Plato's Moral Theory: The Early and Middle Dialogues (review)

Book Reviews Terence Irwin. Plato's Moral Theory: The Early and Middle Dialogues. Oxford. Clarendon Press, 1977. Pp. 376 + xvii. $21.00. Irwin's book is an extremely important contribution to the literature on Plato. It painstakingly reconstructs a systematic picture of the moral positions of Socrates and Plato as they emerge from the early and middle dialogues. Irwin considers these positions philosophically important and at least partially worthy of defense. He will have nothing to do with facile refutations and offhand dismissals; he insists that we take Plato seriously. In the execution of this project, Irwin displays sensitivity to problems of classical scholarship combined with a high degree of philosophical sophistication. The result is worthy of extended study. Although the main exposition, interpretation, and evaluation is to be found in the text (where all Greek is either translated or transliterated), another extremely valuable part of the book is the fifty-eight pages of notes, which contain interesting discussions in support of particular interpretations and a consideration of recent scholarship. There is a bibliography that lists 278 items, a general index, and an index locorum. One feature of Irwin's approach calls for comment. While he is definitely claiming to interpret Plato, he does not hesitate to "read into" the text certain consequences or implications or to suggest a line of argumentation that does not have explicit textual support (p. 3). Part of the reason for this is Irwin's feeling that "the character of a Platonic dialogue itself leaves us unsatisfied" (p. 3). Irwin also admits that he is often "charitable" to Plato in that he minimizes certain "flaws and obscurities" (p. 3). While this approach will not recommend itself to everyone, it certainly seems justified in that it enables us to take Plato seriously as a philosopher, rather than merely as an intellectual museum piece. The main line of interpretation that Irwin advances runs as follows. Socrates and Plato both hold certain paradoxical theses in moral philosophy, such as the unity-of-virtue doctrine and the claim that virtue must be in the agent's interest. In addition, Socrates holds that virtue is craft knowledge only. Like any craft, its value for a rational practitioner lies in the production of an independently desirable product. For Socrates, presumably, both virtuous and nonvirtuous persons agree on what this desirable end is, so that it could be defined in undisputed terms; the virtuous person would differ from the nonvirtuous only with respect to the means of achieving it. Thus, for Socrates, the virtues are of instrumental value only. Irwin admits (e.g., p. 7) that the Socratic dialogues offer no satisfactory account of this final good that is taken to be the product of virtue, although in the Protagoras it is definitely specified as the agent's pleasure. Furthermore, the Socratic denial of akrasia relies upon the assumption that the end product or final good is something we all want and that therefore we will never fail to exercise our virtue-craft. Thus, virture requires only a cognitive component; no affective component is necessary. The claim that virtue is a craft knowledge only and the denial of akrasia are rejected by Plato, although he substitutes equally paradoxical doctrines in their place, for example, the thesis that virtue must be good in itself and that the virtuous person must have knowledge of the Forms. Plato begins to reject Socratic claims in the Gorgias and Meno; he rejects them even more decisively in the Phaedo and Republic. His espousal of the doctrine of recollection and of the theory of Forms is important in that it involves a rejection of the craft analogy (CA). Plato now sees that there can be no definition of the good in undisputed terms, as demanded by the CA. Since moral [103] 104 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY properties are not definable in terms of nonmoral ones, as Socrates had thought, morality cannot be merely a craft. Therefore, morality "can be learnt only through the elenchos, by the method of recollection" (p. 7). In theory, for Socrates, the final good should be discoverable independently of the elenchos. But "Plato denies that the elenchos can be replaced by a craft; he allows...