Socrates’ Moral Paradox

Abstract

In Socratic Paradoxes,2 Gerasimos Santas argues that Plato's Socrates expounds two distinct paradoxes concerning human weakness. The paradox, most thoroughly developed in the Protagora* J, is that no one desires evil (harmful) things and that all who pursue evil (harmful) things do so involuntarily. The that virtue is knowledge and that all who do injustice or wrong do so involuntarily is argued for in the Gorgias .3 Although it is commonly thought that the problem of moral weakness originated with Socrates, Santas' larger claim is that the moral paradox does not really deny the fact of moral weakness and so is far more plausible than it is usually taken to be. The aim of this paper is to represent the bases of the moral paradox so as to make apparent what, at best, is problematical about its conceptual foundations. A clue to the resolution of the paradox is then offered. There is evidence, as Santas points out (p. 158), that in the Gorgias the moral paradox is partly derived from the prudential paradox. A reconstruction of the overall argument to the moral paradox might read as follows. Assume: