MORALITY‘S WEAKER ARGUMENT: DE JURE AUTHORITY IN PLATO‘S GORGIAS

ABSTRACT:

Socrates‘ failure to defend himself against the charge that he ―makes the weaker argument defeat

the stronger‖ is an omission that requires explanation. Modern scholarship supports the

conventional portrait of Socrates as a proponent of ethico-religious teleology (ERT), who is

concerned essentially with morality and ethics. After rejecting an obvious logicist interpretation

of the charge, and taking seriously the speculative suggestion that Socrates was a sophist with

craft knowledge of the art of rhetoric, I undertake a textual analysis of the Gorgias to elicit

Socrates‘ overall position and argument about morality. That position, I argue, amounts to a

formulation of de jure authority. In conclusion, I propose the following interpretation: because

Socrates identifies moral striving itself with ―the weaker argument,‖ he views the charge as just

(that is, its principal assertion is true); thus, he has no reason to defend himself against it.

I originally delivered this paper at the 1992 American Philosophical Association annual meeting in Louisville,

Kentucky, an invited paper of the Plato Symposium. Professor Henry Teloh of Vanderbilt University commented on the essay. I have made some slight stylistic revisions to the text and endnotes.

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MORALITY‘S WEAKER ARGUMENT: DE JURE AUTHORITY IN PLATO‘S GORGIAS

On three separate occasions early in his defense, Socrates tells the Athenian jury that he

―makes the weaker argument defeat the stronger.‖1 Each mention of this particular offense

occurs in a litany of principal charges brought against Socrates by his accusers. Yet nowhere

does Socrates defend himself against this particular accusation. Since he does such a thorough

job of defending himself against the other charges, this omission would appear to require

explanation.

Perhaps the simplest explanation is that either Socrates or Plato (or both) understood the

charge‘s principal assertion to be true and therefore to require no defense. Is there an

understanding or interpretation of this charge, consistent with the conventional picture of

Socrates, that is capable of justifying such a hypothesis? What is the charge‘s principal

assertion? What does it mean to say of someone that ―he makes the weaker argument defeat the

stronger‖?

It might mean that Socrates is a sort of shyster lawyer who engages in the art of rhetoric,

who persuades his audience by manipulating or appealing to psychological factors (for example,

emotions). On this account, the principal assertion would be that Socrates makes the (logically)

weaker argument defeat the (logically) stronger. There are several reasons for rejecting this

interpretation, of which I will mention three. (1) While Plato is not above occasionally putting

weak or fallacious arguments into Socrates‘ mouth, on the whole the arguments he makes are not

obviously fallacious.2 (2) Practically nobody is persuaded by the arguments Socrates makes.

3 (3)

This interpretation derives its plausibility from a modern distinction between logic and rhetoric,

which views them as diametrically opposed and identifies rhetoric with fallacious reasoning.

Logic and rhetoric were not so distinguished from one another in Plato‘s day, since logic as a

formal discipline did not exist.4 Taken together, these constitute decisive reasons for rejecting the

interpretation that Socrates makes logically weak arguments defeat logically strong ones.

Besides, this interpretation simply violates the conventional picture of Socrates.

On the other hand, there is a sense in which Socrates wants to persuade, and in which he

clearly is engaged in the art of rhetoric. I share Paul Carus‘ conviction that ―Socrates opposed the

sophists, but in all theoretical points he was one of them. There was only this difference, that he

insisted on the moral nature of man and thus became the noblest exponent of the sophistic

principle.‖5

To suggest that Socrates possessed craft knowledge of rhetoric raises questions that are

worth trying to untangle, even if the effort ultimately fails for lack of evidence. Is the difference

between the historical Socrates and the figure who appears in the early dialogues like the

difference between the historical Clarence Darrow and the figure of Henry Drummond (based on

Darrow) in Inherit the Wind? Darrow was a self-confessed atheist and determinist whereas

2

Drummond discloses himself by the play‘s end as the soul of piety. Did Socrates practice

rhetoric? Was he a sophist? Did he make moral arguments? (What is a moral argument? Did

Darrow make them, too? Are the moral arguments of Darrow like the moral arguments Socrates

made?) Such questions are inseparable, for how we answer any one of them affects the answers

we give the others.

