friends have all things in common Archives

Plato’s Prayer for Inner Beauty, Wisdom, and Temperance

Socrates and Phaedrus beneath a plane tree by the River Illisus outside Athens.

By Dr Neel Burton — Psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine writer; Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford; author of over twenty books.

Yesterday, I prepared dinner for some friends, and we recited the Socratic Prayer from Plato’s Phaedrus in lieu of grace, with one person taking the part of Socrates and another that of Phaedrus.

I think I shall be sticking with it: it is absolutely perfect for a dinner among friends.

Socrates: Beloved Pan, and all ye other gods who haunt this place, give me beauty in the inward soul; and may the outward and inward man be at one. May I reckon the wise to be the wealthy, and may I have such a quantity of gold as a temperate man and he only can bear and carry. Anything more? The prayer, I think, is enough for me.

Phaedrus: Ask the same for me, for friends should have all things in common.

Socrates: Let us go [eat].

The prayer comes at the very end of the Phaedrus. Socrates and Phaedrus have spent the afternoon outside the walls of Athens, conversing beneath a plane tree on love, beauty, the soul, rhetoric, and the written word. Before returning to the city, Socrates prays to Pan and the other gods of the place.

His prayer contains three closely related wishes.

First, he asks for beauty in the inward soul. Physical beauty is vulnerable to time and fortune, but beauty of soul—wisdom, goodness, harmony—is both more enduring and more truly our own.

Second, he asks that the outward and inward person be at one. This is a prayer for integrity: that our appearance and conduct should express, rather than conceal or contradict, our inner nature.

Third, he asks to count the wise as wealthy, and to possess no more gold than a temperate person can bear. True wealth lies not in having much, but in needing little—and in having the wisdom to know how much is enough.

Phaedrus then asks to share in the prayer, “for friends should have all things in common.” This final touch transforms a private aspiration into a shared ideal. What better grace could there be among friends?