"Knowledge becomes evil if the aim be not virtuous"
About this Quote
Knowledge, for Plato, is never a morally neutral pile of facts. It is power with a direction. Strip it of a virtuous aim and it stops being enlightenment and starts behaving like a weapon: cleverness turned predatory, technique divorced from the good.
The line carries a typically Platonic suspicion of mere skill. In Athens, rhetorical training could win court cases, move crowds, topple rivals; the Sophists sold that skillset as portable, value-agnostic advantage. Plato saw the danger: an intellect trained only to persuade or to optimize can become a high-performance engine for appetite, status, and domination. The subtext is an attack on the idea that knowledge automatically improves people. If the soul is mis-aimed, more knowledge just makes it more effective at getting what it wants.
That framing also fits Plato's deeper architecture: the Good is the sun that makes all other knowing meaningful. Without it, what looks like "knowledge" degrades into cunning (metis) or manipulation, a counterfeit wisdom that can mimic truth while serving a corrupt end. The quote works rhetorically because it reverses a comforting modern premise: education is inherently progressive. Plato insists that pedagogy without ethics is incomplete, even dangerous.
In context, it's less anti-intellectual than anti-instrumental. He is arguing for the inseparability of epistemology and character: what you know matters, but what you are aiming at decides whether that knowing heals a city or hollows it out.
The line carries a typically Platonic suspicion of mere skill. In Athens, rhetorical training could win court cases, move crowds, topple rivals; the Sophists sold that skillset as portable, value-agnostic advantage. Plato saw the danger: an intellect trained only to persuade or to optimize can become a high-performance engine for appetite, status, and domination. The subtext is an attack on the idea that knowledge automatically improves people. If the soul is mis-aimed, more knowledge just makes it more effective at getting what it wants.
That framing also fits Plato's deeper architecture: the Good is the sun that makes all other knowing meaningful. Without it, what looks like "knowledge" degrades into cunning (metis) or manipulation, a counterfeit wisdom that can mimic truth while serving a corrupt end. The quote works rhetorically because it reverses a comforting modern premise: education is inherently progressive. Plato insists that pedagogy without ethics is incomplete, even dangerous.
In context, it's less anti-intellectual than anti-instrumental. He is arguing for the inseparability of epistemology and character: what you know matters, but what you are aiming at decides whether that knowing heals a city or hollows it out.
Quote Details
| Topic | Ethics & Morality |
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