Of Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2, and Living Like a Hero
JONATHAN J. SANFORD
Peter Parker is leaning over the corpse of Uncle Ben, the man who took him in and raised him, gripped by a grief that quickly finds an outlet in a desire to capture and punish his killer. Off he races, modifying and perfecting his web-slinging technique of swinging down and through the urban canyons of New York. He finally beholds the face of the assailant in a dark warehouse, realizing with horror that he is the same thief that Peter, acting out of spite, let escape from the office of the wrestling promoter.
Peter suddenly realizes that if only he had heeded Uncle Ben’s warning that “with great power comes great responsibility,” he could have prevented his murder. Peter now knows that every failure to act with justice has negative consequences. This moment proves to be one of the transforming events in his life, serving as a constant reminder to never make the same mistake again. Soon after this Peter becomes the superhero Spider-Man, using his unique abilities to effect good in the world.
To be sure, Spider-Man is larger-than-life. Nevertheless, his predicament of finding himself with unique powers and facing the fundamental choice of how they are to be employed is by no means foreign to common human experience. In fact, he proves a model for our own lives, unapproachable in his uncommon abilities, but imitable in the moral quality of his actions and the end he serves. The moral teaching of Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2 is that the way of the hero ought to be our own; that we too have unique and binding obligations, just like Peter, “I’m Spider-Man, given a job to do”(Spider-Man 2); and that it is only through being faithful to these obligations—which is being heroic—that we live optimally meaningful lives.
But what makes a moral hero? What does it mean to choose the way of the hero? How can we do it? And, more fundamentally, why should we strive to be heroic? These questions amount to the core question of ethics: How ought one to live?1 We’ll look not just to Spidey, but to two of the greatest philosophers for help answering these questions. For Plato (428–348 B.C.) and Aristotle (384–322 B.C.), answering this last question and, more importantly, living that answer is the only life befitting a being who is capable of raising the question in the first place. That is, the very fact that we can ask how we ought to live our lives, a question that encapsulates in many ways what it means to be human, suggests that in asking and answering this question we find the key to the meaning of life.
One of the ways that both Plato and Aristotle suggest that this question can be answered is to look to those individuals whose lives shine forth as models for our own, the lives of heroes. Aunt Mae in Spider-Man 2 suggests as much to Peter when he visits her while she is moving from her house. She, unaware of his full identity, tells Peter just what he needs to hear: that he should be heroic, like Spider-Man!
Plato presents a hero to us with his portraits of Socrates in the Apology, Crito, Phaedo, and other dialogues, and systematically lists the characteristics of a hero in Books V and VI of the Republic. Aristotle in his Nicomachean Ethics describes the individual of practical wisdom, who is the morally good individual of great soul. Such portraits both make the case for how one should live and inspire us to live in that way. The character of Spider-Man functions in a similar fashion as do these models, serving as both guide and inspiration for our own moral development. It’s not so much that we are drawn to Spider-Man because we’d love to hang from ceilings, climb skyscrapers like they’re stairs, and avoid rush hour from above (although we may want all those things!). Rather, what most draw us to Spider-Man are his outstanding moral feats, precisely those which we can and indeed want to imitate.
Heroic models can perform their function only insofar as we recognize in them something we can imitate. This commonality between ourselves and these moral exemplars is threefold: a shared moral universe, similar moral capacities, and a common goal. Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2 teach us that the meaning of life has much to do with living heroically, and such a life is our common vocation.
Spider-Man and Moral Exemplars
The Green Goblin has drugged Spider-Man and carried him to a high rooftop to tempt him to join forces, a scene reminiscent of Jesus Christ’s third temptation. The Green Goblin explains that together they could do wondrous things, establishing domination over the whole city. Not only that, but the Green Goblin claims that they have a right to do this, since they are the exceptional types and the rest of humanity exists merely to do their bidding: “These teeming masses exist for the sole purpose of lifting those exceptional people on their shoulders” (Spider-Man). This is the same doctrine the character Raskolnikov formulates and tests—with disastrous consequences—in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s (1821–1881) Crime and Punishment, and that Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) commends in The Genealogy of Morality: the exceptional few are entitled to everything and by virtue of their strength they are altogether beyond the moral law. One of the characters in Plato’s Republic, Thrasymachus, similarly argues that for those who are strong enough, what is right is to exercise power over all and everything with a singular dedication to satisfying their desire to have it all. It is this same sort of doctrine that drives Doctor Octopus. The responsibility he once felt to use his knowledge to help humanity is perverted into an insatiable thirst for power: “The power of the sun in the palm of my hand!” (Spider-Man 2).