It is primarily for the sake of our own time that it is worth trying to untangle and answer

what are perhaps unanswerable questions, worth trying to get clear about the historical Socrates,

to see whether what has been thought admirable in the conventional portrait of Socrates still

seems worthwhile. Whatever the differences between ancient Athens and our own experience,

we are surrounded by more—not less—rhetoric and sophistry than Plato ever imagined, and of a

kind more varied in form and more potent, too. The ambivalence about rhetoric I alluded to

earlier is no doubt a product of this factual condition.

Taking a hint from Carus‘ remark that the only difference between Socrates and the

sophists was the former‘s concern with morality, I want to take a look at what is probably the

most indelible feature of the conventional portrait of Socrates: namely, his seemingly exclusive

concern with problems of ethics and morality.6

What is the ―moral argument‖ Socrates makes? In what follows, I propose to examine not

the subsidiary arguments but Socrates‘ overarching moral argument as Plato fashions it in the

Gorgias. By doing so, I hope to arrive at a satisfactory answer to our original question.

The first thing I want to draw attention to is the way that Plato uses the appearance-reality

distinction throughout this dialogue. In Part I (447-461b), where Socrates engages Gorgias, the

real and apparent aims of rhetoric are contrasted. The distinction is tied to the contradiction

Socrates detects in Gorgias‘ claims that a rhetorician might make ―wrongful use of this faculty

and craft‖ (457b) and that ―the rhetorician must necessarily be just‖ (460c). The distinction is

further developed in Part II (461b-481c), through Socrates‘ analysis and evaluation of rhetoric,

the contrast focusing on Socrates‘ extraordinary and counter-intuitive claim that rhetoricians are

not powerful, in fact, they ―have the least power of any in the state‖ (466b). Two senses of power

are introduced and pitted against each other: the ordinary sense of worldly political power (P)

and the new sense that Socrates introduces of power associated with moral virtue or excellence

and, in short, with moral principle (P). In suggesting that only the power that is good for its

possessor is real, Socrates escapes the implied dualism in the notion of power. Socrates does not

question the superiority of P to P; it is this which gives to P whatever meaning or value it has.

In Part III (481c-527e), the contrast between appearance and reality is explicated via the

nature-convention distinction. Socrates contrasts in detail the sophistic model of rhetoric with

that of principled morality, deepening the earlier comparison of the two sense of power, in the

course of which both the underlying assumptions and the commitments of each model are

exposed. The appearance-reality distinction is forcefully, conclusively drawn. At the end,

Socrates tells his opponent: the kind of life you describe and defend ―is worthless.‖

Socrates represents an ethico-religious teleological (ERT) view of the universe, common

throughout antiquity; he is after knowledge, all right, but it is the sort of knowledge that is

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capable of altering the course or direction of one‘s life, knowledge of a type we should call

―religious‖ and ―moral.‖7 In Socrates‘ case, this knowledge expresses itself primarily in moral

terms. On his own account in the Apology, Socrates cannot imagine the gods lying.8 The gods

want mortals to strive for moral excellence; in Socrates, knowledge of moral goodness preceds a

proper religious piety. The chief (perhaps the only) difference between Socrates and the sophists

is that Socrates accepts the restriction and self-limitation imposed by moral law.9 For the ancient

Greeks, first principles were all invested with ethical and religious significance, and possessed

the authority of divine decree. What they termed variously Being, Word, Way and Mind, and

regarded as irreproachable moral order pervading the universe, was their primitive conception of

law, with which knowledge of the self was intimately connected. The view that the kosmos

embodied a moral law provided the first model for a certain view of rationality, and for

subsequent views about the rationality of any principle which might be discovered or embodied

in the physical universe.10

Socrates‘ moral position (or argument) amounts to this: Moral virtue or excellence is real.

