Commentary on Nehamas The Limits of Socratic Intellectualism: Did Socrates Teach Arete? Amélie Osenberg Rorty

Socrates was evasive in answering the question, "Can virtue be taught?", and he had good reasons for being evasive. Put so baldly, the question is equivocal. Socrates had to face the problems of those who think that common conceptions about such matters might be ill-formed. The terminology is tainted: Socrates is painfully aware of the fact that in speaking of arete and of didaskein, he is evoking the very conceptions he thinks need to be examined critically, and perhaps need to be rede - fined. As Socrates was the first to say, we cannot determine whether virtue can be taught until we have determined what virtue is. But we also need to determine in what teaching con - sists, who could qualify as a teacher, and what conditions must be satisfied for someone to be capable of learning virtue. Let us suppose that Socrates' attack on the Sophists has shown that virtue essentially embeds or requires knowledge of what is good and bad: without such knowledge a person might, even with the best of intentions, bring harm to those he wishes to benefit. The centrality of knowledge to virtue justifies identifying it with knowledge only if knowledge of what is good and bad assures whatever other conditions -- say conditions of tempera - ment and character -- might be required for living well. If, as Nehamas says, (p. 294) virtue is "the capacity for achieving a justi - fiably high reputation among one's peers and the achieved reputation as well," then it is the capacities for living well that justify the reputation rather than the capacities for achieving the repufation, even achieving it justifiably. The capacities for living well are primary; the capacities for getting a justifiably high reputation for living well might not be identical with those for living well, even if we put strong conditions on justifiability. Socrates' position on whether virtue can be taught depends on whether the kind of knowledge that constitutes living well can be taught. Socrates might be an intellectualist about virtue, identifying it with knowledge of what is good and bad, yet not be an intellectualist about knowledge. Full knowledge might require a set of conditions that go beyond having, and properly defending true beliefs: it might, for instance require the active disposition to apply those beliefs appropriately, in any contexts where their import might be relevant. Whether these extra nonintellectualist conditions on knowledge undermine Socratic intellectualism in ethics depends on Socrates' account of how knowledge affects acting well and living well. Many interpreters have argued that the knowledge of what is good involves some eroticised evaluation, or that it consists in some sort of techne, knowing how to do something. I do not think these familiar versions of the limits of Socratic moral intellectualism -- thoroughly canvassed, and thoroughly discredited by Nehamas --will do. There is another interpretation of Socrates' modified intellectual - ism I want to explore. On this reading, Plato must be seen, even in the early dialogues, as the first in a long line of deconstructivist interpreters of Socrates. His dramatic presentation of Socratic discussions subtly undermines the views that Socrates presents. Socrates may hold, and practice an intellectualist position about virtue. But is he presented as holding and practicing an intellec - tualist position about knowledge? In a sense, yes; and in a sense, no. Certainly the knowledge which is at the core of virtue doesn't solely -- though it also essentially -- consist in knowing what is good and bad, that is, in being able to formulate, and ap - propriately justify true beliefs about what is good, bad and indif - ferent. But this cannot be the whole story. Significantly, know - ledge of what is good and bad is also knowledge of how to act well. Are the virtuous craftsmen? How is the ability (and disposi - tion) to act well connected to the disposition to define and de - fend true beliefs about what is good? Are these apparently dis - tinguishable technai identical? Though the knowledge of virtue is also a species of techne, the virtuous are not craftsmen. For one thing, craftsmen are specialized: a cook is not a shoemaker, and it is rare that even a master rhetorician is a reliable cook. But the virtuous are presumably good at knowing how to live well,