Platonic Socrates Research Articles

Aristotle's dialogue with Socrates: on the Nicomachean ethics

What is the good life for a human being? Aristotle's exploration of this question in the Nicomachean has established it as a founding work of Western philosophy, though its teachings have long puzzled readers and provoked spirited discussion. Adopting a radically new point of view, Ronna Burger deciphers some of the most perplexing conundrums of this influential treatise by approaching it as Aristotle's dialogue with the Platonic Socrates. Tracing the argument of the Ethics as it emerges through that approach, Burger's careful reading shows how Aristotle represents ethical virtue from the perspective of those devoted to it while standing back to examine its assumptions and implications.

Akrasiaetenkrateiadans lesMémorablesde Xénophon

AbstractThis article aims to shed light on both the foundations and the consistency of the position regarding akrasia Xenophon attributes to Socrates in theMemorabilia.As does Plato's Socrates, Xenophon's Socrates maintains thatakrasiais impossible in the presence of knowledge. On the other hand, he differs from the platonic Socrates by granting toenkrateia,instead of knowledge, the role of foundation for virtue. If enkrateia is the very condition for acquiring knowledge and virtue, consequently the responsibility for counteringakrasiafalls toenkrateia.

The Absolute Good and the Human Goods

By the absolute Good, I understand the Idea of the Good; by the human goods, I understand pleasure and reason, which have been disqualified in Plato’s “Republic” as candidates for the absolute Good (cf.R.505b-d). Concerning the Idea of the Good, we can distinguish a minimal and a maximal interpretation. According the minimal interpretation, the Idea of the Good is the absolute Good because there is no final cause beyond the Idea of the Good. According the maximal interpretation, the Idea of the Good is the One. Although the minimal interpretation is not excluded by the textual evidence, it is not a suffienct interpretation. The maximal interpretation goes beyond the textual evidence. I will defend two theses: (1) Since the Platonic Socrates deliberately gives no more information, it seems wise to stop with Socrates and to give only a formal, not a substantive, interpretation: The absolute good is the third item between and above knowledge and the known. (2) To mediate between the absolute Good and the human goods, Plato’s Eleatic Stranger introduced in the “Politicus” an intermediate principle, the appropriate (to metrion), and Plato's Socrates introduced in the “Philebus”: “The measure (to metron) and the measured (the appropriate) and the right moment and whatever else the eternal nature has chosen to be similar”.

Aquinas and the Academic Life

In a book on Aquinas and beauty, Fr Armand Maurer starts with an apology. For, so he notes, ‘we look in vain in the immense body of Aquinas’s writings for a detailed and comprehensive treatment of beauty’. In general, says Maurer, ‘Thomas seems to have given short shrift to beauty or to have avoided it altogether’. And I might say something similar when it comes to Aquinas and the academic life. In his writings, the word ‘academic’ occurs in two allusions to St Augustine’s Contra Academicos. Otherwise, it is not to be found at all whether as a noun or as an adjective. There is a common 16th and 17th century English use of ‘academic’ according to which someone academic is a disciple of Plato. But Aquinas is heavily critical of Plato. And he has no treatise on the nature and purpose of centers of higher learning and the like. No work of his remotely corresponds to studies such as Cardinal Newman’s The Idea of a University.I might add that some famous academics have been throughly skeptical of Aquinas’s own academic value. He is often presented as an important philosopher. But was he? Not, for example, according to Bertrand Russell. As Russell himself put it: ‘There is little of the true philosophical spirit in Aquinas. He does not, like the Platonic Socrates, set out to follow wherever the argument may lead ...

On the Lack of ‘True Philosophic Spirit’ in Aquinas: Commitment v. Tracking in Philosophic Method

Bertrand Russell famously disparaged Thomas Aquinas as having ‘little of the true philosophic spirit’, because ‘he does not, like the Platonic Socrates, set out to follow wherever the argument may lead.’ Like many of Russell's pronouncements, this is breathtakingly supercilious and unfair. Still, even an enthusiastic admirer of Aquinas may worry that there is something in it, that there is something wrong with religious ‘commitments’ in philosophy. I examine Russell's objection by comparing standards of permissibility in epistemology with standards of permissibility in ethics, where these issues are better understood. I conclude that the epistemic standard behind Russell's criticism is no less contentious in epistemology than, say, direct utilitarianism is in ethics.

