"Wealth is well known to be a great comforter"
About this Quote
Plato isn’t praising money here so much as naming its seduction: wealth soothes. It cushions hunger, fear, embarrassment, and the daily humiliations of dependence. Calling it a “great comforter” has the cool, clinical bite of a diagnosis. Comfort isn’t virtue. Comfort is what you reach for when you’re in pain, and Plato is interested in what happens when a society quietly agrees to treat that relief as the highest good.
The subtext is psychological and political at once. Psychologically, wealth offers the kind of reassurance that can mimic wisdom: if your needs are met, you can mistake ease for insight, security for character. Politically, Plato is always circling the problem of who should rule and why. In a city where wealth comforts, it also persuades: it buys leisure to study, the status that passes for credibility, the networks that translate private advantage into public authority. A “comforter” can become a corrupter without changing its smile.
Context matters because Plato is writing in the shadow of Athens’ instability and the trial of Socrates, watching democracy’s susceptibilities up close. In works like The Republic, he distrusts appetites that pull the soul (and the city) away from reason. Wealth, in that framework, is not evil as a substance; it’s dangerous as a solvent, dissolving self-discipline and making injustice feel livable. If poverty can brutalize, wealth can anesthetize. Plato’s point lands because it admits money’s genuine appeal while refusing to confuse relief with the good life.
The subtext is psychological and political at once. Psychologically, wealth offers the kind of reassurance that can mimic wisdom: if your needs are met, you can mistake ease for insight, security for character. Politically, Plato is always circling the problem of who should rule and why. In a city where wealth comforts, it also persuades: it buys leisure to study, the status that passes for credibility, the networks that translate private advantage into public authority. A “comforter” can become a corrupter without changing its smile.
Context matters because Plato is writing in the shadow of Athens’ instability and the trial of Socrates, watching democracy’s susceptibilities up close. In works like The Republic, he distrusts appetites that pull the soul (and the city) away from reason. Wealth, in that framework, is not evil as a substance; it’s dangerous as a solvent, dissolving self-discipline and making injustice feel livable. If poverty can brutalize, wealth can anesthetize. Plato’s point lands because it admits money’s genuine appeal while refusing to confuse relief with the good life.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wealth |
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