So why not join forces with the Green Goblin and his ilk? An answer to this can be found in Spider-Man’s initial reaction to the Green Goblin’s proposal: “But you’re a murderer.” To be a murderer is to be a usurper of the lives of others, which is to be the very opposite of a hero. The Green Goblin doesn’t see the difference, or at least he pretends not to see the difference. He contends instead that they are not so different, for they’ve merely channeled their powers in different directions: “I chose my path. You chose the way of the hero.” But to Spider-Man, it is precisely this choice that has made them contradictory moral types: the Green Goblin is dedicated to taking whatever he can whenever he wants it; he is dedicated to justice’s opposite, greed. Spider-Man on the other hand is dedicated to using his powers in the service of others for a seemingly simple reason, a reason that Spider-Man voices when the Green Goblin asks him why he bothers to help those in need: “Because it’s right.” Spider-Man sees that the direction in which we channel our efforts makes all the difference in the world.
In one sense, Spider-Man’s reply is simple, for it indicates an uncomplicated orientation of his moral being towards one goal: the accomplishment of what is right. But when we examine what such an orientation entails, both on the side of the moral agent and on the side of the goal, we uncover a great deal of complexity. We will discuss some of this complexity in the sections to follow, but for now let’s continue to examine the role of the moral exemplar in ethics.
Consider this counter-example: What would your reaction have been if instead of resisting the temptation of the Green Goblin, Spider-Man had been persuaded by him? This, of course, would not have happened immediately because that would have been too out of character. His resolve would have disintegrated in stages. Nevertheless, the final stage would have resulted in joining forces with the villain, so that Spider-Man himself would become a villain. What would your reaction have been to the first instances of Spider-Man’s weakening? Would it be a disappointment bordering on a sense of personal betrayal? And would your reaction to the last stage in Spider-Man’s moral collapse be to reject him as a hero altogether?
We find something like this to have almost happened in Spider-Man 2. Spider-Man does not turn into an arch-villain, but he does hang up, for a time, the whole hero business. One of the most painful scenes of the whole film is when Peter turns his back on the man being mugged in an alley. What was your reaction to this scene? The former Spider-Man fails to do what is minimally required of anyone seeing a person being mugged: at least to try to find help if you are unable to come to a victim’s defense yourself.
But why would we have felt betrayed if Spider-Man had joined the Green Goblin? Why did we feel betrayed when Peter walks away from the mugging? Spider-Man never promised to other characters in the movies that he would be a superhero for them, nor did he make such a compact with the viewers. Nevertheless, the characters in the movie, and we the viewers, have expectations about what he should do. The greatest of expectations in fact, because we look to him as a model of the lives we ourselves are striving to live. Spider-Man is a hero, and heroes do what’s right. We invest in him, and other moral exemplars, something of ourselves—a vision of the moral beings we hope to become—and it is for this reason that when a moral hero or exemplar fails we take it personally.
There is nothing psychologically unhealthy about this: it’s not as though we’re shirking our responsibility through identification with a moral proxy. Nor is looking up to heroes the type of thing that only kids should do. Plato and Aristotle, certainly mature thinkers, both recognized the need for heroic portrayal to draw us out of our own temptations of Green Goblinesque greed and into an unyielding orientation towards the right.
Moral Heroes and Determining What’s Right
The main character in most of Plato’s dialogues is Socrates, who was friend and mentor to Plato and many others and generally regarded as the first great philosopher. There appears to be a historical basis to one of the events in the life of Socrates that is related in the Apology as well as in Plato’s Letter VII. In his defense against trumped up charges before a large Athenian jury Socrates tells of a time when he was ordered by a group of dictators in Athens to bring an innocent man to court on false charges. Socrates refused because, “death is something that I couldn’t care less about, but . . . my whole concern is not to do anything unjust or impious” (Apology, 32d).2 For Socrates, death is nothing compared to the horrors of doing wrong. The greatest of evils can only be self-inflected through a moral agent’s own wrongdoing. This is a truth driven home at the end of Spider-Man 2 with Doctor Octopus who in his right moral mind again realizes with dread what he has done and resolves not to die a monster but in striving to undo the havoc he produced.
