Socrates by C. C. W. Taylor Christopher;taylor
Authors: C. C. W. Taylor Christopher;taylor
Ads: Link
The goal of the kingly art can therefore be none other than to make people skilled in the kingly art itself. But, as Socrates admits (292d–e), that is completely uninformative, since we lack any conception of what the kingly art is.
Socrates leaves the puzzle unresolved, and it may well be that at that point Plato did not see his way out of the puzzle. What this dialogue does show is that Plato had become aware of the incoherence of the system of Socratic ethics whose two central tenets are that virtue is knowledge (sc. of human good) and that virtue is human good. If human good is to be identified with both knowledge and virtue, then that knowledge must have some object other than itself. Plato’s eventual solution was to develop (in the Republic ) a conception of human good as consisting in a state of the personality in which the non-rational impulses are directed by the intellect informed by knowledge, not of human good, but of goodness itself, a universal principle of rationality. On this conception (i) human good is virtue, (ii) virtue is, not identical with, but directed by, knowledge, and (iii) the knowledge in question is knowledge of the universal good. It is highly plausible to see Euthydemus as indicating the transition from the Socratic position set out most explicitly in Meno to that developed Platonic position.
Protagoras may be seen as an exploration of another solution to this puzzle, since in that dialogue Socrates sets out an account of goodnesswhose central theses are: (i) virtue is knowledge of human good (as in Meno ); (ii) human good is an overall pleasant life. The significance of this is independent of whether Socrates is represented as adopting that solution in his own person, or merely as proposing it as a theory which ordinary people and Protagoras ought to accept. Either way, it represents a way out of the impasse which blocks the original form of the Socratic theory, though not a way which Plato was himself to adopt. Having experimented with this theory, which retains the identity of virtue with knowledge while abandoning the identity of virtue with human good, he settled for the alternative just described, which maintains the latter identity while abandoning the former.
Socrates and the Sophists
The confrontation of Socrates with sophists is central to Plato’s apologetic project. Socrates, as we have seen, had been tarred with the sophistic brush, and it was therefore central to the defence of his memory to show how wide the gap was between his activity and that of the sophists. Since Socrates represents in Plato’s presentation the ideal philosopher, the confrontation can also be seen more abstractly, as a clash between genuine philosophy and its counterfeit.
Plato depicts Socrates in confrontation with sophists and their associates in the three longest and dramatically most complex dialogues of the group which we are considering: Gorgias , Protagoras , and Euthydemus . I shall consider those together with Republic 1, which may originally have been a separate dialogue; even if it was not, it certainly looks back to the aporetic and elenctic style of the earlier dialogues, while there are obvious similarities between the positions of Callicles in Gorgias and Thrasymachus in Republic 1. As well as these major dramatic dialogues, Socrates is presented in one-to-one discussion with a sophist in the two Hippias dialogues.
The Greek word sophistēs (formed from the adjective sophos ‘wise’ or‘learned’) originally meant ‘expert’ or ‘sage’; thus the famous Seven Sages were referred to as the ‘Seven Sophistai ’. In the fifth century it came to be applied particularly to the new class of itinerant intellectuals, such as Protagoras and Hippias, whom we find depicted in the Socratic dialogues. We saw earlier that sophists were regarded in some quarters as dangerous subversives, overthrowing conventional religion and morality by a combination of naturalistic science and
Socrates leaves the puzzle unresolved, and it may well be that at that point Plato did not see his way out of the puzzle. What this dialogue does show is that Plato had become aware of the incoherence of the system of Socratic ethics whose two central tenets are that virtue is knowledge (sc. of human good) and that virtue is human good. If human good is to be identified with both knowledge and virtue, then that knowledge must have some object other than itself. Plato’s eventual solution was to develop (in the Republic ) a conception of human good as consisting in a state of the personality in which the non-rational impulses are directed by the intellect informed by knowledge, not of human good, but of goodness itself, a universal principle of rationality. On this conception (i) human good is virtue, (ii) virtue is, not identical with, but directed by, knowledge, and (iii) the knowledge in question is knowledge of the universal good. It is highly plausible to see Euthydemus as indicating the transition from the Socratic position set out most explicitly in Meno to that developed Platonic position.
Protagoras may be seen as an exploration of another solution to this puzzle, since in that dialogue Socrates sets out an account of goodnesswhose central theses are: (i) virtue is knowledge of human good (as in Meno ); (ii) human good is an overall pleasant life. The significance of this is independent of whether Socrates is represented as adopting that solution in his own person, or merely as proposing it as a theory which ordinary people and Protagoras ought to accept. Either way, it represents a way out of the impasse which blocks the original form of the Socratic theory, though not a way which Plato was himself to adopt. Having experimented with this theory, which retains the identity of virtue with knowledge while abandoning the identity of virtue with human good, he settled for the alternative just described, which maintains the latter identity while abandoning the former.
Socrates and the Sophists
The confrontation of Socrates with sophists is central to Plato’s apologetic project. Socrates, as we have seen, had been tarred with the sophistic brush, and it was therefore central to the defence of his memory to show how wide the gap was between his activity and that of the sophists. Since Socrates represents in Plato’s presentation the ideal philosopher, the confrontation can also be seen more abstractly, as a clash between genuine philosophy and its counterfeit.
Plato depicts Socrates in confrontation with sophists and their associates in the three longest and dramatically most complex dialogues of the group which we are considering: Gorgias , Protagoras , and Euthydemus . I shall consider those together with Republic 1, which may originally have been a separate dialogue; even if it was not, it certainly looks back to the aporetic and elenctic style of the earlier dialogues, while there are obvious similarities between the positions of Callicles in Gorgias and Thrasymachus in Republic 1. As well as these major dramatic dialogues, Socrates is presented in one-to-one discussion with a sophist in the two Hippias dialogues.
The Greek word sophistēs (formed from the adjective sophos ‘wise’ or‘learned’) originally meant ‘expert’ or ‘sage’; thus the famous Seven Sages were referred to as the ‘Seven Sophistai ’. In the fifth century it came to be applied particularly to the new class of itinerant intellectuals, such as Protagoras and Hippias, whom we find depicted in the Socratic dialogues. We saw earlier that sophists were regarded in some quarters as dangerous subversives, overthrowing conventional religion and morality by a combination of naturalistic science and
Similar Books
