Month: septiembre 2025

In the first article of this series, I demonstrated that κόλασις (kolasis) was never a gardening term by origin, and even in horticultural contexts, it does not signify ‘pruning’. The second article examined Aristotle’s treatment of κόλασις and τιμωρία (timōría), arguing that he regarded both as forms of retributive justice. This third installment turns to Plato, challenging the universalist claim that he upheld a clear-cut distinction between κόλασις and τιμωρία. Both words are widely translated as “punishment” because they have a similar range of meanings as the English word “punishment.” While a comprehensive survey of every instance of these terms in Plato’s corpus lies beyond the scope of this article, I will analyze a representative selection of texts across his works to illustrate how he typically employed them.

Like Aristotle, Plato is a well known ancient Greek philosopher, and so is often cited by universalists as an important witness to what κόλασις meant. William Barclay made the following comment:¹William Barclay, The Apostles’ Creed, (Westminster John Knox Press: 1967), 189.

Plato says that no one punishes (kolazei) a wrong-doer simply because he has done wrong – that would be to take unreasonable vengeance (timoreitai). We punish (kolazei) a wrong-doer in order that he may not do wrong again.

The passage Barclay is discussing from Protagoras 324.

No one punishes (κολάζω) a wrongdoer from the mere contemplation or on account of his wrong-doing, unless one takes unreasoning vengeance (τιμωρέω) like a wild beast. But he who undertakes to punish (κολάζω) with reason does not avenge (τιμωρέω) himself for the past offence, since he cannot make what was done as though it had not come to pass; he looks rather to the future, and aims at preventing that particular person and others who see him punished (κολάζω) from doing wrong again. And being so minded he must have in mind that virtue comes by training: for you observe that he punishes (κολάζω) to deter.

Plato’s Protagoras is a dialogue between Socrates and Protagoras which explores themes such as virtue, knowledge, and education. In the section from which this quote is taken, Protagoras discusses the role punishment takes in incentivizing good conduct and educating people in virtue. This passage does not have the nouns κόλασις and τιμωρία, but it does have their cognate verbs κολάζω (kolazó) and τιμωρέω (timóreó). Universalists like Brett from Salvation for All argue that Protagaros draws a contrast between κολάζω as a corrective punishment and τιμωρέω as retributive vengeance.

Plato is exceptionally clear that kolazo is corrective punishment that is done in order to benefit the person who committed wrong-doing as well as those who see the punishment and learn from it. He contrasts this with timoreitai, the taking of retributive vengeance. This is significant because Plato specifically tells us that kolasin means corrective punishment that serves a didactic purpose and is aimed at reform, as opposed to simply getting back at someone. For Plato kolasin is the type of punishment practiced by rational people because it produces beneficial results….

While it is true that corrective punishment is in view in the passage, this theme is not developed through contrasting κολάζω and τιμωρέω. In the first sentence, Protagoras does use κολάζω when he states no one punishes because of wrongdoing, but this is followed by ‘unless one takes unreasoning vengeance (τιμωρέω) like a wild beast’. This additional clause shows that one could κολάζω (punish) in a way that involved τιμωρέω (inflicting vengeance). Something similar can be observed with the next sentence. If we only look at ‘he who undertakes to punish (κολάζω) with reason does not avenge (τιμωρέω) himself for the past offence’, we might assume that Protagaros is contrasting the two words. Note, though, ‘he looks rather to the future…’ adverbially modifies ‘avenge’ (τιμωρέω), which in turn expresses the action of the subject of the sentence, ‘he who undertakes to punish (κολάζω) with reason’.²This is noted by Stewart James Felker here. This is perhaps why Trevor J. Saunders regards this as an instance when τιμωρέω and κολάζω are used ‘indifferently’, as both verbs imply ‘the infliction of suffering’.³Trevor J. Saunders, Plato’s Penal Code: Tradition, Controversy, and Reform in Greek Penology, (Clarendon Press: 1994), 134. The translation by Robert C. Bartlett captures the flow of thought well:

But one who attempts to punish (κολάζω) in accord with reason seeks retribution (τιμωρέω) not for the sake of the past act of injustice … but for the sake of the future one, so that neither the criminal himself nor anyone else who sees him punished (κολάζω) may commit injustice again.⁴Robert C. Bartlett, “Protagoras” and “Meno”, Translated with notes and interpretive essays, (Cornell University Press: 2004), 20-21.