Beyond the Comedy and Tragedy of Authority: The Invisible Father in Plato's Republic

What follows is a reading of Plato's Republic in the light of Aristophanes' Clouds. More precisely, what is here offered is the bare outline of such a readinga set of preliminary notes that, by illuminating the inceptive stages of the Republic (especially book 1), constitutes a propaedeutic to the interpretation of the Platonic dialogue as a whole. Questions that one would typically be expected to raise in this context, questions regarding the relation of philosophy to poetry, the nexus between the Aristophanean and the Platonic Socrates, or Aristophanes' comedy in connection with the fate of the historical Socrates, will here remain unaddressed or will be touched upon only marginally (and obliquely). Far from accidental, this qualified

The Truth of Pederasty: A Supplement to Foucault’s Genealogy of the Relation Between Truth and Desire in Ancient Greece

inrfTfexw, Vol. 2, No. 1,1998 The Truth of Pederasty: ASupplement to Foucault’s Genealogy of the Relation Between Truth and Desire i n A n c i e n t G r e e c e Nigel Nicholson R E E D C O L L E G E Michel Foucault’s treatment of the relationship between truth and de¬ sireintheClassicalGreekworldisinmanywaystheleastsatisfactor)'partthe Use of Pleasure. In the final section of the Use of Pleasure, Foucault sug¬ gests that Plato’s elaboration of pederasty introduced “the question truth into the love relation as afimdamental question” (Foucault, Pleasure2^Z).This“questionoftruth”generatedacontradictionwithtlie wayinwhicharistocraticGreeksregulatedthemselvesintheirrelationsto pleasure.For,asFoucaultarguesintherestoftheUseofPleasure,these anstocraticGreekmalesattemptedtomaketheirlivesconformtocertain generalaestheticandstylisticcriteria.Sexforthem“wasanaestheticques¬ tion,amatteroflife-style”(Poster211),lifeitselfwasanartform,andthe artists^thatshapeditpracticedwhatFoucaultcallsan“aestheticsofcxise ^e.Thisformofpersonaldisciplinewas,accordingtoFoucault,veO 1^^^nt firom that of the modern Western subject. It was not oriente aroun subordination to detailed and universal prescriptive codes, but aroun afree and deliberate choice to style one’s life in aparticular way? andaroundthemoderationor“use”ofpleasures,ratherthantheirdenial or renunciation. 1Plato’s introduction of “the question of truth” repre¬ sented,however,atransitionawayfromthisethicofself-stylizationsinceit encouraged the training and purification of asubject’s desire in the quest c opposedtotheprincipleofmoderatingpleasuresaprinciple otindehmteabstention”(Foucault,UseofPleasure24:^-4S). ntracing afault line between this ethics of moderation and selfstylizationandanethicsofabstention ,Foucaulthas,however,leftmysteri¬ ous tereasons why truth came to be in this relationship with desire. Truth seems to emerge out of nowhere; Foucault does not attempt to explain why Platonic erotics makes the search for truth the criterion for determin¬ ing what behavior was appropriate for ayouth in apederastic relationshipWere truth and desire associated before?And, if so, how was this relation¬ ship configured? Were truth and desire always oppositional, such that the search for truth demanded apurification of desire and aresistance to the temptations of pleasure? The bareness of the treatment of truth is exacer¬ bated by the limited scope of this section. Because Foucault has restricted o f o f 2 6 2 7 Nicholson—^Thc Truth of Pederasty hisinvestigationalmostexclusivelytoPlato’sphilosophy,heofferslittlemdicationofthesortsofinstitutionsorpracticesthatmighthaveproduceda change in the practice of truth.