The Unity of Virtue and the Objects of Socratic Inquiry

The Unity of Virtue and the Objects of Socratic Inquiry MICHAEL T. FEREJOHN ONE STRIKINGFEATUREthat separates Plato's early, or "Socratic," dialogues 1 from those in subsequent parts of his corpus is the apparent absence of anything that could easily be construed as a philosophical system. The middle dialogues (most especially the Meno and the trilogy consisting of the Phaedo, the Symposium, and the central parts of the Republic) clearly signal the emergence in Plato's thought of a wide and diverse network of views, covering nearly every branch of philosophy, all neatly drawn together into a coherent body of doctrine centered upon the Platonic Theory of Ideas. ~ In the later, "critical," dialogues, he is engaged in an ongoing process of elaborating and refining (the Sophist), critically reexamining (the Parmenides ), and perhaps in some instances (the Philebus?) ultimately rejecting, various tenets of that earlier system. In contrast to this, the philosophical positions advanced in the Socratic dialogues seem to add up to little more than a hodgepodge of strange, counterintuitive theses accompanied by no explicit indication of whether or how they are meant to be interconnected. Some of these propositions--for example, that no harm can ever befall a virtuous man, or that no one ever willingly does what he knows to be wrong--deserve to be called paradoxical (in the nonlogical sense of that term) because they are at odds with opinions likely to be endorsed by any ' The recent controversies over the proper ordering and classification of Plato's works do not touch any of the theses argued for here. The lone assumption I make in that area is one that has not been seriously challenged: that both the Laches and the Protagoras are clearly among the writings in Plato's early, or "Socratic," period. The elegance of this system is demonstrated by H. Cherniss in "The Philosophical Economy of the Theory of Ideas," in G. Vlastos, ed., Plato 1: Metaphysics and Epistemology (New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1971 ). [1] 2 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY reasonable and thoughtful person. Others--for example, that it is always wrong to harm another, even in retaliation--are merely paradoxical in the more limited sense that they contradict the conventional morality of Socrates ' time. It is a matter of some controversy whether the paradoxes presented in the early dialogues were actually taken up and defended by the historical Socrates, or whether they are introduced simply as prolegomena to Plato's own later philosophy. That issue will not matter here; though for ease of reference, I shall herein speak of the paradoxes as Socratic. Whichever of these two historical views is nearer the truth, it may be concluded independently , both from the regularity with which the paradoxes turn up in these works and from the vigor and quality of the argumentation given to support them, that they are in any case not offered in the manner of the DissoiLogoi merely as excuses for eristic exercise. No, quite apart from whether the views they express were ever embraced by Socrates, it is at least plain that they are presented by Plato as serious philosophical assertions intended to be taken as containing a substantial element of truth, if not in all cases as strictly and literally true. Consequently, the early dialogues pose a very special set of exegetical problems, especially with respect to those paradoxes that still seem intuitively false. For it was noted above that these are propositions that, at least at first sight, appear to fly in the face of good sense and solid reasoning. And yet both Plato and Socrates must surely be counted as reasonable men and careful thinkers. Thus, an immediate challenge facing any serious reader of the Socratic dialogues is to find an interpretation for each paradox that (a) conforms to the actual language used to express and defend it, and (b) according to which it is plausible enough to be attributed to Socrates (or Plato) without insult. That is the nature of the task that will take up most of this work. My primary aim will be to develop an adequate interpretation for what has been known as the Unity-of-Virtue Paradox, though along the way I shall have...