"Wisdom alone is the science of other sciences"
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A culture that can build ships, prosecute wars, and argue cases still has no guarantee it knows what any of it is for. Plato’s line draws that distinction with almost surgical economy: “other sciences” can multiply endlessly, but without wisdom they stay instrumental, clever, and morally untethered. The phrasing “science of other sciences” is a deliberate power move. It elevates wisdom from one skill among many to a governing discipline, a kind of meta-knowledge that judges aims, not just methods. In modern terms, it’s less “learn more facts” and more “learn how to decide what deserves to be done.”
The intent is polemical as much as philosophical. Plato is writing in a post-Socratic Athens where the Sophists sold rhetorical technique to ambitious citizens, and where public life had recently demonstrated how easily intelligence can be mobilized for disaster. “Wisdom alone” reads like a rebuke to the expert class of his day: persuasion, geometry, politics, even poetry can be mastered and still serve vanity or power.
The subtext is his deeper project: securing philosophy’s authority over civic life. In dialogues like the Republic, he argues that knowledge of the Good should steer the city, because every specialized craft is blind about ultimate ends. Medicine knows how to heal; it doesn’t tell you what a good life is. Strategy can win battles; it can’t justify the war. Plato’s sentence works because it flatters expertise while quietly subordinating it, insisting that the highest competence is not competence at all, but judgment.
The intent is polemical as much as philosophical. Plato is writing in a post-Socratic Athens where the Sophists sold rhetorical technique to ambitious citizens, and where public life had recently demonstrated how easily intelligence can be mobilized for disaster. “Wisdom alone” reads like a rebuke to the expert class of his day: persuasion, geometry, politics, even poetry can be mastered and still serve vanity or power.
The subtext is his deeper project: securing philosophy’s authority over civic life. In dialogues like the Republic, he argues that knowledge of the Good should steer the city, because every specialized craft is blind about ultimate ends. Medicine knows how to heal; it doesn’t tell you what a good life is. Strategy can win battles; it can’t justify the war. Plato’s sentence works because it flatters expertise while quietly subordinating it, insisting that the highest competence is not competence at all, but judgment.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
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