^ MyaimisthereforetofillthesegapsinFoucault’saccountofthe tionship between truth and desire by offering ahistory of this relation^ip priortoPlato,focusingondielatearchaicperiodanditstracesinthefirst part of the classical period (600 to 450 B.C.E.). I\vill examine two poetic practices,encomiumandthetypeofad\acepoetryknownashypothekat, andfromthisevidenceIwillarguethattherewasastrongrelationshipbcnveentruthandpederasticdesireinthisperiodwhichnotonlyprovidesthe contextforPlato’selaborationofpederasty,butalsooffersasignificant contribution to Foucault’s political program. Foucault’smotivesinwnritingtheUseofPleasureareovertlypohne. He characterizes the book as an “effort to think one’s own history an hopesthatthiseffortcan“freethoughtfromwhatitsilentlythinks,and enableittothinkdifferently”(9).Foucault’shistoricalinvestigationisthus itselfaformofasccsis,adeliberateandconcentratedefforttotransforme self(Halpcrin,SaintFoucault76-77).Thistransformationwill,ifsuccessfill ,beachievedtiiroughtherecognitionchattheselfisformed,thatitasa history, and tiiat it has been formed differently in the past. History is ascholarly thought-experiment that we perform on ordertodecenterourselvesbyrevealing,throughagenealogicalanaysis ofourbeinginthepresent,ourownothernesstoourselves.Inthe*8^° historyweappeardifferentfromourselves,orfromwhatwethoughtwe were,andsowcrecoverasenseofourselvesassitesofdifference—ence, sitesofpossibletransformation.(Halperin,SaintFoucault105) s o ourselves in Foucault does not only use tlic notion of an “aesthetics of existence to is toricize our present regime of sex and sexuality. He also use potentialalternativetotiiatregime,oratleastpotentialavenues^roug whichthosedisadvantagedbythecontemporaryregimeofsexandsexu itymightbeabletodisruptthatregime.ThisisnottosaythatFoucat promotedtiieparticularstandardsagainstwhichtheclassicalGreek ured his life, or that he was unaware that in classical Greece the possibility ofmakinganartformoutofone’slifewasopenonlytoaristocraticnialcs, simplythathesawthepracticeofself*stylizationasaconcreteandachiev¬ ableformofresistance(Halperin,SaintFoucault67-125;Poster210-12, cf Foucault, “Oveniew” 343-51). Astudyoftilerelationshipbetweentruthanddesireinthelatearchaic period advances Foucault’s political project. Ahistory that demonstrates a veiy different relationship between truth and desire from the oppositional relationship exemplified by the Platonic Socrates can help undermine the present relationship benveen trutii, sexual abstention and the purification of desire. Moreover, ahistory that shows astrong link between pederastic desire and truth can change the unquestioned legitimacy in Western 2 8 I N T E R T E X T S society of the relationship between heterosexuality, truth and authority.As DavidHalpcrinobserves,inoursocietyheterosexualityisa“conditionfor thesupposedlyobjective,disinterestedknowledgeofotherobjects,”while an overt homosexual identity “operates as an instant discjualification. ... grants everyone else an absolute epistemological advantage (Halperin,SflmrT£,Mc/i«/r47,8;scc further 7-13, 36-67, 126-39). By con¬ trast,archaicGreeceoffersanexampleofmale-maledesirelegitimating, rather than dclcgitimating asubject’s authority. E n c o m i u m o \ ' c r y o u nepracticewherepederastyandtrutharcimplicatedisthatofen¬ comiasticpoetry.Mostoftheencomiasticpoetrythatsunavesbelongsto csmallersubsetofcpinician—poemscomposedinhonorofimportant PoUticaJ individuals and their families who have demonstrated their superirityywinning ^ictoricsinthelargestathleticfestivalsofancientGreece. ^memberofthefamily(ifnottheheadofthefamilyhimself)mayhave onthevictorybyactuallycompetinghimself,orhemayhavewonby ponsonng(intheequestrianevents)tlictrainingandmaintenanceofdie groomsandrider.Suchsponsorshipwasexpensive,butthe ready to commit still further resources to hiring apoet to glomoJr ^recordtheir\ictories.Pindar,BacchylidesandSimonidesweredie somproducersofcpinician,butthereweredoubtlessmanyothers, and...