Moreover, in the following sentences κολάζω and τιμωρέω are used with reference to the same kind of punishment:

And being so minded he must have in mind that virtue comes by training: for you observe that he punishes (κολάζω) to deter. This then is the accepted view of all who seek requital (τιμωρέω) in either private or public life; and while men in general exact requital (τιμωρέω) and punishment (κολάζω) from those whom they suppose to have wronged them, this is especially the case with the Athenians, your fellow-citizens, so that by our argument the Athenians also share the view that virtue is procured and taught.

Both κολάζω and τιμωρέω are used in the context of a paragraph that begins and ends with an emphasis on fostering virtue through education (‘virtue comes by training’ and ‘virtue is procured and taught’). Κολάζω is said to be inflicted for the purpose of deterrence, but in the very next sentence, Protagoras states, ‘This then is the accepted view of all who seek requital (τιμωρέω)’. That is, those who inflict τιμωρέω on another also have the view that virtue is fostered through training and education. In the third sentence, κολάζω and τιμωρέω are referred to as responses to having been wronged by another. This is evidence that Plato was not making a sharp distinction between the two verbs. That is, κολάζω alone is not being used with the technical meaning of ‘correction for the benefit of the one punished’. Rather, both verbs are referenced with reference to the procurement of virtue in the one who is punished.

One might question this conclusion on the basis that κολάζω is explicitly linked with the outcome of deterrence. If κολάζω acts as a deterrent, then is that not evidence it has its own nuance distinct from τιμωρέω? It should be noted that elsewhere Plato can just as easily use τιμωρέω in a context where the punishment is said to improve the one being punished while the punishment serves as a deterrent for others. See for instance Gorgias, 525b:

And it is fitting that everyone under punishment (τιμωρία) rightly inflicted (τιμωρέω) on him by another should either be made better and profit thereby, or serve as an example to the rest, that others seeing the sufferings he endures may in fear amend themselves. Those who are benefited by the punishment they get from gods and men are they who have committed remediable offences; but still it is through bitter throes of pain that they receive their benefit both here and in the nether world.

The connection of τιμωρία with a punishment that benefits the one being punished is noted by the secular scholar Harold Tarrant:⁵Harold Tarrant, ‘Ancient Readers of the Gorgias’, in Plato’s Gorgias: A Critical Guide, ed. By J. Clark Shaw, (Cambridge University Press: 2024), 41.

Revenge requires that punishment be withheld. Any interpreter would be justified in showing how this thesis agrees with the myth, all proper timôria (525e1, e1, e3) is either aimed at improving and benefitting those punished (if curable) or (where incurable) offering an example (paradeigma, 525b2, c2, c6, d3) to potential transgressors.

The additional benefit of τιμωρία has to do with its function of correcting those who observe those being punished. This is communicated by the use of παράδειγμα (paradeigma),⁶Gonzalez Lodge, Commentary on Plato Gorgias, (Ginn & Company: 1891), 266. which has the basic meaning of ‘pattern’ or ‘model’. The idea is people see those who suffer τιμωρία and are persuaded to avoid committing crimes. In this way they are improved. This emphasis on the improvement of the punished and onlookers is entirely at odds with the implied belief amongst universalists that τιμωρία was reserved for referencing vengeful punishment. Furthermore, it is difficult to imagine universalists arguing that since τιμωρία is used in a context of correction and the betterment of the punished, then the word itself has taken on the meaning of ‘correction’ or ‘beneficial punishment’. Yet this is what they do when analyzing uses of κόλασις.

Moving on, in his last dialogue called Laws, Plato uses dialogues between a fictional character known as the Athenian Stranger and other fictional characters to develop a penal code for a proposed Cretan city. Throughout the dialogue the Athenian Stranger discusses the purpose of punishment, along with themes such as punishment as a cure, as education, and as a deterrent. There is insufficient space in this article to fully analyze Plato’s theory of punishment in Laws.⁷For a discussion of Plato’s theory of punishment in Laws, see R.F. Stalley, An introduction to Plato’s Laws, (Hackett Publishing Company: 1983); R.F. Stalley, ‘Punishment in Plato’s Laws’, in History of Political Thought, Vol. 16, No. 4 (Winter 1995), pp. 469-487. My modest goal is to simply show how Plato’s use of κόλασις/κολάζω and τιμωρία/τιμωρέω in Laws does not reflect the kind of distinction universalists think exist between the two word groups.

