[647a]
and this fear we (like everybody else, I imagine) call shame.Clinias
Of course.Athenian
These are the two fears I was meaning; and of these the second is opposed to pains and to all other objects of fear, and opposed also to the greatest and most numerous pleasures.1Clinias
Very true.Athenian
Does not, then, the lawgiver, and every man who is worth anything, hold this kind of fear in the highest honor, and name it “modesty”; and to the confidence which is opposed to it does he not give the name “immodesty,” and pronounce it to be for all,
[647b]
both publicly and privately, a very great evil?Clinias
Quite right.Athenian
And does not this fear, besides saving us in many other important respects, prove more effective than anything else in ensuring for us victory in war and security? For victory is, in fact, ensured by two things, of which the one is confidence towards enemies, the other, fear of the shame of cowardice in the eyes of friends.Clinias
That is so.Athenian
Thus each one of us ought to become both fearless and fearful;
[647c]
and that for the several reasons we have now explained.Clinias
Certainly.Athenian
Moreover, when we desire to make a person fearless in respect of a number of fears, it is by drawing him, with the help of the law, into fear that we make him such.Clinias
Apparently.Athenian
And how about the opposite case, when we attempt with the aid of justice to make a man fearful? Is it not by pitting him against shamelessness and exercising him against it that we must make him victorious in the fight against his own pleasures? Or shall we say that, whereas in the case of courage it is only by fighting and conquering his innate cowardice
[647d]
that a man can become perfect, and no one unversed and unpracticed in contests of this sort can attain even half the excellence of which he is capable,—in the case of temperance, on the other hand, a man may attain perfection without a stubborn fight against hordes of pleasures and lusts which entice towards shamelessness and wrong-doing, and without conquering them by the aid of speech and act and skill, alike in play and at work,—and, in fact, without undergoing any of these experiences?Clinias
It would not be reasonable to suppose so.
[647e]
Athenian
Well then: in the case of fear does there exist any specific, given by God to men, such that, the more a man likes to drink of it, the more,
1 i.e. shame, which is fear of disgrace, induces fortitude under pain and the power of resisting vicious pleasures.
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 10 & 11 translated by R.G. Bury. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1967 & 1968.
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