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Ethics 19 Notes 02 BARRY STOCKER (Dr) Faculty of Science and Letters Assistant Professor Department of Humanities and Social Science ([email protected]) https://barrystockerac.wordpress.com ETHICS. AUTUMN 2019 İTB 219E NOTES: WEEK TWO Protagoras continued. The discussion between Socrates and Protagoras breaks down half way through the dialogue as explained at the end of the notes for last week. Everyone gathered in the house wants it to continue. One person suggests a referee so that the discussion can continue in a way that is fair to both speakers. Someone suggests the discussion should not be an ‘eris’, that is a struggle, strife or conflict. It is suggested that Socrates and Protagoras accept a middle way between their two approaches. That is Socrates’ approach of short questions and answers; Protagoras’ approach of long speeches. Socrates’ approach is dialectic (interaction in speech). Protagoras’ approach is rhetoric (the art of one person making a speech). Their discussion moves to poetry. They discuss a poem by Simonides (of Ceos). He was one of the most highly regarded poets of ancient Greece, but none of his poems survive as complete poems. The Protagoras is one of the sources of fragments of his poems, which is all that remains. Socrates quotes Homer’s poetic epic Iliad a couple of times, Plato has a complex attitude towards Homer. There are indications in other dialogues that Plato is against the strong presence of Homer in Greek culture, because of the immoral behaviour of the gods. In Homer, the gods are shown to be driven by anger, pride, revenge, and lust. Plato prefers treating the gods as models of perfect virtue. Despite this, Socrates often quotes Homer in Plato’s dialogues as a source of wisdom. The discussion of Simonides’ poem, refers to the view of virtue he takes. Protagoras says to Socrates that the poem contains a contradiction in its view of virtue. One line says it is hard to be virtuous. Another line says it is wrong to say it is hard to be virtuous. Socrates’ response is to suggest that the poem is saying: a. It is hard to become virtuous, b. It is less hard to stay virtuous once you have become virtuous. He adds the thought that the poem addresses itself to the difference between a god who is perfectly virtuous and the mass of humanity which is mostly virtuous, but sometimes does bad things. It is not hard for the god to stay virtuous, but it is much more hard for any human to avoid error and do a bad thing. This is a matter of error not deliberate badness. As Socrates, goes onto explain, after the discussion of the poem, he does not think that anyone is deliberately bad. Badness comes from ignorance about what is good rather than a choice to be bad. In his discussion of the poem, Socrates argues that it picks up on an ancient wise saying about how hard it is to be virtuous and challenges it. Socrates refers to wise sayings which circulated in hidden forms. This is the philosophical tradition, before there were philosophical texts, distinct from the poor understanding contained in everyday discussions. Socrates’ view of the origin of philosophy also takes him into a discussion of the role of Sparta and Crete (but mostly Sparta) in Greek philosophy. He puts Crete and Sparta first as philosophical places, though they did not contribute to written Greek philosophy. Greek philosophy began with Thales of Miletus (western "2 Anatolia, near Efes/Ephesus). Plato claims that Thales was an admirer of Sparta and that other famous Greek wise men were admirers of Sparta, including Solon, the legendary author of the laws of Athens. Spartans were expected to live modestly, wearing one cloak all year round and eating simple good, with equality in wealth between citizens. This was part of the extreme military life of the Spartans which is how they were able to defend their ownership of the land from the helots (semi-slaves), as well as defend the state against external enemies. Spartan males had to leave home and start military training at the age of 7. The military training was extremely tough and discipline was extremely strict. As adults, Spartan men had to to live in an army barracks even when married. Cowardice in war was an extreme disgrace and led to the exclusion of Spartans from normal citizen rights. The Spartans had imposed a council of 30 tyrants on Athens after the Peloponnesian war, and Socrates’ connections with some of its members was a motive for the trial which led to his death. The war was seen in Athens as a struggle against the Spartan way of life. Pericles’ funeral speech in The Peloponnesian War by Thucydides famously said that the Athenians were more free and more developed as people than the Spartans who lived very constrained lives devoted to war. As Socrates points out in the Protagoras, there were admirers of Sparta across Greece, including Athens. He says that most of them failed to understand that the Spartans were the real philosophers of Greece, sending foreigners away when they discussed philosophy. He suggests that though Spartans start philosophical discussions slowly they arrive at a point where they undermine the other speaker in a few words (the Spartans were famous for speaking in very short phrases, the English word ‘laconic’ for speaking with few words comes from another name for Spartans, Lacaedemonians, or Laconians). Most informed people now would consider this to be an idealisation. Socrates also refers to the education of women in Sparta, which has some truth as women were more equal to men compared with Athens, though it was not complete equality. Some of the same qualities are attributed to Crete but Plato has less to say about this. A large part of what he likes about Sparta and Crete is that they were the oldest Greek states, so can be seen as closest to traditional wisdom. Moving onto the discussion of virtue, Socrates argues that Protagoras is wrong to say that courage is unlike all other virtues. He forces Protagoras to admit that cowardice comes from lack of knowledge about where real danger is. The experienced solider shows courage because he knows the best way to fight and how to minimise danger. Socrates takes this as an example of how virtue comes from knowledge, so that badness comes from ignorance. The overall aim of virtue is to achieve pleasure and avoid pain. However, some pain is necessary for overall pleasure, as in exercise to become healthy, just as too much pleasure can lead to pain as in eating unhealthily. Virtue requires an art of measurement so that we know when to avoid pleasure and avoid pain. In this way, pleasure becomes part of an honourable life which is truly happy. Virtue and knowledge are the same. The audience says that it is strange that Socrates had said earlier that virtue cannot be taught since he is now saying it is part of knowledge. The answer presumably is a theory that Plato explains elsewhere (Meno, Phaedrus, Republic) according to which we have a soul that exists before birth which at one time contained pure knowledge. In life, education and philosophical education reminds us of what our soul knows inside but we have forgotten). Teaching then is not teaching as generally understood, but an aid to remember what we already know but forgot..
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