In Laws 880e-881b,⁸I am using a different translation of Laws in this instance as it is much easier to see where the relevant Greek words are used. This translation can be found here. the Athenian Stranger discusses what is to happen to those who assault and kill their parents:

For whoever will dare at any time to touch in some violent assault his father or mother, or yet their progenitors, terrified neither by the wrath of the gods above nor by the retributions (τιμωρέω) said to be beneath the earth, but holding in contempt the ancient sayings repeated by everyone, as if he knew things he doesn’t know at all, and breaking the law—this man requires some ultimate deterrent. Now death is not the ultimate, and the toils said to await these people in Hades, though they’re closer than this to being ultimates, and though they speak very truly, do not succeed as a deterrence for such souls. If they did, there would never be assaults on mothers or daring, impious, attacks on the other progenitors. It is necessary, then, that the punishments (κόλασις) here for such things, inflicted on these men while they are living, be no less than those in Hades, insofar as possible.

This is noteworthy since τιμωρέω is used of the afflictions people experience in Hades, with the following discussion focusing on the function and effectiveness of these ‘punishments’ as a deterrent for those who might commit patricide and matricide. It is important to note that in Laws, Plato’s penal code incorporates the notion that certain instances where one acts unjustly towards another are ‘diseases of the soul’ and so must be cured through the law. To achieve this, they must instruct those who do wrong to compel that person to ‘never willing to dare to do such a deed’ in the future.

It is in this context that the discussion of punishment. The Athenian Stranger recognizes there are those who cannot be deterred from murdering their parents, and this is acknowledgement that the law and its punishment cannot cure everyone of the disease that inflicts their souls. They cannot be instructed and deterred by any punishment. Plato uses τιμωρέω with reference to the punishments people receive in Hades after they have died, while he uses κόλασις with reference to all possible forms of punishment that could be inflicted while the person is living on the earth. This means Plato used κόλασις broadly with reference even those punishments that might in other contexts be referenced as τιμωρία.

Furthermore, it is recommended that the κόλασις punishments inflicted while people are still living are at minimum as severe as the τιμωρία inflicted in Hades. Plato goes on to use κόλασις to discuss the range of punishments that are to be inflicted on transgressors in various scenarios relating to wrongdoing against one’s parents. The very first example given has to do with a bystander failing to act when a person beats his parents: ‘he who fails to help shall be banished from the country for life’. As for the one who is convicted of beating his parents, he too was to be exiled for life under threat of being punished (κολάζω) by flogging on the first attempt to return home and then death on the second attempt. Plato uses the word ἀειφυγία (aeiphygía), which means ‘exile for life’ or ‘perpetual exile’. The exile is permanent, as the increasing severity of retaliatory punishments (κολάζω) for refusal to remain in exile shows there is no attempt at reforming the offender as such. Permanent exile is akin to the idea of retribution that is associated with τιμωρία, even as Plato uses κολάζω to outline what is to happen to the offender. This fits with Plato’s use of κολάζω in Republic 6.492b, where the verb is used with reference to capital punishment: ‘Don’t you know that they chastise (κολάζω) the recalcitrant with loss of civic rights and fines and death?’ Death is permanent, and so capital punishment offers no chance for the punished person to reform his ways. Κολάζω could be used by Plato in this way precisely because the verb itself lacked the nuance of punishing for the sake of the one being punished.

Earlier in Laws, the Athenian Stranger discusses the punishment of those who rob temples. There were circumstances when the offender ‘must punish (κολάζω) him by long imprisonment, of a public kind, and by measures of degradation’ (Laws 855b-855c). Judges were to regard these offenders as ‘already incurable, reckoning that, in spite of all the training and nurture he has had from infancy, he has not refrained from the worst iniquity’ (Laws 854e). The possible punishments inflicted include execution, imprisonment, or flogging. Κολάζω is used with reference to these punishments that may be inflicted on the incurable offender.

In Laws 735, the medicinal analogy is pressed into service to emphasize the painful extirpation of incurable criminals from society. In this case Plato uses three common words for punishment in order to press the point home:

The best purge is painful, like all medicines of a drastic nature, the purge which hales to punishments (κολάζω) by means of justice (δίκη, diké) linked with vengeance (τιμωρία), crowning the vengeance (τιμωρία) with exile or death: it, as a rule, clears out the greatest criminals when they are incurable and cause serious damage to the State.

The use of the medicinal analogy is summarized by MacKenzie:

The community is a flock from which the unhealthy stock must be removed. This culling will, first, preserve the legislator from the excessive trouble of treating the chronically wicked and, second, protect the rest of the citizen body from infection. The medicine to achieve this is end is punishment (kolazein) by diké with timória; The medicine to achieve this is end is punishment (kolazein) by diké with timória; timória will be continued up to the point of death or banishment. Those who have committed the greatest crimes are incurable and constitute a source of great harm to the state; they must therefore be removed.⁹Mary Margaret Mackenzie, Plato on Punishment, (University of California Press: 1985), 198-199.