Although independent of human community or consciousness, this fundamental reality is

nevertheless accessible to individual persons. A link or connection exists between this moral

reality and the soul or self. Socrates promises nothing, but implies that without moral striving

and inquiry, life is worthless.11

Such a position (if Socrates held it) would consistently explain Socrates‘ calm stature in

the face of his unjust trial and impending death, the equanimity attributed to him by Plato in the

Apology, Crito and Phaedo. Even if the portrait of Socrates in these dialogues is something of an

idealization on Plato‘s part and Plato has, so to speak, put the best face on Socrates, still there

must have been something of inherent dignity in the original figure for Plato to have been so

impressed by Socrates‘ performance.

From the analysis of the appearance-reality distinction so far plus the claim that Socrates

represents an ERT, it might appear that Socrates is something of an otherworldly crank. Does he

really believe, after all, that rhetoricians and tyrants (ad-men and serial killers) have no power?

Does Socrates really believe that power is (and is only) what he says it is? To fully answer this

question, we will have to consider Part III of the Gorgias—Socrates‘ showdown with Callicles—

in greater detail; for that is where the appearance-reality distinction is finally brought to bear

upon the task of distinguishing the illusion of Callicles‘ sophistry from the reality of the morally

principled life.

Two other instances of the appearance-reality distinction, both occurring in Part III of the

dialogue, are worth noting. In the first, Callicles gives the appearance of Plato‘s account in The

Republic: ―..the nobler...the better and wiser man should rule over and have more than the

inferior man‖ (490a). –Callicles calls this ―natural justice.‖ The second is simply Socrates‘

conclusion at 527 that ―a man should study not to seem but to be good.‖

It is in this part of the dialogue that Callicles proposes the standard of ―natural justice‖

and the ―natural man‖ (483b, d, e; ―nature‘s true justice‖ 484c; 488b).12

Callicles asserts (at

492a, b) that the weak and inferior make slaves of those who are ―naturally better‖; one can

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almost hear Rousseau‘s ―Man is born free; yet is everywhere in chains.‖ Callicles‘ definition of

happiness as the ability to satisfy all cravings and desires is reminiscent of Plato‘s treatment of

the tyrannical man in Book IX of The Republic. There is, in fact, a passage worth recalling for

the insight it gives us into Callicles‘ cynicism, one of those passages in Plato that might have

been written last week. It is the one where Thrasymachus describes the form of ―despotism,

which uses force or fraud to plunder the goods of others, public or private, sacred or profance,

and to do it in a wholesale way. If you are caught committing any one of these crimes on a small

scale, you are punished and disgraced; they call it sacrilege, kidnapping, burglary, theft and

brigandage. But if, besides taking their property, you turn all your countrymen into slaves, you

will hear no more of those ugly names; your countrymen themselves will call you the happiest of

men and bless your name, and so will everyone who hears of such a complete triumph of

injustice; for when people denounce justice, it is because they are afraid of suffering wrong, not

of doing it.‖13

Plato introduces the nature-convention distinction at 482-489. Nature and convention,

Callicles asserts, are antagonists. ―...if a man speaks on the basis of convention, you [i.e.,

Socrates] question him on the basis of nature, but if he follows nature, you follow convention.‖ It

is unfair or deceitful of Socrates to employ this ―clever trick‖ (or so Callicles claims).

This argument reaches its culmination when Socrates gets Callicles to concede that it is

also the view of the many or the majority ―that justice means equal shares, not excess, and that it

is more shameful to do than to suffer wrong...‖

Then it is not by convention only, but also by nature that it is more shameful to do than to

suffer wrong and true justice to share equally; so apparently..you were mistaken in

attacking me when you said that convention and nature are opposed and that I have

recognized this and do not play fairly in debate, but invoke convention if a man refers to

nature, or nature, when he refers to convention (489c).