Knowledge of Beauty in Plato's Symposium

Plato's Symposium consists of six speeches on Eros with the addition of Alcibiades' praise of Socrates. Of these speeches Socrates' speech is philosophically most important. It is true that the speech is given as a report of Diotima's view on Eros, but ‘she is a double of the Platonic Socrates’, and we take her view as the theory of Socrates in this dialogue

Socrates as Hero

Robert Eisner SOCRATES AS HERO The very first experience that philosophy had on Greek soil, the Sanction of the Seven Sages, is an unmistakable and unforgettable feature of the Hellenic image. Other people have saints; the Greeks have sages. ' Nietzsche Plato composed in a mythomorphic vein, or rather he attempted in his dialogues to superimpose a new kind of myth on the much older palimpsest of the sagas. To do this effectively he had to present Socrates not just heroically, but as a hero far different from the bronzed figures of that timocracy and shame culture whose legacy he resented and whose lingering influence on the Adienian present he was, in his more Utopian moods, determined to eradicate. Hence many of the traditional traits of the Homeric warrior are found in the Platonic Socrates, but they have been substantially modified to sustain the new philosophic content of die hero's role. These revitalized characteristics serve to highlight the radically novel establishment of the hero as philosopher and the philosopher as hero. The heroic comparisons that Socrates and Plato make, delineating a new prototype , risk the inflation of Socrates' ego, to use a modern term for what the Greeks called hubris. In the agonistic world of politicians, sophists, athletes, and lovers, Plato's Socrates stands out as the most erotically powerful intellectual in Athens. Even the chryselephantine Alcibiades shows himself captivated by this most charismatic of pedagogues. The self-proclaimed ignorance of the philosopher restrains him from too overt a display of his pride and arrogance, but the repeated success of his ironic gambits constantly tempts him to press his rhetorical advantages too far. For the Greek who is also a Socratic philosopher and therefore primarily concerned with the problems of the ethical life, the discernment of rational standards , patterns, and paradigms is not only the epistemological road to the examPhilosophy and Literature Vol. 6 Nos. 1 and 2 Pp. 106-118 0190-0031/82/0061-0106 © 1982 by The Johns Hopkins University Press Robert Eisner107 ined life but is also the mimetic way to Virtue.2 For such an individual, questing along new heights of moral speculation, there are older figures for him to model himself on, despite Alcibiades' insistence at Symposium 221c-d that no parallel in the sagas exists for Socrates. With the death of Socrates and the emasculation of political possibilities for civic man after the Peloponnesian War, Plato sought to absorb the external world of battlefield and assembly into the no less contentious inner domain of the soul. As reconstituted or invented by Plato this monde intérieur needed myth for its shores to be made accessible to the likes of mere men, and in this requirement it did not differ from the Troad of the Achaean expedition or the Persia of Xenophon's dreams and deeds.3 What better hero to animate the new myth of the quest for virtue and the forms than the man who was himself entheos, "enthused"? Platonic myth, however, is not simply a matter of a new sort ofhero searching for a new sort of treasure. The several sorts of myths employed in the dialogues are all more or less supplementary in those areas where Logos is more or less deficient. From the ancient point of view human reason is especially weak in science and history, where myth must aim at the truth and explore its ramifications , even if it must take the place of rational knowledge, as in the great central myths of the Timaeus and the Critias. In ethics, however, where human reason is adequate to the task of knowing, myth adds to the rational and speaks to man's passions, as in the accounts of the cave, the chariot of the soul, and Ei^s visit to the Underworld. Ludwig Edelstein remarks on this function of myth: "It rouses and confirms hopes; it enhances courage and allays fears. It is like a charm that one must sing to oneself."4 Unlike the rational certainty obtained through dialectic, the myths provide the reader (the silent but never absent interlocutor of the dialogues) with an essential and otherwise unobtainable conviction. Only myths can ease the rational helplessness of man...

Musical Developments in the School of Aristotle

At the end of his life, Socrates reported a command which he had received in a dream. This is, of course, the Platonic Socrates; the Socrates of Xenophon would never have had anything to do with so trifling a pursuit as musical composition. According to Plato, he was told, ‘Compose musical settings of poetry; make this your regular practice’ (Phaedo 60e6–7: , mousikēn poiei kai ergadzou).

