Socrates Claims Research Articles

Regress? I’ve Had a Few?

AbstractOn Malcolm Schofield’s highly influential reading of the Similarity Regress in Part I of theParmenides, the problem that the Regress poses is explanatory. Socrates posited the Similarity Form in order to explain why similar things are similar: similar things are similar because they participate in the Form Similarity as copies of the same original. Yet, the Similarity Regress generates an infinite series of Similarity Forms such that explanation is deferred ad infinitum. Schofield provides a philosophical incentive for adopting his reading. He argues that the treatment of similarity in Part II of the dialogue yields a complete explanation of similarity. If we adopt this account, we can avoid the Similarity Regress altogether since a Form of Similarity is not needed in order to explain why similar things are similar. Thus, his interpretation has a hugely important philosophical pay-off.However, there is a different way to read the argument. Socrates claims that each Form is only one. Yet, the Similarity Regress is an argument that generates an infinite series of Similarity Forms. This results in a violation of the principle of non-contradiction: there is both only one Similarity Form and infinitely many Similarity Forms. Yet, anything that is incompatible with the principle of non-contradiction is surely absurd. Nobody, as far as I am aware, has explored whether this reading also has philosophical pay-off if we look at it together with similarity in Part II. However, should this interpretation pay off, it would be a viable alternative to Schofield’s.In this paper, I explore both views in the context of the treatment of similarity in Part II of theParmenides. I argue for an account of similarity that differs from Schofield’s. Although my account is not wholly dismissive of Schofield’s, it renders the pay-off of Schofield’s account less appealing than he suggests. Furthermore, I show that the account of similarity in Part II also yields important lessons for the proponent of the alternative reading of the Similarity Regress: similarity as treated in Part II simply leads to further infinite regresses, thereby pushing us to consider rejecting the account of similarity in Part II too and to look for some other account intead.

Can Flogging Make Us Less Ignorant?

In the Gorgias, Socrates claims that painful bodily punishment like flogging can improve certain wrongdoers. I argue that we can take Socrates’ endorsement seriously, even on the standard interpretation of Socratic motivational intellectualism, according to which there are no non-rational desires. I propose that flogging can epistemically improve certain wrongdoers by communicating that wrongdoing is bad for oneself. In certain cases, this belief cannot be communicated effectively through philosophical dialogue.

「우리는 사랑에 대해 이야기를 할 때 무엇을 이야기할까」와 『향연』 속 에로스/사랑론에 대한비교 독해

This essay, as a case of comparative literary studies, analyzes an ancient text, Plato’s Symposium, and a contemporary piece of short fiction, “What we Talk About When We Talk About Love”, written by Raymond Carver, an American short story writer and poet. The two texts share similar themes and settings. The Symposium, adopting the device of a play-within-play, is about a dialogue between Apollodorus and his friends about a symposium held by Agathon after he had won the prize at a dramatic competition. Seven speakers then share their ideas or theories about Eros (the Greek god or love): Phaedrus, Pausanias, Eryximachus, Aristophanes, Agathon, Socrates, and Alcibiades. Each one argues for or against the concept of Eros. Phaedrus claims that Eros is good and beautiful because he is eldest god, while Aristophanes tells a myth in which the ancient human beings are severed by the force of god. Socrates claims that Eros brings forth due to the lack. Carver’s story has similar setting, in which four characters — Mel, Terry, Rick, Laura — at a drinking party share their ideas about love. They talk about two incidents related to love: Ed’s bizzare case and an old couple’s tragic case. A parallel analysis of two texts show how those texts share similar and different ideas about love. Though not regarding Carver’s story as a parody of The Symposium, the essay at least endeavors to delve into a possible comparative reading of two texts and how those texts may be deconstructed.

Opining Beauty Itself in Republic V

Abstract In consoling the lover of sights and sounds at Republic 475e4-479d5, Socrates describes a tripartite distinction among knowledge, doxa, and ignorance. Socrates claims that knowledge is ‘over’ (epi) what-is, doxa is over what is and is-not, and ignorance is over nothing at all. I argue that Plato shows that doxa and ignorance are also related to what-is. While knowledge, doxa, and ignorance interact with different first-degree objects, these three capacities have a common second-degree object: what-is. The fact that Socrates claims that doxa is inferior to knowledge, and ignorance is inferior to doxa, shows that these three capacities have a shared aspiration that doxa and ignorance each fail to fulfill in their own way. Following Plato’s analogy to the senses at 477c1-d1, I use an analogy to the senses to demonstrate Plato’s understanding of the relationship between doxa and what is.