This is where Callicles loses his temper and accuses Socrates of being ―captious about

words.‖ It is worth noting that Socrates does not do what Callicles accuses him of doing—

namely, reducing nature to convention or convention to nature, for expedience‘s sake—but

Callicles does; in fact, like a latter-day Romantic, Callicles seems to virtually worship Nature:

―But if a man arises endowed with a nature sufficiently strong, he will, I believe, shake off all

these controls, burst his fetters, and break loose. And trampling upon our scraps of paper, our

spells and incantations, and all our unnatural conventions, he rises up and reveals himself our

master who was once our slave, and there shines forth nature‘s true justice.‖

Callicles abuses Socrates verbally, trying to humiliate him, as the demeaning and

trivializing comparison of philosophy with the ―play‖ of children brings out (485b). Philosophy

is fine for the young, Callicles says, but real men don‘t waste their time in such idle pursuits. It is

equally clear what Callicles‘ paradigm of nature is—violence, force, power in the strict sense of

the power to dominate others physically or emotionally. A fellow like Socrates, he goes so far as

to maintain, ―one may even boxs on the ears with impunity‖ (486c).

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Nothing is more conventional than the view that Callicles presents. It represents not so

much an agreement between nature and convention as an ontological reduction of one to the

other.14

Socrates, on the other hand, combines reference to both convention and nature in a

judgment that harmonizes both by allowing each an equal weight or value. This can only come

about because the judgment is based on experience; that is, it is rooted in reality. By contrast,

with Callicles‘ judgment there is no question of a balance or equality between the two

components: one or the other—nature or convention—is subjugated to the other. Whatever is, is

right. The point, however, should not be lost: by representing a different kind of agreement

between nature and convention (one that is not ontologically eliminative or reductionist),

Socrates elude Callicles‘ original accusation.

Moral inquiry and discourse are exhausted by a distinction between conventional and

critical morality. Socrates‘ persistent use of the distinction between appearance and reality

dovetails into his use of the nature-convention distinction in Part III. Together, the two constitute

a Platonic approximation of the fact-value distinction, a heuristic supposedly not available before

Hume in the 18th

century.

What is natural about Socrates‘ example at 489c just is the fact of conventional

morality—that the many do in fact hold such a view as Socrates claims they do. (It is presumably

Callicles‘ recognition of this fact that compels his acquiescence.)

But Socrates‘ contention also constitutes an instance of critical morality: for his

maintaining that justice is equal shares and that it is better to suffer than to do harm is itself

compelling, over and above the empirical fact of instantiation (that is, that is is conventionally-

held by the many). Moreover, it is compelling in a way that Callicles‘ claim about violence is

not. Socrates is justified in characterizing Callicles‘ view of natural justice: ―the more powerful

carries off by force the property of the weaker, the better rules over the worse, and the nobler

takes more than the meaner...‖ (488b). Callicles‘ tantrum is understandable, if not justifiable.

MacIntyre ties moral excellence, the ―functioning well as a man‖ to a man‘s performance

as a citizen in a city-state. ―To succeed there,‖ he writes, ―it is necessary to conform to the

prevailing conventions as to what is right, just, and fitting. ...What one must do therefore is to

study prevailing usages and learn to adapt oneself to them, so as to mold one‘s hearers

successfully.‖15

But how does this moral excellence differ from the ―charitable feeling‖ Kant

calls ―complaisance‖?

an inclination to be agreeable to others by friendliness, by consent to their demands, and

by conformity of our conduct with their intentions....But it is not at all a virtue, for where

higher principles do not set bounds for it and weaken it, all the depravities can spring

from it. For—not to mention that this complaisance toward those with whom we are

concerned is very often an injustice toward otheres who are outside this little circle—if

one takes this incitement alone, such a man can have all the depravities, not out of

immediate inclination but because he likes to live so as to please others. Out of

kindhearted fellowship he will be a liar, an idler, a drunkard, or the like, for he does not

act by the rules that are directed to good conduct in general, but rather by an inclination

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that in itself is beautiful but becomes trifling when it is without support and without

principles.16

Socrates is under no illusions as to what the polis is like. He understands the current,

prevailing and conventional reality of Athens, in terms that prefigure his trial and execution

(508c, d), answering the taunt that Callicles threw at him earlier (486a-d). Remarking his sacred

ethical mission, Socrates returns Callicles‘ box on the ears (526d, e; 527e).