Like Spider-Man refusing the offer of the Green Goblin, Socrates refuses to participate in evil-doing. Unlike Spider-Man, Socrates was eventually executed for his refusal to buckle to unjust injunctions, though Spider-Man is certainly persecuted for his way of life. Socrates accepted his execution despite being convinced that he had not done anything wrong (Apology, 37a), and despite being offered the chance to escape from Athens before his execution. He was convinced that it would be wrong to do harm to the laws of Athens by not enduring the verdict of the jury. In explaining this position to his friend, Crito, Socrates emboldens his friend, as well as readers, to dedicate ourselves to what is right no matter past or future harms:
SOCRATES: So one must never do wrong.
CRITO: Certainly not.
SOCRATES: Nor must one, when wronged, inflict wrong in return, as the majority believe, since one must never do wrong.
CRITO: That seems to be the case.
SOCRATES: Come now, should we mistreat anyone or not, Crito?
CRITO: One must never do so.
SOCRATES: Well then, if one is oneself mistreated, is it right, as the majority say, to mistreat in return, or is it not?
CRITO: It is never right. (Crito, 49b–c)
It is no easy matter to live this way. It can only be done through a high-degree of self-reflection, which is why it is no accident that Socrates is not only a man of great moral courage but also a great philosopher. Peter Parker may not be a great philosopher, but we do see him in reflective moments throughout both movies. Spider-Man is in many ways an extended self-reflection in which Peter Parker tells the story of how he has become Spider-Man, beginning with the question, “Who am I?”, and concluding with the declaration, “I’m Spider-Man.” Spider-Man 2 picks up on the same theme, with Peter/Spidey attaining a more mature degree of personal unity through being unmasked on several occasions, and loved on at least two of them by the people on the train and by Mary Jane. He has become his true self, a transformation that included and will continue to include dedicating himself to fulfilling the responsibilities that fall to him.
Aristotle includes reference to the heroic individual in the very definition of virtue: “Virtue is then a state of choice, lying in a mean relative to us, this [mean] being determined by reason and in the way in which the man of practical wisdom would determine it” (NE II, Book 6, 1106b35–1107a2).3 Virtue is an important term in both Plato’s and Aristotle’s ethics, for being virtuous implies being properly ordered, and acting virtuously implies doing the right thing for the right reason. Practical wisdom is that virtue of the intellect that accomplishes the subtle task of determining which actions are in fact right. This is often difficult, and not least because of the myriad possibilities that present themselves to us.
We see this intellectual virtue (and spider sense!) at work when the Green Goblin seeks to expose Spider-Man’s weakness by forcing on him the choice of saving either Mary Jane or an elevator full of children (Spider-Man trumps the test by saving both, which may be good for a Hollywood production, though it weakens the force of the moral challenge he faces). But we also see it (and spider sense!) every time Spider-Man acts rightly. In the choices we face it is often difficult to determine just what course of action would be right. It’s often necessary to look to a moral exemplar or hero for us to successfully determine what is right. We can ask ourselves, ‘What would Spider-Man, or Socrates, or Maximilian Kolbe, or Mother Theresa or my mother do in this situation?’, and use their example to determine what it would be virtuous for us to do. It is in this fashion that moral exemplars help us to determine what is right.
The role of moral exemplars or heroes is twofold: On the one hand they perform the general task of inspiring us to be like them, and on the other hand they serve as guides who help direct us to make the proper turns when determining what to do in the face of the nitty-gritty of our own particular circumstances. Now let’s consider some of the features of the right.
Spider-Man, Virtue, and the Beauty of the Right
Spider-Man asserts that he does what he does because it is right, but what is meant by ‘right’? For Plato and Aristotle this notion has much to do with virtue. For both, a virtue is a matter of being excellent in some regard. Ethics is concerned with the question of how one ought to live, and an obvious, if broad, answer to that is ‘excellently’.
