What Makes Socrates a Good Man?

What Makes Socrates a Good Man? THOMAS C. BRICKHOUSE and NICHOLAS D. SMITH AN INTRIGUING PUZZLE can be generated from what is said in Plato's early dialogues regarding the relationship between moral goodness and virtue. At the end of the Apology Socrates tells those jurors who voted for his acquittal of his confidence that death will not be an evil thing for him, and he exhorts them "to bear in mind this one truth: that no evil comes to a good man in life or in death, nor are the concerns [pragraata] of this person neglected by the gods" (41c9-d2 ). That Socrates regards himself as a "good man" is an inescapable inference. Yet throughout the early dialogues Socrates seems to believe both that virtue requires moral knowledge (see, e.g., La. 194d 1-2; Prt. 361 b 12 ) and that he himself lacks that very knowledge (see, e.g., Ap. 21bl-d7; Euthyp. 5a3-c7, 15Cl 1-16a4; La. 186b8-c5; Grg. 5o9c4-7). Were we to accept each of these claims at face value, they are consistent only if Socrates also believes that one can, in some sense, be good without possessing moral virtue itself and, indeed, that he himself isjust such a "good man." To be sure, Socrates regards the virtuous as good. But it is by no means obvious in what sense a person could still be good if he or she lacked the moral wisdom necessary for virtue? Rather than attempt to pursue what Socrates might have in mind by such a distinction, one might simply deny the sincerity of Socrates' disavowal of knowledge and with it the sincerity of any denial that he lacks the virtue he says he is seeking. ~ In this essay, our principle task will ' The tension between Socrates' moral superiority and his repeated disclaimers of moral wisdomis welldocumented by Gregory Vlastosin "The Paradox of Socrates,"in ThePhilosophyof Socrates,ed. Gregory Vlastos(Garden City, 197x), 7-8. * No one to our knowledge has suggested that Socrateswould maintain such a distinction. Those who have attempted to address the problem head or~have simplydenied the sincerityof Socrates' profession of ignorance. See, e.g., Norman Gulley, ThePhilosophyof Socrates(London: MacMillan, 1968),69; L. R. Shero, "Plato'sApologyand Xenophon's Apology,"ClassicalWorld~o 09u7): 1o9. [a69] 17o JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 28:2 APRIL 1990 not be to show that Socrates' profession of ignorance is in fact altogether sincere--we have argued for that at length elsewhere.3Rather our goals are to show, first, why Socratic categories of moral assessment require that Socrates view himself as a good person who has nevertheless not attained virtue and, then, to show why, in spite of his goodness and the protection against evil he believes it affords, he regards his life as importantly deficient. l° In a famous passage in the Apology (2oc4-23Cl) Socrates relates that once his friend, Chairephon, was told by a Delphic oracle that no one was wiser than Socrates. He goes on to say that as a result of his attempts to understand what the oracle could have meant, he came to the conclusion that indeed he does possess a kind of human wisdom that sets him apart from the great mass of his fellow Athenians. Unlike most people, who think they know how best to live when they do not, he at least is aware that he does not know. In their arrogance and folly his fellow citizens see no need even to inquire into the nature of virtue. His task, he came to believe, was to carry out the god's wish that he exhort all---especially those who mistakenly think they know--to pursue virtue through philosophical examination.4Thus, in spite of the fact that he has not attained virtue himself, Socrates views himself as morally superior, not only to those who have actively sought to end his questioning of others, but also to the multitude of Athenians who impiously disregard what the god wants for men. It is tempting to conclude, then, that when Socrates indicates at the end of the Apology that he considers himself to be a "good man," he is merely expressing the...