Socrates‘ ultimate position on morality is like a de jure formulation of authority. Socrates

knows that the conventional world of Athenian politics is the actual world, and that the world in

which men pursue a life based on first-order principle is not; for, had he been confused about

this, he would not have bothered to exhort men to take care of their souls. ―How is it,‖ pragmatic

men may object, ―that Socrates can recognize this, yet stake his life on an indissoluble nexus

between conventional and critical morality, while asserting the superiority of the latter?‖

First, we might notice the relationship of critical morality to violence and coercion:

Socrates eschews these options, while Callicles defends them on naturalistic grounds

(maximization of pleasure).17

Second, this sort of violence is deeply connected with

paternalism—not, perhaps, the refined modern definitions of Gerald Dworkin or Joel Feinberg

but with a ruder sort defined in terms of a basic inequality, a division into ―strong‖ and ―weak,‖

ruler and ruled, adult and child (we could well add ‗man and woman,‘ ‗employer and employee‘

to these pairings). ―A person like you, Socrates, one may even box on the ears with impunity.‖

Does an exclusive preoccupation with the mere appearance of morality not make it easier to, say,

invade Iraq under false pretenses, spy on one‘s own citizens, and covertly embrace policies of

torture and assassination? To manipulate conventional appearances to the exclusion of all

thought of substantive critical morality (as advertising and mass-marketing requires) is to elevate

what Plato calls the very form of despotism, the wholesale injustice Thrasymachus defends in

The Republic, the colossal crime that turns ―all your countrymen into slaves.‖

Not only does it make a better story to suppose that Socrates began as an enthusiastic

sophist and rhetorician, it also plausibly accounts for his coming to see the import to moral

action of distinguishing conventional appearance from critical reality. To realize that ―Man is not

the measure of all things‖ is to know that reality is not in the eye of the beholder. In fact, the very

elusiveness or incomprehensibility of moral law might make it more real, since ―our

conceptualizing capacity can even range over power that, from the perceptual and imaginative

viewpoint of a finite creature, is incomprehensible as a totality.‖18

Such claims as Socrates makes

in Gorgias are the resulting ―insights‖ of the ―experience of thinking.‖19

―Paternalism‖—so held Kant—―was the grossest form of despotism.‖20

Plato, because he

stands at the beginning of our political tradition, could not explicitly formulate the problem of

paternalism; but he knew the reality of it in his own society and the origin of it in the human

psyche. It was Socrates who had shown him the way to it.

It is the intensity of the personal history which gives ―the personal stamp‖ signifying ―a

rich existence..[and] development.‖21

As Hannah Arendt had suggested in The Human

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Condition, we do know much better who Socrates was—despite the fact that he left no writings

behind—than we do Aristotle, ―about whose opinions we are so much better informed‖—

―because we know his story.‖22

Socrates‘ familiarity with the art of rhetoric far surpasses his

acquaintance with other subjects—medicine, navigation, husbandry—in any of the other

dialogues. This knowledge is first-hand. When Socrates talks about rhetoric, he speaks as an

insider. There is no doubt that Socrates was a persuasive speaker. ―Persuasive speaking, in

assembly and law courts, was felt to be the key to worldly success, the way to wealth and

influence and power.‖23

Socrates must have been drawn to the sophists and rhetoricians, to their

promise of improving men; for the belief that virtue or excellence is teachable constitutes

Socrates‘ ―greatest point of agreement with sophists.‖24

Socrates is not less interested in teaching

success in living than Gorgias or Callicles; rather, he differs from them in his definition of what

constitutes such success.

