Plutarch, De recta ratione audiendi, ed. William W. Goodwin, 1

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[1]

The Introduction.

I HAVE sent, Nicander, the reflections of some spare hours concerning Hearing, digested into the following short essay, that being out of the hands of governors and come to man’s estate, you may know how to pay a proper attention to those who would advise you. For that libertinism which some wild young fellows, for want of more happy education, mistake for liberty, subjects them to harder tyrants than their late tutors and masters, even to their own vicious inclinations, which, as it were, break loose upon them. And as Herodotus observes of women, that they put off modesty with their shift,¹ so some young men lay aside with the badges of minority all the sense of shame or fear, and divested of the garment of modesty which sat so well upon them are covered with insolence. But you, who have often heard that to follow God and to obey reason are all one, cannot but believe that men of best sense in passing from minority to manhood do not throw off the government, but simply change their governor. In the room of some mercenary pedant, they receive that divine guide and governor of human life, reason, under whose subjection alone men are properly said to live in freedom. For they only live at their own will who have learned to will as they ought; and that freedom of will which appears in unconstrained appetites and unreasonable actions is mean and narrow, and accompanied with much repentance.

De recta ratione audiendi. Plutarch. ed. William W. Goodwin. Boston. 1874.

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Current edition Perseus

Of Hearing (English) (Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals, Vol. I. Goodwin, William W., editor; Hoy, Thomas, translator. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1874.)

Editions (1)

Περὶ τοῦ ἀκούειν. Perseus (Plutarch. Plutarchi Chaeronensis Moralia, Vol I. Vernardakēs, Grēgorios N., editor. Leipzig: Teubner, 1888.) — 1 focus

[1] 37c τὴν γενομένην μοι σχολὴν περὶ τοῦ ἀκούειν, ὦ Νίκανδρε, ἀπέσταλκά σοι γράψας, ὅπως εἰδῇς τοῦ πείθοντος ὀρθῶς ἀκούειν, ὅτε τῶν προσταττόντων ἀπήλλαξαι τὸ ἀνδρεῖον ἀνειληφὼς ἱμάτιον. 5 ἀναρχία μὲν γάρ, ἣν ἔνιοι τῶν νέων ἐλευθερίαν 37d ἀπαιδευσίᾳ νομίζουσι, χαλεπωτέρους ἐκείνων τῶν ἐν παισὶ διδασκάλων καὶ παιδαγωγῶν δεσπότας ἐφίστησι τὰς ἐπιθυμίας ὥσπερ ἐκ δεσμῶν λυθείσας· καὶ καθάπερ Ἡρόδοτός¹ φησιν ἅμα τῷ χιτῶνι συνεκδύεσθαι 10 τὴν αἰδῶ τὰς γυναῖκας, οὕτως ἔνιοι τῶν νέων ἅμα τῷ τὸ παιδικὸν ἱμάτιον ἀποθέσθαι συναποθέμενοι τὸ αἰδεῖσθαι καὶ φοβεῖσθαι καὶ λύσαντες τὴν κατασχηματίζουσαν αὐτοὺς περιβολὴν εὐθὺς ἐμπίπλανται τῆς ἀναγωγίας. σὺ δὲ πολλάκις ἀκηκοὼς 15 ὅτι ταὐτόν ἐστι τὸ ἕπεσθαι θεῷ καὶ τὸ πείθεσθαι λόγῳ, νόμιζε τὴν εἰς ἄνδρας ἐκ παίδων ἀγωγὴν 37e οὐκ ἀρχῆς εἶναι τοῖς εὖ φρονοῦσιν ἀποβολήν, ἀλλὰ μεταβολὴν ἄρχοντος, ἀντὶ μισθωτοῦ τινος ἢ ἀργυρωνήτου θεῖον ἡγεμόνα τοῦ βίου λαμβάνουσι τὸν λόγον, ᾧ τοὺς ἑπομένους ἄξιόν ἐστι μόνους ἐλευθέρους νομίζειν. μόνοι γὰρ ἃ δεῖ βούλεσθαι μαθόντες, ὡς βούλονται ζῶσι· ταῖς δʼ ἀπαιδεύτοις καὶ παραλόγοις ὁρμαῖς καὶ πράξεσιν ἀγεννὲς ἔνεστι καὶ μικρὸν ἐν πολλῷ τῷ μετανοοῦντι τὸ ἑκούσιον. 5

Translations (1)

On Listening to Lectures Perseus (Plutarch. Moralia, Vol. I. Babbitt, Frank Cole, translator. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1927 (printing).) — 1 focus

[1] The discourse which I gave on the subject of listening to lectures I have written out and sent to you, my dear Nicander, so that you may know how rightly to listen to the voice of persuasion, now that you are no longer subject to authority, having assumed the garb of a man. Now absence of control, which some of the young men, for want of education, think to be freedom, establishes the sway of a set of masters, harsher than the teachers and attendants of childhood, in the form of the desires, which are now, as it were, unchained. And just as Herodotus ¹ says that women put off their modesty along with their undergarments, so some of our young men, as soon as they lay aside the garb of childhood, lay aside also their sense of modesty and fear, and, undoing the habit that invests them, straightway become full of unruliness. But you have often heard that to follow God and to obey reason are the same tiling, and so I ask you to believe that in persons of good sense the passing from childhood to manhood is not a casting off of control, but a recasting of the controlling agent, since instead of some hired person or slave purchased with money they now take as the divine guide of their life reason, whose followers alone may deservedly be considered free. For they alone, having learned to wish for what they ought, live as they wish; but in untrained and irrational impulses and actions there is something ignoble, and changing one’s mind many times involves but little freedom of will.

Notes on the current edition

Of Hearing

1. Herod. I. 8.

Plutarch De recta ratione audiendi 1

ed. William W. Goodwin

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The Introduction.

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Notes on the current edition

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