Eryxias
A conversation involving Socrates, Eryxias, Erasistratus and Critias examines wealth and its value. Money, property, skills and needs provide competing ways to identify riches, while examples ask whether possessing more actually makes a person better off.
Understanding the text
The dialogue belongs to the spurious Platonic appendix and reflects later Socratic ethical discussion. Its dramatic setting does not make it a reliable record of a meeting with the historical Socrates.
Key points
- 01
Relative usefulness
An object’s value depends partly on the needs and capacities of its possessor, challenging a simple equation of wealth with money.
- 02
Knowledge as resource
Skills can make things useful, so identifying riches requires considering what someone knows how to do with possessions.
- 03
Desire and harm
Greater resources may enable damaging appetites, making the evaluation of wealth depend on character and the purposes it serves.
How to read it
Separate the definition of wealth from the question whether wealth is good. Compare the dialogue’s changing examples with the use-of-goods argument in the Euthydemus.
Editions & sources
Summaries and key points are original editorial interpretations. They accompany reading the work and do not replace an edition of the text. Editorial method ↗