Know the Essence First
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Socrates — εἰδέναι δεῖ περὶ οὗ ἂν ᾖ ἡ βουλή ἢ παντὸς ἁμαρτάνειν ἀνάγκη. τοὺς δὲ πολλοὺς λέληθεν ὅτι οὐκ ἴσασι τὴν οὐσίαν ἑκάστου.
The speech's first move is, of all things, a rule of method — and a genuine one. On any question, Socrates says, you must first know what the thing under discussion actually is; skip that, and you are guaranteed to go wrong at every step. The trouble with most people is that they don't even realize they lack this knowledge: they argue about love, or justice, or anything else, without ever grasping its essence, and so they contradict each other and themselves. Before praising the non-lover, then, the speaker proposes to define what love is. It is exactly the right procedure — which is what makes its use here so pointed.
Even inside the 'bad' speech, Socrates plants a real principle. Whatever you are deliberating about, he says, you must first know what it is — or you are bound to miss the mark completely. Most people never notice that they don't actually know the essence of the things they argue over, and so they never agree, not even with themselves.
This is Platonic method stated flat out, and Plato has planted it inside a speech he intends to disown. Know the ousia — the 'being,' the essence — of what you are talking about, or miss everything: it is the demand that drives every Socratic dialogue, the search for what a thing really is behind its many appearances. The word for the many's failure is lelēthen, 'it escapes their notice' — the same root as lēthē, forgetting, and alētheia, truth-as-unforgetting: people don't know, and worse, don't know that they don't know. So far, flawless. The catch is that Socrates's speech will define love only to bury it — it defines erōs as a kind of appetite precisely so that it can be condemned, and that definition is the lie the palinode will overturn. Plato's lesson is double-edged: getting the method right is not enough if you aim it at the wrong answer. A definition can be a tool of truth or a trap, and the same speaker can use the right rule to reach a false god. Here method and falsehood walk in together — exactly the confusion the rest of the dialogue exists to untangle.
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