The Socratic Paradox and its Enemies (review)

This is an important book. Its author, Roslyn Weiss, contends that the Socratic Paradox, "No one does wrong willingly," and related Socratic views about the virtues ("virtue is knowledge," and "all virtues are one") have been seriously misinterpreted. Socrates is not the moral intellectualist, ethical/psychological egoist, and eudaimonist generations of scholars have believed him to be. The arguments in which Socrates articulates versions of the Socratic Paradox must be examined with respect to their overall agonistic contexts. The Socratic Paradox, when it appears, operates as a rhetorical weapon against a specific class of interlocutor enemies—the Sophists.

The significance of Weiss's thesis cannot be underestimated. If her view is correct, the delineation between early "Socratic" dialogues, marked by problematic Socratic doctrines like "No one does wrong willingly," and later "Platonic" dialogues, is significantly eroded. Perhaps other, thematic and/or methodological features mark distinctions between groups of dialogues, yet the overall effect of dispensing with this particular doctrine is spectacular. A saner Platonic Socrates emerges along with improved coherence across Plato's dialogues. Weiss builds her case in careful detail, limiting critical engagement with the scholarship to her notes—an aspect of her book that keeps its primary focus, her investigation of the dialogues, from becoming secondary to her battle with the literature—and a pleasure to read as well.

An introductory chapter outlines the way in which the Paradox is a literal reversal of Sophists' commitments and a strategic feature to bring these commitments out into the open. Weiss also presents evidence for a "deflationary" view of Plato's Socrates' beliefs once the Paradox is jettisoned. Most of these beliefs are consistent with intuitive moral views. More importantly, Socrates does not deny akrasia: people deliberately do wrong, even knowing that it is wrong. Socrates' distinctive moral position is that when people deliberately fail to do what is right or just, they bring upon themselves a bad condition no one could want (22). With this general characterization in place, Weiss proceeds to examine each of the dialogues where Socratic Paradox plays an important role.

Chapters two through five—covering the Protagoras, Gorgias, Hippias Minor, and Meno—stand on their own as readings of these dialogues or the arguments they contain, but an intriguing question unites them: To what extent does the context of a dialogue influence its formal arguments? Weiss's claim is that Socrates is not necessarily committed to all of the propositions he advances; rather, he uses them strategically, tailoring them to contest the sophist interlocutor's point of view. If this is so, we must accept that Socrates sometimes argues from premises he believes to be false. This position about the influence of context on the arguments is substantial. Weiss is not merely claiming that a dialogue's literary context provides an added bonus alongside the philosophical or argumentative content, but that context is key to getting the philosophical content right—though 'right' must be qualified because some arguments are not good ones. However, Weiss's view has the benefit of explaining the purpose of these bad arguments. Her analyses of arguments in the Gorgias are especially strong.

Chapter six, which concerns Republic IV, is crucial, since this is the point at which Plato has his Socrates break free from his moral intellectualism and denial of akrasia. The trajectory of Weiss's argument leads to this chapter, for if Socrates was never committed to the Socratic Paradox in earlier works, exactly what was he breaking with in the Republic? Weiss's close reading of the text at 438A, where Socrates alludes to an objector who would claim that no one desires drink, but good drink, etc., aims at disassociating the earlier Socrates from the objector referred to, arguing instead that it is Glaucon whom Socrates intends to correct. Weiss's reading in this chapter may be more fiercely contested, given its usual interpretation. But the next chapter, on Laws IX, is a tour de force, and could persuade the unconvinced who get...