What persuaded Socrates about his definition was an aesthetic experience. ―For the scope

of rational cognition can be ‗realized‘ just as much by the appearance of vastness and power, as

it can by the vastness or power of a real object.‖25

The ground of our pleasure in sublimity is ―a

felt harmony between the sensible world and our cognitive capacities or creative abilities.‖26

The

sublime is connected with morality: ―...aesthetic experience—and the sublime in particular—has

the capacity to humanize.‖27

Morality is the weaker argument that ordinarily loses out to worldly power and

conventional interests, yet which, at Socrates‘ hands, is seen—as if for the first time—to be

irresistibly powerful, radiant, alone worthy of human dignity and sacrifice.

ENDNOTES

1 Apol., 18c, 19b, 23d. Jowett renders the phrase: ―makes the appear the better cause.‖ Grube translates it: ―makes

the worse into the stronger argument.‖ For this essay I have adopted Hugh Tredennick‘s translation from the

standard The Collected Dialogues of Plato, Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (eds.), Bollingen Series LXXI

(Princeton University Press, 1961).

This very claim was originally attributed to Protagoras and others. See Walter Burkert, Greek Religion,

Translated by John Raffan (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1985), 313. If Plato‘s attributions

are historically faithful and Socrates did mention the charge three times during his trial, why did Socrates neglect to

defend himself against it? On the opposite assumption, why did Plato feel compelled as an artist to have Socrates

mention a charge he did not mention during the actual trial? (Perhaps somebody else mentioned it.) Why have

Socrates bring it up at all if Plato was not going to let him answer the charge? Why embellish the account in this

particular way? Certainly, there is something of the whistle-blower about the historical Socrates. For a relevant

treatment of whistle-blowing, see Richard T. De George, Business Ethics, Second Edition (New York: Macmillan

Publishing Company, 1988), 223-225, 226.

2 Certainly, not all of the arguments Socrates makes are of equal worth. See, for example, Alasdair MacIntyre, A

Short History of Ethics (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1966), 20, 46-47; Richard Robinson,

―Elenchus: Direct and Indirect,‖ 105-106; S. Marc Cohen, ―Socrates on the Definition of Piety: Euthyphro 10A-

11B,‖ 158; Gerasimos Santos, ―Socrates At Work On Virtue And Knowledge In Plato‘s Laches,‖ 205, and ―Plato‘s

2

Protagoras And Explanations Of Weakness,‖ 265, included in Gregory Vlastos (ed.) The Philosophy of Socrates

(University of Notre Dame Press, 1971, 1980). For Gorgias, see Mary Margaret Mackenzie, Plato on Punishment

(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), 160-161; 241-244.

3 Richard Robinson, ―Elenchus‖ (in Vlastos, 1980), 90-91.

4 A. R. Lacey, ―Our Knowledge of Socrates,‖ argues that Socrates did not typically rely on a didactic question-and-

answer method (Vlastos, 40). If we take this in conjunction with Robinson‘s insistence on the ―personal character‖

of Socratic elenchus, it is reasonable to infer that Socrates did not regard his primary mission to be either teaching or

advancing logic.

5 Of course, one may question whether such commitment to man‘s ―moral nature‖ does not in fact constitute a

theoretical point of difference. However this may be, I take it that Carus‘ fundamental insight is unaffected. For

Carus‘ remark, see his essay ―Kant‘s Philosophy‖ in Immanuel Kant. Prolegomena (La Salle, Illinois: Open Court

Publishing Company, 1902), 168. Cf. Paul Friedlander, Plato, An Introduction, Translated from The German By

Hans Meyerhoff, Bollingen Series LIX (Princeton University Press, 1958), 23.

Between G. M. A. Grube‘s observation that the Apology purports ―to be a record of the actual speech that

Socrates delivered‖ and his reminder that ―the ancients did not expect historical accuracy in the way we do,‖ there is

a gap or blind spot to which moderns, with our ambivalence about rhetoric, are peculiarly liable [Plato. Five

Dialogues (Hackett Publishing Company, 1981), 23]. On the whole, the tendency among modern philosophers is to

treat the Apology as a quasi-historical artifact, exempt from dramatic and artistic considerations. Gregory Vlastos,

―The Paradox of Socrates,‖ is a notable exception in specifying that ―The Apology ...was not journalism, but art‖ (3).

