from the same cause, which is ignorance of the world.’
• He explains misanthropy: an inexperienced person ‘trust a man and think him altogether true and sound and faithful, and then in a little while he turns out to be false and knavish; and then another and another… he at last hates all men, and believes that no one has any good in him at all,’ a reaction he calls ‘discreditable’ and evidence of ignorance of human nature.
• He generalizes that in any domain, ‘few are the good and few the evil, and that the great majority are in the interval between them,’ illustrated by the rarity of extremes like ‘the very large and very small’ among men, dogs, and other things.
• Analogously, in argument, ‘when a simple man who has no skill in dialectics believes an argument to be true which he afterwards imagines to be false, whether really false or not, and then another and another, he has no longer any faith left,’ and ‘great disputers… come to think at last that they have grown to be the wisest of mankind’ because they see ‘the utter unsoundness and instability of all arguments.’
• He finds this outcome ‘melancholy, if there be such a thing as truth or certainty or possibility of knowledge,’ because such a person, ‘instead of blaming himself and his own want of wit… should at last be too glad to transfer the blame from himself to arguments in general… and lose truth and the knowledge of realities.’
• As a corrective, he urges: ‘Let us then, in the first place… be careful of allowing or of admitting into our souls the notion that there is no health or soundness in any arguments at all. Rather say that we have not yet attained to soundness in ourselves, and that we must struggle manfully and do our best to gain health of mind.’
• He applies this exhortation both to Phaedo and the others ‘having regard to the whole of your future life,’ and to himself ‘in the prospect of death,’ signaling that resisting misology is a lifelong philosophical duty and especially urgent when facing mortality.

Source Quotes

I said. Lest we become misologists, he replied, no worse thing can happen to a man than this. For as there are misanthropists or haters of men, there are also misologists or haters of ideas, and both spring from the same cause, which is ignorance of the world.

Lest we become misologists, he replied, no worse thing can happen to a man than this. For as there are misanthropists or haters of men, there are also misologists or haters of ideas, and both spring from the same cause, which is ignorance of the world. Misanthropy arises out of the too great confidence of inexperience;—you trust a man and think him altogether true and sound and faithful, and then in a little while he turns out to be false and knavish; and then another and another, and when this has happened several times to a man, especially when it happens among those whom he deems to be his own most trusted and familiar friends, and he has often quarreled with them, he at last hates all men, and believes that no one has any good in him at all.

For as there are misanthropists or haters of men, there are also misologists or haters of ideas, and both spring from the same cause, which is ignorance of the world. Misanthropy arises out of the too great confidence of inexperience;—you trust a man and think him altogether true and sound and faithful, and then in a little while he turns out to be false and knavish; and then another and another, and when this has happened several times to a man, especially when it happens among those whom he deems to be his own most trusted and familiar friends, and he has often quarreled with them, he at last hates all men, and believes that no one has any good in him at all. You must have observed this trait of character?

And is not the feeling discreditable? Is it not obvious that such an one having to deal with other men, was clearly without any experience of human nature; for experience would have taught him the true state of the case, that few are the good and few the evil, and that the great majority are in the interval between them. What do you mean?

Yes, that is very likely, I said. Yes, that is very likely, he replied; although in this respect arguments are unlike men—there I was led on by you to say more than I had intended; but the point of comparison was, that when a simple man who has no skill in dialectics believes an argument to be true which he afterwards imagines to be false, whether really false or not, and then another and another, he has no longer any faith left, and great disputers, as you know, come to think at last that they have grown to be the wisest of mankind; for they alone perceive the utter unsoundness and instability of all arguments, or indeed, of all things, which, like the currents in the Euripus, are going up and down in never-ceasing ebb and flow. That is quite true, I said.

That is quite true, I said. Yes, Phaedo, he replied, and how melancholy, if there be such a thing as truth or certainty or possibility of knowledge—that a man should have lighted upon some argument or other which at first seemed true and then turned out to be false, and instead of blaming himself and his own want of wit, because he is annoyed, should at last be too glad to transfer the blame from himself to arguments in general: and for ever afterwards should hate and revile them, and lose truth and the knowledge of realities. Yes, indeed, I said; that is very melancholy.

Let us then, in the first place, he said, be careful of allowing or of admitting into our souls the notion that there is no health or soundness in any arguments at all. Rather say that we have not yet attained to soundness in ourselves, and that we must struggle manfully and do our best to gain health of mind—you and all other men having regard to the whole of your future life, and I myself in the prospect of death. For at this moment I am sensible that I have not the temper of a philosopher; like the vulgar,

Key Concepts

• Lest we become misologists, he replied, no worse thing can happen to a man than this
• as there are misanthropists or haters of men, there are also misologists or haters of ideas, and both spring from the same cause, which is ignorance of the world
• he at last hates all men, and believes that no one has any good in him at all
• few are the good and few the evil, and that the great majority are in the interval between them
• when a simple man who has no skill in dialectics believes an argument to be true which he afterwards imagines to be false, whether really false or not, and then another and another, he has no longer any faith left
• and lose truth and the knowledge of realities
• Rather say that we have not yet attained to soundness in ourselves, and that we must struggle manfully and do our best to gain health of mind

Context

Immediately after the group’s discouragement and before refuting the specific objections, Socrates introduces the central theme of misology, using an analogy with misanthropy and exhorting his companions to maintain confidence in reasoning while acknowledging their own fallibility.