Plato on the Value of Philosophy: The Art of Argument in the Gorgias and Phaedrus

Plato on the Value of Philosophy: The Art of Argument in the Gorgias and Phaedrus

Platonic know‐how and successful action

AbstractIn Plato's Euthydemus, Socrates claims that the possession of epistēmē (usually construed as knowledge or understanding) suffices for practical success. Several recent treatments suggest that we may make sense of this claim and render it plausible by drawing a distinction between so‐called “outcome‐success” and “internal‐success” and supposing that epistēmē only guarantees internal‐success. In this paper, I raise several objections to such treatments and suggest that the relevant cognitive state should be construed along less than purely intellectual lines: as a cognitive state constituted at least in part by ability. I argue that we may better explain Socrates' claims that epistēmē suffices for successful action by attending to the nature of abilities, what it is that we attempt to do when acting, and what successful action amounts to in the relevant contexts. These considerations suggest that, contrary to several recent treatments, the success in question is not always internal‐success.

The Possibility of Inquiry: Meno's Paradox from Socrates to Sextus by Gail Fine

Reviewed by: The Possibility of Inquiry: Meno's Paradox from Socrates to Sextus by Gail Fine David Ebrey Gail Fine. The Possibility of Inquiry: Meno's Paradox from Socrates to Sextus. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Pp. xiv + 399. Cloth, £55.00. In the first half of this book, Gail Fine provides a renewed defense of her reading of Meno's famous paradox; in the second, she provides novel accounts of how Aristotle, the Stoics, the Epicureans, and Sextus Empiricus responded to the paradox. For reasons of space, I focus on the first half, where Fine defends the same basic account of Meno's paradox she put forward in her influential "Inquiry in the Meno" (1992). The book goes further, considering and dismissing several alternatives not considered there and arguing at length against recent accounts in the secondary literature, especially those of Dominic Scott and David Charles. According to Fine, Meno's paradox rests on Meno misunderstanding what Socrates means by "not knowing at all." On her reading, Meno takes this to refer to a cognitive blank, then raises a problem for inquiring in a cognitive blank; Socrates does not think of "not knowing at all" as a cognitive blank, and so responds that it is possible not to know at all and still have true beliefs that allow one to inquire. Is Fine right that Meno's paradox rests on misunderstanding "not knowing at all" as a cognitive blank? While this is a key point in the book, the only evidence Fine cites (71) is that, shortly before the paradox, when Meno accuses Socrates of being like a torpedo fish, Meno says that he can "no longer say [eipein] at all what it [virtue] is" (80b4). But this seems to point to Meno's inability to provide an acceptable answer to "what is virtue?"—not to his thinking he is in a cognitive blank about virtue. If someone reports that she cannot say what time the train leaves, she may still have views, but think that they are insufficiently justified to say. In fact, Socrates suggests earlier in the dialogue that one should only say what virtue is if one knows what it is. At the beginning of the dialogue Meno asks Socrates to "say" (eipein) whether virtue is teachable (70a). Socrates claims that Gorgias has given Meno the habit of expecting fearless and magnificent answers, as is reasonable from those who know (70b–c). But Socrates claims that people in Athens would laugh at the idea of answering Meno's question because they are so far from knowing whether virtue is teachable that they do not even know what it is (70c–71b). It is only after Meno suggests that he may have learned from Gorgias what virtue is that Socrates asks Meno to say (eipein) what it is (71d). Meno alludes to this earlier conversation in his torpedo fish objection, when, having been refuted, he reports that he no longer can say what virtue is. Meno points to two different problems in his statement of the paradox. Fine treats it as clear that the first is a "targeting objection": how can you specify the thing you are inquiring into. She translates the sentence in question as "[f]or what sort of thing, from among those you don't know, will you put forward as the thing you're inquiring into?" (80d6–7). As translated, it is not clear that Meno is pointing to a targeting problem; one would like an argument for thinking this. But it is also not clear that this is the best way to translate the sentence. "What sort of thing" (poion) can be governed by the participle, "put forward," without being governed by the main verb, "inquire" (see Smyth, 2643). If read this way, Socrates is saying "[f]or what sort of thing, from among those you don't know, will you put forward when you inquire?" Up until this point, Socrates's and Meno's inquiries have involved putting forward proposed answers to the "what is it?" question. One could interpret Meno's question as pointing to a problem with putting forward such an answer, [End Page 537] rather than with specifying...