In the Republic Plato emphasizes four virtues: wisdom, courage, temperance, and most importantly, justice (Republic, Book IV, 427e). These are often called the cardinal virtues because of their foremost importance. Each of these are the excellence or virtue of some part of the soul: wisdom, the excellence of the intellect whereby we determine what is right; courage, the excellence of the will and emotions which resolves us to hold onto and accomplish what we’ve determined to be right; and temperance, the excellence of our appetites which keeps us from being consumed by inordinate desire and drawn away from what’s right.
Justice is the virtue that governs intellect, emotion, and appetite by enabling and sustaining the virtues specific to each sphere of the person and directing us as a whole towards the right (Ibid., 433a–e, 443c–e). Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2, like the Republic, highlight the importance of wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice. Consider, for example, the last scene in Spider-Man in which Peter tells Mary Jane that he cannot offer her romantic love but only friendship. Since he was six years old Peter has wished for little more than a romantic relationship with Mary Jane. He has, however, used his wisdom (and spider sense!) to determine that it would not be right to become too close to Mary Jane, for by doing so he would endanger her life.
We see that same conviction in Spider-Man 2, and most poignantly when the unmasked Spider-Man and Mary Jane have their talk on the web and Spider-Man tells Mary Jane, “I will always be Spider-Man. You and I can never be.” But this is an extremely difficult determination to put into practice because of his desire to be with Mary Jane. It takes a great deal of courage to stand by his determination not to become involved with her. It also takes temperance, a restraint especially of his sexual appetite, to be with her. Justice, insofar as it has to do with an overall orientation towards the right and enables Peter Parker to embody each of these virtues, makes his determination, resolve, and self-control all right.
Aristotle stresses these same virtues, although he also introduces some nuances to the notion of wisdom and places a greater emphasis on the habitual nature of virtue. For Aristotle, acting virtuously requires more than knowledge of the relevant virtue, it also requires that one already have acquired that virtue as a trait of character through repeated virtuous actions (NE, Book II:4, 1105a30–35). Learning to do what is right is a matter, then, of practice, for “it is by doing just acts that the just man is produced, and by doing temperate acts the temperate man. . .. But most people do not do these, but take refuge in theory and think they are being philosophers and will become good in this way” (Ibid., 1105b9–14). Talk is cheap. A person must perform the types of actions a virtuous person would if he or she is eventually to become virtuous him or herself. This is why proper moral instruction—which includes the designation of moral exemplars like Spider-Man and encouragement to imitate them—is so essential for children: “It makes no small difference, then, whether we form habits of one kind or another from our very youth; it makes a very great difference, or rather all the difference” (NE, Book II:1, 1103b24–6).
In addition to knowing that some action is right, and acting out of a well-developed character, Aristotle also emphasizes that in order to act virtuously one must choose the virtuous action for its own sake and not for some further result. What is it about virtuous actions that make them appealing on their own terms? Plato and Aristotle both speak of virtuous actions as kalon, which is a Greek word that has no equivalent in English but is often translated as ‘noble’, ‘fine’, or ‘beautiful’. For Plato, virtue is kalon in large measure because of its share in wisdom, and we ought to love virtue as we love wisdom.4 Aristotle puts the matter pithily when he states: “Now virtuous actions are kalon and done for the sake of the kalon” (NE, Book IV:1, 1120a–23). It is the beauty and nobility of virtuous actions that call us forth to great deeds. This helps explain why we are drawn to moral exemplars in the first place: It is the nobility and beauty of Spider-Man’s actions that attract us to him and inspire us to perform similarly kalon actions. To be sure, Spider-Man’s acrobatics are beautiful, but the deeper attraction is to Spider-Man’s unambiguously good interior and exterior moral acts; acts which we can do more than pretend to imitate.
For Plato, Aristotle, and Spider-Man right action is virtuous action. We strive to do what’s right because doing what’s right constitutes living excellently, which is to live in such a way that we embrace the noble and beautiful. An understanding of this notion of the ‘right’ can be deepened by looking closer at its relation to our nature.