A. D. Woozley, ―Socrates On Disobeying The Law,‖ is altogether representative: ―[The Apology] is not a

dialogue..[and]..may be taken fairly to represent the views of the actual Socrates‖ (in Vlastos, 300). But Vlastos‘

disclosure about the way he used the Apology to chop down any suggestion that these dialogues might primarily

have served Plato‘s rhetorical and ideological designs is telling (8).

6 Hannah Arendt also took the view that Socrates was primarily an ethical teacher, since the only ―positive

statements‖ attributable to him are ethical ones. For Arendt‘s construction of an ―ideal model‖ of Socrates, see

―Thinking and Moral Considerations: A Lecture,‖ Social Research 38 (1971): 417-466. Most of her article found its

way, with minor revisions, into Arendt‘s Gifford Lectures, posthumously published as The Life of the Mind One-

volume Edition (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978), 166-193. Most commentators mention the centrality

of ethics and morality in the life-work of Socrates, though few recognize the importance of Socrates‘ religious

―mission‖ as clearly as Gregory Vlastos (in Vlastos, 1980, 7, 16, 21).

7 This view asserts that (a) the world forms a single system, embodying (b) a principle or pattern of order that is (c)

supreme, understood on analogy with political rule by kingship and nobility that was common throughout antiquity,

(d) affording a framework for teleological explanation, associated with the higher purpose of divine command, (e)

thereby integrating explanations of the world with explanations of the self (and vice-versa). That Socrates is a

proponent of such a view is, I take it, at least part of the burden of Vlastos‘ essay. A great part of what Vlastos finds

paradoxical about Socrates is that, although Socrates‘ model of knowledge is deductive, the sort of knowledge he

was actually after is empirical, inductive knowledge (16). To argue thus is, I believe, anachronistic since it depends

on a concept of knowledge that was simply not available to the Greeks. Besides, it is arguable on the basis of the

dialogues alone that Socrates did not mistake the practical character of moral reasoning. But Vlastos overlooks the

observation that Socrates typically relies on an inductive method, or at least as inductive as he can be, given the

applicable historical and linguistic limitations. At any rate, I believe that Vlastos has erroneously characterized as

deductive the supremacy (or command) feature of ERT, as given above.

R. M. Hare, Plato (Oxford University Press, 1984), 45: ―[The idea that] we can explain everything by

giving its purpose‖ is one ―which Socrates took to heart.‖ As a proponent of ERT, Socrates must have been very

3

interested indeed in such purposes where human beings were concerned. A. R. Lacey, ―Our Knowledge of

Socrates,‖ believes that there is ―little positive reason‖ to attribute ―an interest in teleological explanation‖ to

Socrates (Vlastos, 43). Surely Lacey means a theoretical interest in teleological explanation. George Nakhnikian

argues that ―the first step in the Socratic analysis of a good man is that he is a man whose character is such as to

cause him to perform well his essentially human function, viz., the function of a rational animal‖ (Vlastos, 157).

This sort of functional analysis requires reference to basic or natural purposes of the creature. Teleological

explanation is simply explanation in terms of precisely such purposes. For Socrates, natural purposes of human

persons are existing structures or ―essences‖; they are among what is most real (Cf. R. E. Allen, ―Plato‘s Earlier

Theory of Forms,‖ in Vlastos, 329). One such purpose—if not indeed for Socrates the highest and most real—is

morality itself, the striving for moral goodness or excellence, arête. If only because moral argument is one form of

teleological argument, it seems perverse to deny that Socrates is interested in teleological argument.

8 Cf. Richard Feynman (talking about cracking the puzzle of the Dresden Codex): ―You know there‘s sense behind

the damn thing.‖

9 Cf. Arendt, ―Thinking and Moral Considerations,‖ 440-446.

10 Max Hamburger, The Awakening of Western Legal Thought, Bernard Miall, Translator (New York: Biblio &

Tannen, 1942), 4-8, 9, 13, 14, 17, 122, 125; Edward Hussey, The Presocratics (London: Duckworth, 1972), 14, 15,

30-40, 46-49; Giovanni Reale, From the Origins to Socrates. I. A History of Ancient Philosophy, Edited and

Translated From the Fourth Italian Edition by John R. Catan (State University of New York Press, 1987), 12, 13, 17,

307-326.