Philosophy and the Modern Mind: A Philosophical Critique of Modern Western Civilization (review)

374 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Levi's subsequent chapters: they all are outlines for full-length works that we may hope he gets to before long. Nevertheless, ! find it difficult to accept the claim that such figures as Windelband and Br6hier "have some difficulty in finding their contemporary successors." Randall's work in the history of philosophy, W. T. Jones's, Copleston's, and even, to a lesser extent, Russell's, to mention only a few, have--perhaps with less scholarship (in terms of sheer volume of work reviewed) but with no less pertinacity--become quite worthy successors in the great history of philosophy tradition. Moreover, Randall has repeatedly acknowledged his debt to Windelband , and specifically to that aspect of his work that Levi emphasizes for his own methodology -the social context. One must admire these works, including Levi's, for the light they throw on the ways in which philosophies grow out of certain cultures, for such histories have the considerable merit of explaining much about their genesis. But it is their history, even their "meaning," that is exposed, after all, not their truth. Another way of putting this issue is to ask whether assessing or appreciating Levi's own philosophical contribution in this book involves knowing answers to the following questions: What sort of society is Levi writing for and trying to persuade? What are the current conventions of communication and the literary forms of discourse? What is Levi's class affiliation , his place in the social hierarchy of his age? "And perhaps above all: what [are] his moral commitments, the structure of his ideals?" Of course, these are precisely the questions that Levi insists we must ask to measure the extent of a philosophical contribution to our tradition. Granted that this is not Levi's only contribution (he has given us a number of notable works in the past), it should be obvious that answers to none of the above questions will provide us with answers to the truth of Levi's own key offerings in this book or in his others. Philosophers must face the question of truth, however interesting the questions of psychology, history, biography, social expression, or "meaning," if their contributions are to be measured justly. Of course, Levi might protest that he had no intention of making a philosophical contribution in this book and that therefore the questions he insists we ask about philosophical contributions should not be asked of him. This position would then raise interesting questions about what he means by offering his book as a "contribution to the philosophy of culture," but we shall not pursue these matters further. No such claim is likely to be made. STANLEYM. DAUGERT Western Washington University Philosophy and the Modern Mind: A Philosophical Critique of Modern Western Civilization. By E. M. Adams. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975) The argument of this book is built upon Professor Adams's conviction that the ills or failures of contemporary culture are reflected in, and in part caused by, widespread erroneous positions in our philosophy, and that a correction of these errors can be effective in restoring our mental health. The book thus returns to the classical position that has persisted since the Platonic Socrates: philosophy is the guide to the good life, or as the seventeenth century put it, the medicina mentis--in this case, the Western "cultural mind." But it is not so much this conformity to a long tradition of the relation of philosophy to mental or social health that justifies a notice in a journal devoted to the history of philosophy; rather, it is Adams's criticism and correction of recent philosophical currents that pushed the realistic revolt against idealistic metaphysics, early in our century, to the extremes of linguistic analysis, positivism, and scientism. Although Adams addresses his argument not merely to "professional and lay philosophers," but also to "all fully aware people" who sense our cultural alienation from reason and established values, it will require more than a modicum of philosophical training and understanding BOOK REVIEWS 375 for the reader to grasp the hard core of philosophical criticism and construction upon which his argument is built. Following the analogy of ailment...

Forms and Explanation in the Phaedo

In a well-known passage at Phaedo 100 c Socrates declares that if anything else is beautiful besides Beauty itself, it is beautiful for no other reason than because it partakes of that Beauty. With that statement he advances the hypothesis of Forms in an effort to prove that the soul is immortal but also, apparently incidentally to that central theme, to expound his own view of causation (r'v .t'VLav w ehLuLe)J1 The section of the dialogue in which the Platonic Socrates is made to recount his early inquiries into natural philosophy, and which provides the context of the quotation, contains Plato's most explicit statement of the explanatory role of the Forms. It is that function of the Platonic Form, as set forth at Phaedo 95 e-106 e, which I propose to examine in this paper. More specifically my question will be: What is the force of the claim that the eidos is aitia? The method I follow in trying to answer that question is dictated by the observation that the hypothesis of Forms is presented in that context as a solution to certain vexing problems. My inquiry therefore falls into two main sections in which I pose the following questions: What is the nature of the problems set forth in relevant passages of the Phaedo, and how