How to Escape Indictment for Impiety: Teaching as Punishment in the Euthyphro

In the Euthyphro , Socrates claims that, if he gains knowledge of piety, he should be able to secure his acquittal on charges of impiety. This paper examines why Socrates thinks that this is the case. It offers two readings: reading (a), according to which Socrates will use this knowledge to prove that he is innocent of impiety, and reading (b), according to which Socrates believes that this knowledge will make him pious henceforth and that his instruction in piety is a suitable punishment for any past impiety. The paper argues in favor of reading (b), and suggests that Socrates endorses a functional definition of punishment in the Euthyphro , according to which whatsoever reforms a wrongdoer constitutes punishment.

TAKING THE TOOL ANALOGY SERIOUSLY: FORMS AND NAMING IN THECRATYLUS

It has been suggested that the so-called tool analogy passage of Plato'sCratyluspresents us with a moderate linguistic naturalism that can stand or fall independently of the more unpalatable etymological and mimetic theories advanced later in the dialogue. This paper offers a reading of the tool analogy which argues that Socrates' employment of Forms (and in particular Species-Forms), together with a careful distinction between the types of knowledge associated with making and using tools, aims to establish a radical linguistic naturalism that constrains the intrinsic properties of names. This should be clear if we take Socrates' claim seriously that names are tools: tools in general can only function successfully if they exhibit the relevant structural, compositional and (to some extent) material properties. Since Socrates claims that names are a class of tools and not merely like tools in some respects, as many have supposed, then what holds for tools in general must also hold for names.

Childish Nonsense? The Value of Interpretation in Plato’s Protagoras

In the Protagoras , Plato presents us with a puzzle about interpretation. Socrates claims to find several familiar Socratic theses about morality in his interpretation of a poem by Simonides, yet, immediately afterwards, he castigates interpretation itself as “childish nonsense.” In this paper, I argue that the puzzle can be resolved if we understand Socrates’s interpretation of Simonides’s poem to be a parody, which articulates implicit criticisms of sophistic interpretation . The parodic criticisms rely on an ideal of interpretation, what I call philosophical interpretation , whereby an interpreter remains indifferent to the authority of the poet, attempts a plausible reconstruction of the poem so that a philosophical view is formulated, and critically assesses this view. However, this ideal of interpretation can only partly escape the explicit criticisms Socrates voices against interpretation, and it thus has only limited value due to a contingent relation to truth.

The Triptych of Liberal Education

A LITTLE BEFORE DAYBREAK “Socrates, are you awake or sleep?” Our story commences a little before daybreak with the sound of violent knocking on Socrates’s door followed by this petulant cry (Protagoras 310b2). A young Athenian nobleman bursts into Socrates’s chamber, not being able to contain his excitement that he might finally be able to receive true education from the genuine master. The teacher he has in mind, however, is not the one we do. The youngster reveals, while feeling his way to Socrates’s bed in the still dark room, that it is not Socrates, but the “beautiful stranger” (Protagoras 309c1–10) Protagoras who has inspired his excitement. This is the second visit of the famous foreigner I n Athens encouraged most probably by Pericles, a patron of the sophist movement of which Protagoras is the leading figure. Socrates claims that Protagoras is the first who admits to being a sophist, a professional teacher of wisdom, and the first who makes teaching philosophy an economic activity by charging tuition fee. Protagoras is most commonly known for his homomensura argument that is paraphrased as “man is the measure of all things.” Socrates himself refers to him as “the wisest man now living” (Protagoras 309d1).