11 I am unpersuaded that Socrates has any commitment whatsoever to the immortality of the soul, or indeed to

anything like the substantive soul of Descartes. The Phaedo, for example, can be suitably interpreted in its entirety

without committing Socrates to anything stronger than the importance of discourse and reflection about the soul. Cf.

R. E. Allen, ―Plato‘s Earlier Theory of Forms,‖ in Vlastos, 334. The late Richard Feynman‘s remarks about the

limits of science and metaphysics seem apropos: ―We have no deeper understanding. If we had a deeper

understanding, we‘d all go nutty.‖ The historical Socrates must often have been driven, as a result of the intensity of

his self-examining method, to a position not unlike the one expressed by Feynman‘s remark, of which his remark

(perhaps because it is hyperbolic) represents an extreme limit. Cf. Arendt on the destructiveness of Socrates‘ (and

Socratic) thinking, The Life of the Mind Vol. I: Thinking, 176-177, 192-193.

12 See MacIntyre (1966), 17-18.

13 F. M. Cornford, The Republic of Plato (Oxford University Press, 1945, 1978), 25-26.

14 It is unclear to me just how Alasdair MacIntyre‘s account of the nature-convention distinction might be applied to

the Gorgias. ―A man who lives in a given state and conforms to its required standards is a creature of convention; a

man who is equally at home in any state or none, depending upon his own personal and private purposes, is a

creature of nature‖ (1966, 16). Is Socrates a conventional person or a ―creature of nature‖ according to MacIntyre‘s

criteria? The difficulty is that this passage applies equally well either to Callicles or to Socrates, and so fails to

distinguish them in an important (and obvious) sense. Nor does MacIntyre do much to clear this up when he

subsequently writes: ―When to that is added an identification of the moral with the conventional, the identification

of the premoral and nonmoral agent with the natural man is complete. The natural man has no moral standards of his

own‖ (16). If, as MacIntyre supposes, the ―natural man is merely a man from another and earlier culture‖ (17), and

the ―presocial turns out to presuppose the existence of some social order‖ (18), then the natural man‘s values are

simply those of an earlier social order. This again applies equally to Socrates or Callicles. I. F. Stone appears to have

folloowed some such pattern as this in his portrait of Socrates as a not-so-lovable crank and ―monarchist‖ who was

totally out of step with his times (The Trial of Socrates, Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1988, 17).

4

15 MacIntyre, 14.

16 Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime, Translated by John T. Goldthwait (Berkeley:

University of California Press, 1960), 59-60. We know Kant‘s notion of complaisance as ―people-pleasing.‖

17 Socrates interestingly defends both his odd definition of power and his belief that it is worse to do than to suffer

harm by an appeal to consequences (at 468d, 470a, b and 477c).

18 Paul Crowther, The Kantian Sublime (Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1989), 149.

19 Arendt (1971), 439.

20 MacIntyre (1966), 198.

21 Erich Auerbach, Mimesis. The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, Translated From The German By

Willard R. Trask (Princeton University Press, 1953, Fourth Printing 1974), 18.

22 The Human Conidtion, Second Edition (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1958, 1998), 186.

23 A. R. Lacey (in Vlastos), 36.

24 MacIntyre, 21. Cf. Hannah Arendt, 431: ―Socrates, however, who is commonly said to have believed in the

teachability of virtue...‖ See also her discussion of this issue in The Life of the Mind (―Socrates, at any rate, is

commonly said to have believed in the teachability of virtue...‖), particularly in the context of her argument about

the relation of thinking to evil, 171-175.

25 Crowther (1989), 166.

26 Ibid., 166.

27 Op. cit., 172, 173, 174.