Another example is found in Laws 728 where τιμωρία is used:

Hardly anyone takes account of the greatest “judgment” (as men call it) upon evil-doing; that greatest judgment is this,—to grow like unto men that are wicked, and, in so growing, to shun good men and good counsels and cut oneself off from them, but to cleave to the company of the wicked and follow after them; and he that is joined to such men inevitably acts and is acted upon in the way that such men bid one another to act. Now such a resultant condition is not a “judgment” (for justice and judgment are things honorable), but a punishment, an infliction that follows on injustice; both he that undergoes this and he that undergoes it not are alike wretched,—the one in that he remains uncured, the other in that he is destroyed in order to secure the salvation of many others. Thus we declare that honor, speaking generally, consists in following the better, and in doing our utmost to effect the betterment of the worse, when it admits of being bettered.

Neither κόλασις or κολάζω are used here, but τιμωρία. This is in a context where the medical analogy is being employed. MacKenzie notes:

The medical metaphor prevails in this passage, which strongly suggests that during the process of justice effected by timória the curable criminal might be saved.¹⁰Mackenzie, Plato on Punishment, 119.

The idea that τιμωρία is inflicted in order to save is at odds with any variation of the claim that only κόλασις could be used with reference to a punishment intended to benefit the one who is punished. Furthermore, to my knowledge, no one argues that since the contexts of these passages have to do with curing, deterring, or correcting criminals then τιμωρία must have as part of its semantic range the notion of a cure, deterrence, or correction. Yet this is exactly the way universalists can at times reason from passages where they see κόλασις and κολάζω used where the surrounding contexts have to do with medicine, deterrence, or the correction of someone.

In his highly influential book called The Semantics of Biblical Language, James Barr discusses this faulty way of reasoning about the meaning of words. The problem Barr has in his sights is bound up with the practice of ‘suggesting that the significance which is given through associations of the context is in fact the indicator value of that word’.¹¹James Barr, The Semantics of Biblical Language, (SCM Press: 1983), 69. The problem is compounded when the various contexts in which a word is used leads people to ‘adding up the semantic effects of various contexts and not the specific contributions which the word made to these contexts’.¹²Barr, Semantics, 71. This fallacious way of analyzing how words have meaning leads universalists to wrongly conclude that a word like κόλασις has the meaning of correction because it is used with reference to a punishment that was intended to correct an offender. The example of the use of κολάζω in Laws 735 is one where universalists likely would not attribute the context to the definition of this verb. It is difficult to see how they can be consistent.

There are more examples I could discuss but I can only make one last point. In Protagoras 326, where Plato uses both κόλασις and κολάζω, the context has to do with the education of children as the backdrop for a discussion of how punitive actions are intended to correct a person:

She punishes (κολάζω) anyone who steps outside these borders, and this punishment (κόλασις) among you and in many other cities, from the corrective (εὐθύνω) purpose of the prosecution, is called a Correction (εὔθυνα).

At first blush this may seem to show that Plato used κόλασις and κολάζω with the meaning of correction. However, Plato uses the verb εὐθύνω (euthýnō) and the noun εὔθυνα (eúthyna) to communicate the idea of correction.¹³Robert C. Bartlett, Plato: “Protagoras” and “Meno”, (Cornell University Press: 2004), 23. Both of these words convey the idea of making something straight and do the heavy lifting in the sentence to clarify the nature of the punitive action. The use of both in very close together suggests Plato was using them to emphasize the purpose of the punishment. This would not have been necessary if κόλασις and κολάζω themselves, without additional contextual clues, sufficiently conveyed the notion of correction in this kind of context.

This brings us back to Brett from Salvation for All, who asserts,

The claim that punishment benefits the sinner by causing them to reform is clearly laid out by Plato.

Brett, like most universalists – including William Barclay – rely on a single quote from Plato for the claim that his use of κόλασις and τιμωρία show that he maintained a particular distinction between the two words (see the quote from Barlcay at the top of this article). These universalists – including William Barclay – misunderstand the single quote from Plato they rely on for their claim. Even if this was not true, universalists – including William Barclay – offer no other evidence for their claim. As far as I can tell, no universalist goes beyond the single quote from Plato to discuss his other uses of κόλασις and τιμωρία. They have, therefore, made a conclusion based on very limited evidence from Plato, while misunderstanding the single text they do cite, and so their argument is at best a quintessential example of the hasty conclusion fallacy (drawing a conclusion from insufficient evidence).