The Truth about Gods and Men

In his discussion of Plato's treatment of education in Republic II–III, Mr. Crombie writes that the Platonic Socrates “assumes that we tend to become like the characters in the books which we admire; and this,” he adds, “will never do.” He attributes this alleged assumption to a “simple-minded psychology”, but it is not clear what he thinks the psychology is. His words suggest that we are supposed to become like all of the characters in any book we admire, but since these characters are certain to be unlike each other this cannot be what he means. Again, it is odd that it should be admiration of a book that moves us to become like the characters in it, rather than the fact that it has excited or moved us. The notion one would have expected Crombie to attribute to Plato is rather that we tend to become like characters we admire in books that move us; and perhaps this is what he means. Even so, there is something odd in the notion of admiring a character in a book, since such a character is not a real person. What is really meant must be, I think, that books that move us in certain ways tend to arouse in us admiration for character traits of the kinds typified by the characters sympathetically or powerfully portrayed in those books, and that this admiration then leads us to assume those traits ourselves.

Socrates and Archelaus

DIOGENES LAERTIUS (2.23) includes in his Life of Socrates a paragraph on his campaigns and travels abroad. He mentions three battles (Potidaea, Delium, and Amphipolis) which are named by the Platonic Socrates in the Apology (28e)' as the occasions on which he proved his obedience to the orders of the commanders whom the state had placed in charge. He knows, also from Plato,2 of the prize of valour that Socrates won at Potidaea but resigned to Alcibiades, and the trance into which he fell for a whole day and a night, as well as the coolness and determination that he showed in the retreat from Delium. But this clear testimony is obscured by his own bad memory and judgment or his reliance on an inferior source. For he has it that it was Xenophon, and not Alcibiades, whose life was saved by Socrates, and at Delium, not Potidaea, although Xenophon cannot have been more than a child in the year of that battle.3 He says also that Socrates had to go to Potidaea by sea because the land-route was interrupted by the war; but the siege commenced in 432 before the war began.4 Then, after diverting to cite Aristippus on Socrates' love for Alcibiades, he concludes with three statements concerning his travels. The first is attributed to a 1J. Burnet, in his note ad loc. in his edition of the Euthyphro, Apology, and Crito (Oxford 1924), doubted whether Amphipolis can be the famous battle of 432, in which both Cleon and Brasidas fell, chiefly on the ground that only 1200 hoplites were sent out on that occasion (Thuc. 5.2.1), and Socrates, at his age, was unlikely to be required in so small a force. He also felt some difficulty in the order of battles, as Delium (424) preceded Amphipolis. This latter difficulty, at least, was not removed by his suggestion that an earlier fight of 437/436 is referred to. His argument does not lack weight in a calculation of general probabilities. But the natural interpretation of Plato's words, which has priority over other considerations, is that Socrates is referring to the well-known battle; he certainly left himself open to misunderstanding, if he intended any other meaning. (W. M. Calder, III, in Phronesis 6 [1961] 83-85, argues well against Burnet.) Furthermore, it seems probable that the order of battles, which no one can make chronological, is determined by stylistic purposes. (See Burnet's note on the variation of prepositions

El intelectualismo socrático y su recepción en Aristóteles

El propósito de este artículo es el de revisar algunas de las conexiones sistemáticas existentes entre el pensamiento de Sócrates y el de Aristóteles en torno a la acción y a su mecanismo motivacional. Para ello, se comenzará presentando una lectura del llamado ‘intelectualismo socrático’ en una versión más ‘blanda’, basada en la posibilidad de entender el concepto de ἐπιστήμη (que Sócrates iden­tifica con el de ἀρετή de un modo más amplio, a la luz de ciertos pasajes en los que el Sócrates platónico se refiere a su propia ignorancia y a su célebre ironía. A continuación, se pasará revista sucintamente a las críticas que Aristóteles hace a la posición socrática, a la vez que se remarcarán aquellas intuiciones de Sócrates de las que Aristóteles es, de todos modos, deudor en su teoría de la acción.

