Virtue intellectualism and Socratic forms

Abstract

ABSTRACT Aristotle famously claims that Plato, unlike Socrates, separated the forms. Some argue that Plato's dialogues provide a record of this disagreement, with the Socratic and Platonic theories presented in different groups of dialogues. Nicholas Smith defends a novel version of this view, arguing that the Socratic theory is integrated with virtue intellectualism – the doctrine that virtue is knowledge. The resulting metaphysical view is the Constitution Thesis (CT): the virtue-forms are constituted by ethical knowledge. We raise two objections against CT. The first is a type-token dilemma: whether the virtue-forms are constituted by types or tokens of ethical knowledge, intolerable consequences follow. Second, the reasoning leading to CT depends on a questionable inference from claims about virtue as a psychological condition to claims about virtue-forms. We conclude by defending an alternative explanation of the presence of different characterizations of forms in different dialogues – an explanation based on the distinction in the Republic between shorter and longer explanatory routes (435c9–d5). The conception of forms as separate emerges when Plato pursues the longer route by studying the forms through the prism of the soul's desire for wisdom.