The Soul's Education, Most Precious of All
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Socrates — πολὺ δὲ βλαβερωτάτῳ πρὸς τὴν τῆς ψυχῆς παίδευσιν, ἧς οὔτε ἀνθρώποις οὔτε θεοῖς τῇ ἀληθείᾳ τιμιώτερον οὔτε ἔστιν οὔτε ποτὲ ἔσται.
The first speech's closing insult reaches for the highest possible stakes, and in doing so it says something true. The lover harms the beloved's estate and his body, Socrates grants — but worst of all he damages the education of the beloved's soul, psychēs paideusis, which Socrates then calls, without qualification, the most precious thing that is or will ever be, to human beings or to gods. It is a startling elevation. For one sentence the mean, accountant's speech lifts its eyes and names the one thing that matters absolutely: the forming of a soul. It uses the thought only as a stick to beat the lover with — but it has told the truth about what is at stake, and Socrates cannot unsay it.
The peroration reaches its height on a surprising note. The lover, Socrates says, harms the beloved's property and body — but most of all the education of his soul, which is, in truth, the most precious thing there is or ever will be to men or gods. For one sentence the cold indictment brushes against the deepest value the whole dialogue holds.
This is the moment the first speech overreaches and, in overreaching, hands the palinode its foundation. To make the lover look as bad as possible, Socrates reaches for the greatest good he can name — the education of the soul — and says nothing, for gods or men, in truth or ever, is more precious. It is the highest valuation in the whole speech, and it is completely sincere; Plato means every word. But it does not belong to the argument it is serving. A speech that has reduced love to appetite and the beloved to a harvest has no real use for 'the most precious thing to gods and men'; it has smuggled in a standard it cannot meet. The palinode will simply take the standard back. If the soul's paideusis is the highest thing, then the real question is not whether love harms it but whether love, rightly understood, is the very power that accomplishes it — and the second speech answers, resoundingly, that it is: love is how a soul, drawn by beauty, remembers the eternal and grows its wings. Watch the phrase 'in truth,' tēi alētheiai, sitting in the middle of the sentence. The first speech keeps stumbling into the truth it is trying to argue against. In a moment it will stumble one time too many, and Socrates's own conscience — the daimonion — will stop his mouth.
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