Aristotle's Use of Medicine as Model of Method in his Ethics

Philosophy, in general, moves in a sphere of abstraction, and its statements claim to be necessary and of universal validity. The reader therefore expects them to appeal directly to his reason, and he does not normally reflect much on the time and historical conditions that determined what the philosopher took for granted. It is only in this age of historical consciousness that we have come to appreciate these factors more readily, and the great thinkers of the past appear to us more or less closely related to the culture of their age. The writings of Plato and Aristotle in particular are for us an inexhaustible source of information about Greek society and civilisation. This is true also in regard to the relation of Greek philosophy to the science of its time, and this is of special importance for our understanding. That relation can be traced throughout Aristotle's logical, physical, and metaphysical works; but the influence of other sciences and arts is no less evident in his ethics. In this paper I propose to examine the numerous references to medicine that occur in the Nicomachean Ethics. They are mostly concerned with the question of the best method of treating this subject. The problem of the right method is always of the utmost importance for Aristotle. The discussion of it begins on the first page of the Ethics, where he tries to give a definition of the subject of this course of lectures and attributes it to a philosophical discipline that he calls ‘politics’. He does so in agreement with the Platonic tradition. We can trace it back to one of the dialogues of Plato's first period, the Gorgias, in which the Platonic Socrates for the first time pronounces his postulate of a new kind of philosophy, the object of which ought to be the care of the human soul (φυχῆς θεραπεία). He assigns this supreme task to ‘political art’, even though it does not fulfil this function at present.

The present state of the Socratic problem

A few years ago Gigon's Sokrates 1 with its provocative thesis that of the son of Sophroniscus hardly anything can be known in any case not that he was philosopher nor what kind of philosophy was his -, gave rise to various reactions. At Paris, E. Brehier in his Postwar Chronicle welcomed it as a very important book.2 And when, at about the same time and in the same milieu, J. Patocka protested against Gigon's theory 8, remarking that, though doctrine of Socrates may be unknown to us, yet we do know his philosophical attitude (which, in his opinion, is far more important thing), he too seemed to be much impressed by Gigon's philological method and he supposed that others whose approach to the question was from this side would be similarly impressed. That in fact the method as employed by Gigon is liable to serious objections was shown by different critics 4, most thoroughly perhaps by myself.5 Meanwhile others attacked the problem almost simultaneously. Bruno Snell found trace of Socrates' philosophical doctrine in Euripides' Hippolytus 6; Wolfgang Schmidt 7 (following A. E. Taylor, R. Philippson, E. Angelopoulos and myself8) reconsidered the portrait of Socrates in the Clouds and found confirmation in the words of Aristophanes of some essential characteristics of the Platonic Socrates. Finally E. de Strycker ' adduced three passages of unquestionable historical value by which Plato's testimony on Socrates in the Apology, Crito and Phaedo is confirmed. While this debate was in progress, an important new contribution to the problem was made by scholar who had been working at it quite independently for several years: Mr. V. de Magalhaes-Vilhena, Portugese member of the Paris Centre of Research. In I949, his

The “Policy Sciences”: Aspiration and Outlook

The idea of “policy science” is not a new one. In fact, it is organic to the Western tradition. Its first, incomparable formulation is found in Plato's Republic; policy, the Platonic Socrates says, can be reasonable and sound only if it is based upon the fullness of scientific insight and knowledge. According to the Platonic conception, it is not even enough to apply scientific knowledge, gathered by specialists, to practical policy problems which the rulers are to decide. Rather, the rulers themselves must acquire all the scientific knowledge needed to frame reasonable policy. The duality of the “expert adviser” and of the “decision-maker” who merely listens to him is implicitly rejected in the Republic. The ruler himself must be the knower. For the decisive thing is not knowledge in the abstract, knowledge as something impersonally available and ready to be picked up; it is knowledge conceived as the quality of a soul. According to the Platonic (and Aristotelian) view, knowledge is not an alien material “contained” in the mind, but the “form,” the ideal essence of the mind itself, so that a mind that knows belongs to a different species than the mind that lacks knowledge. In acquiring knowledge, the mind becomes essentially transformed, it acquires a new form; this is the original meaning of the term “information.” In its Platonic sense, then, the idea of “policy science” refers to the soul of the ruler, which must be the highest species of soul.

The Pseudo-Platonic Socrates

Discussion on the Platonic Socrates in relation to the historic Socrates has to some extent subsided in recent years. The older tradition looks like maintaining itself. But the question remains a provocative one, and further light on it would be welcome. It is some years, indeed, since Professor Field showed reason to doubt whether any further light will now be found, and advised reliance on the main line of tradition, through Aristotle, in the belief that we cannot in any case reach behind it.