Spider-Man and Human Nature
The ethical approaches of both Plato and Aristotle rest upon a number of basic insights regarding human nature. It is because we are rational that we have the ability to raise questions, to consider them ourselves, to discuss them with others, to make choices about how we should live as individuals and as members of communities, to gain insight into the structure of reality, and to be sensitive to the beauty and nobility of truth and right action. It is towards a more full expression of this rational nature that Plato and Aristotle exhort us that we ought to live in such a way as to be all we can be (as the U.S. Army suggested, before we were exhorted to become an army of one). We should actualize our potential to live excellently.
Our potential is, of course, determined by our nature. Human beings have by nature a number of capacities, and it is the specifically human capacities that Plato and Aristotle argue are most relevant to ethics. But this presents a problem when we return to a consideration of Spider-Man. Is Spider-Man human? After he is bitten by a hybrid spider at Columbia University’s Science Department we see the computer screen behind Peter Parker run through a DNA transfer and flash the words “New Species.” And indeed, there is something other than human about the physical and sensory abilities that Parker discovers in the ensuing days. But these abilities, though more than human, do not prevent Parker from retaining the uniquely human features that Plato and Aristotle specify. For it is not so much our body or our abilities to sense and move that make us the moral beings we are. Rather, it is our ability to think about how we should live, and indeed this question is the central concern of Peter Parker throughout both movies.
This is not to say, however, that Peter’s special spider abilities are irrelevant. If you or I attempted to jump from tall buildings in order to accost some thugs we would most likely be jumping to our deaths. Various fantasies notwithstanding, we just can’t do what Spider-Man can (for he “does whatever a spider can”). The choices we make about what we should do are necessarily limited by what we can do, and for Spider-Man the perimeter of capacity is much wider than it is for ourselves. Only a Spider-Man could stop a Green Goblin or a Doctor Octopus, and it is because of Spider-Man’s abilities that he is called to do the great things he does, a fact captured by the words of Uncle Ben that Peter Parker recalls at the close of the Spider-Man: “As long as I live I will never forget these words, ‘with great power comes great responsibility’. This is my gift. This is my curse. Who am I? I’m Spider-Man.”
It is because of Parker’s human-spider hybrid nature that he has the responsibility to do the sorts of things that only he can. Nevertheless, insofar as Parker’s actions can be analyzed as virtuous and right, insofar as they proceed from choice, and insofar as they lead to him becoming what he ought to become, we do see in them the essential ingredients of human actions. So even the most spectacular actions of Spider-Man bear the stamp of a human moral nature through and through. Moreover, it is important to recall that we are all gifted and cursed by our power—a fact Uncle Ben acknowledges insofar as he spoke those influential words without any knowledge of Peter’s spider powers. Though we all share a common nature, no two of us find ourselves with exactly equivalent powers nor in exactly equivalent situations where obligations to others arise. Nonetheless, we are all called in common to utilize our unique gifts to carry through our specific responsibilities when they arise.
Although Peter tells us that his special power is a curse, we should be careful not to interpret this too literally. In a sense, Spider-Man is cursed by his power insofar as he is burdened with a wide scope of responsibility. We see this curse in full swing in Spider-Man 2 with Peter failing to deliver pizzas on time, failing to make it to class on time, failing to make it to Mary Jane’s performance of Wilde’s play on time, all because he is repeatedly answering the call to help others in extreme danger. But on a deeper level this is no curse at all, at least if we accept the teachings of Plato and Aristotle, for it is precisely through fulfilling those responsibilities by right and virtuous action that Spider-Man can flourish as the human-spider hybrid he is; a fact he forcibly realizes in Spider-Man 2 by tasting the alternative. The irony of human happiness is that our nature is so constituted that it is only by means of successfully shouldering the burden of responsibility to do what’s right, and not by pursuing pleasure, that we can be happy. We can see, then, that Spider-Man shows us that the life of justice is to be preferred no matter what. Spider-Man is persecuted, suffers the loss of his uncle, the injury of his aunt, the hatred of his former friend, and (until the very end of Spider-Man 2) a romance with Mary Jane; and yet he is happy, even if that happiness is not without its touch of sadness. Obviously, this is not the sort of happiness that we expect to find in a Hollywood flick where at the end the hero gets the girl, unlimited wealth, and just about everything else. And, even though Peter does finally end up with Mary Jane, she does not give the gift of herself to him with the expectation that he should be anyone other than he is. Rather, in completing him with her love, and he completing her with his, she can serve as a further source of strength for his resolve to do what’s right, as she does in the last words of the movie: “Go get ’em, tiger!”. Spider-Man’s happiness is true happiness, for his love for the beauty of the right has led him to become all he should be: Peter Parker and Spider-Man are one and the same person.
Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2, and the Meaning of Life
This brings us back to the scene in which the Green Goblin offers Spider-Man an opportunity to join forces with him so that together they can secure complete power and the satisfaction of their every desire. Spider-Man responds that to do this would not be right. Why? Because such a way of life is ugly and ignoble, and because the happy life, a life in which one is fulfilled, has actualized his or her potential, and flourishes cannot be one in which we are dedicated to an unbridled satisfaction of our appetites. Spidey notwithstanding, many do believe that that is what life is about, a point of view that is expressed in the 1980s banality “I want it all!”, or in the titles of many a self-help book (“You Can Have it All, and I’ll Tell You How!”), or in the central tenets—if they can be called that—of Scientology. But life is not about having it all, at least if by ‘all’ one means every object of desire, for we often desire things that are bad, ignoble, and ugly, and which cause us to fail to be the flourishing human moral beings we might. To spend one’s life seeking to have it all is to live a tyrant’s life, a life Plato describes as a living nightmare (Republic, Book IX, 571a–576c). It is to live the life of the Green Goblin, the projection of Harry Osborne’s lust for power and control which has found a means to be realized.
Plato has Socrates teach us in the Apology that the unexamined life is not worth living (38a). To examine one’s life, to be faithful to the Delphic oracle’s mandate “Know Thyself,” is to consider how one ought to live. When one begins to reflect upon this, he or she is already moving away from the way of the Green Goblin and Doctor Octopus, the way of the antihero, because such a lust for power cannot stand the light of rational reflection: it thrives only in the uncritical posture of obedience to one’s appetites. This is skillfully depicted in Spider-Man by Osbourne’s drunken conversations with himself in his study, and in Spider-Man 2 by the dialogue between Octavius and his mechanical limbs. In saying yes to their darker desires, both Osbourne and Octavius become tyrants. Although these tyrants are wondrously cunning, they are at the same time hopelessly enslaved to their passions.
But such a way is not to be ours. When we reflect on who we are, what our capacities are, how they ought to be used, and towards what end we ought to be directed, and add to that our resolve to put our abilities to the service of the right, we begin to invest our lives with the meaning they are meant to have. This reflective appraisal of ourselves is aided through a consideration of moral heroes. We see in them a way to live that is noble and beautiful, a way of life truly worth living. Such heroes are often men and women who are close to us, but they can also be temporally or geographically distant. They can even be fictitious characters such as Spider-Man. We can indeed identify with Peter Parker’s quest to become all he can be, to live like a hero, because we share with him a shared moral universe, a common moral nature, and a common goal: to live righteously and virtuously, which is to live worthily, meaningfully, and well.
1. Can a person strive to be heroic? Does a real hero look for occasions to be heroic? Doesn’t heroism arise from circumstance?
2. Is a hero really happier than a successful villain?
3. Is there a limit to what others can expect from a person’s talents and abilities? Isn’t there a part of a person’s life that is distinctively their own?
TO READ NEXT
Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by W.D. Ross, revised by J.L. Ackrill and J.O. Urmson. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980.
Viktor E. Frankl. Man’s Search for Meaning: An Introduction to Logotherapy. Riverside: Simon and Schuster, 1997.
Plato. Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo. Translated by G.M.A. Grube. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1981.
Plato. Republic. Translated by G.M.A. Grube, revised by C.D.C. Reeve. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1992.
Josef Pieper. The Four Cardinal Virtues. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1966.
1See Plato, Gorgias 487e–488a, 500c; and Republic 344e, 352d.
2 All quotations from Plato’s works are taken from The Complete Works of Plato, edited by John M. Cooper (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997).
3 The Complete Works of Aristotle, Two Volumes, edited by Jonathan Barnes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984). I have slightly modified the translation, and do so in a few other places as well.
4 See, for example, Republic VI, 484a-487a; Protagoras 309c, 329c-d; Gorgias 506c-509c.