Sokrates’ große Liebe. Der philosophische Eros in den Dialogen Platons

In the platonic dialogues, there is but one exception to the socratic confession of ignorance: Socrates claims for himself a knowledge of the erotica, of love matters. In this paper the connection between the platonic concept of philosophy, which is developed along the lines of the paradigm of the ignorant Socrates, and the role of Eros in platonic conversations is scrutinized. This connection displays not only dramatic-literary and performative, but also dialectical aspects: Plato puts Socrates onstage in his physicalness and his overcoming of fleshliness as a philosophical Eros. Plato, the ›poet-philosopher‹, uses this performance primarily in order to visualize something genuinely conceptual, namely, the revolutionary adventure of his theory of ideas. This theory constitutes a new foundation of cognition on a truly conceptual basis and, as Diotima’s conception of love shows, does not result in a rationalistic reduction of the notion of Eros or in an anti-hedonistic intellectualism, but leads to the ultimate lust that humans can achieve: to a view on the ›ocean of beauty‹.

La psicología moral de Sócrates

Although in the Apology Socrates claims that he goes around exhorting people to moral excellence, in the dialogues we never see him exhorting anyone, but only examining definitions of virtue. We can understand Socrates’ claim by appreciating his intellectualism: he believes that human beings naturally seek the good; only by knowing what is good can they achieve it. According to this view, the soul can be likened to a set of propositions. The soul can achieve the good only if all the propositions are consistent. On this model many of Socrates’ paradoxical views make sense. Moral agents do not need exhortation but logical examination; virtue is not teachable, but it is achievable through constant examination.

Menexenus—son of Socrates

The Menexenus is also known as Plato's Epitaphios or Funeral Oration. The body of the work is a fictional funeral oration, composed as an example of what should be said at a public funeral for Athenians who have fallen in war. The oration is framed by an encounter between Socrates and a certain Menexenus, an eager young man who thinks he has reached the end of education and philosophy, but who is still rather young to take an active party in the city's affairs. Nevertheless, he is anxious to follow in the tradition of his family, which (Socrates tells us) has always provided someone to look after the Athenians (τινα μν πιμελητν). Menexenus' interest in public affairs has led him to attend a meeting of the Council at which a speaker was to be chosen to compose and deliver the funeral oration at the imminent public funeral. However, no final decision was reached at the meeting, and Menexenus remarks that by the time the choice is made, the speaker will have almost to improvise his speech. Socrates gently mocks Menexenus' respect for public orators, saying that speeches about a dead person follow a predictable pattern; a speaker exaggerates all a dead person's good points and minimizes all the bad, so that one who has died appears a paragon of virtue even if he was not really good for much. Socrates claims that listening to such public orations, when not only individuals but also the state is eulogized, always makes him feel that in living in Athens he is living in the Islands of the Blessed.

Socrates on Desire for the Good and the Involuntariness of Wrongdoing: Gorgias 466a-468e

In the Gorgias Socrates forces his interlocutor Polus to agree that neither orators nor even the tyrants whom they emulate have any great power at all. I would like to examine the logic and dramatic context of the argument for this rather strange claim. Doing so will help clarify (1) Plato's thesis that all men desire the good and (2) the role this thesis plays in the Paradox 'No One Is Voluntarily Unjust.' The argument runs as follows (466a9-468e5). Tyrants (or orators) are typically able to do whatever they please: e.g., they can expropriate, banish, or even murder their opponents. Thus they do what seems good to them (& Boxci avcrots). Doing what seems good, however, must be distinguished from doing what one desires (a& iovXovTaL). For all men desire the good. And so if a particular action, either in itself or in its consequences, happens actually to be bad (i.e., harmful to the agent), how can it be what one desires to do? In accordance with the familiar argument of the Republic, Socrates claims that the kind of action characteristic of the tyrant unjust action is in fact always harmful to the agent (cf. 460e6,481b5). Granted this claim it seems to follow that the tyrant doesn't desire to do the thing he typically does do; or, put another way, doesn't do what he desires to do. Hence he is powerless. For how can anyone who (typically) fails to do what he desires be considered powerful?' Now it seems to follow from the above considerations that unjust action is never what any agent desires to do, tyrant or no. Isn't that to say, then, that the unjust agent always acts against his desire, or against his will which is to say involuntarily? The view that no one is voluntarily unjust is, of course, a Socratic Paradox.2 Does the foregoing argument constitute