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Is Virtue Knowledge? Socratic Intellectualism Reconsidered1

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Is Virtue Knowledge? Socratic Intellectualism Reconsidered1 COLLOQUIUM 5 IS VIRTUE KNOWLEDGE? SOCRATIC INTELLECTUALISM RECONSIDERED1 JÖRG HARDY ABSTRACT In this paper, I argue for a non-reductive reading of Socratic intellectualism. Plato has Socrates arguing for the thesis that “the knowledge of the good and bad,” that is, the knowledge about human well-being, is not only necessary but even sufficient for virtue. But what kind of knowledge could virtue possibly be? The knowledge Socrates equates to virtue is the knowledge that we gain through the process of “questioning and examining ours and others’ beliefs” that makes a life an examined (or examining) life. The process of self- examination Socrates is concerned about is, as I take it, the source of both self- knowledge, and self-determination. The main objective of self-examination is to overcome what we may call avoidable ignorance. The search for definitional knowledge about human well-being to which we can only approximate pre- vents us to the maximum extent from avoidable ignorance about both good and bad things in the world, and our own mental states. SYNOPSIS I. Knowledge of the Good and Bad II. ‘All Desire is for the Good’ III. Examining and Caring: the Apology IV. Human Knowledge and Human Love: the Apology and the Symposium V. The Two-Fold Nature of Virtue: the Laches VI. Knowledgeable Fear and Confidence: the Protagoras VII. Wanting and Acting with or without Knowledge: the Gorgias VIII. From Necessity to Sufficiency: the Meno IX. Conclusion _________ 1 I am most grateful to David Roochnik, the commentator of my paper, May Sim, and the audience of the lecture and the seminar at the College of the Holy Cross for their inspiring comments. I am also grateful to the anonymous referee of this proceedings for extremely helpful comments that led to substantial changes of my paper. This essay includes revised parts of earlier (unpublished) papers. I owe valuable comments on these papers to Norbert Bloessner, Catherine Collobert, Wolfgang Detel, Ernst Heitsch, Michael-Thomas Liske, Alex Mourelatos, Tom Robinson, George Rudebusch, Jerry Santas, and Stephen White. 150 JÖRG HARDY I. Knowledge of the Good and Bad How ought we live? That is the intriguing question Socrates seeks to an- swer in Plato’s dialogues (cf., e.g., Gorgias 472c6-d1, 487e7-488a2, 500c1- 4, Republic I 352d5-6). According to Socrates, the life we ought to live is the good life, the life we want to live—once we know what it means to live a good life. The good life (or happiness: εὐδαιμονία) is the supreme goal of all our actions (Gorgias 467c-e, 472c-d, 499e, 500c, Symposium 205a, Re- public 357b-c). For Socrates, the good life is the ‘examined life,’ as op- posed to what he in the Apology famously calls the “life without examina- tion that is not worth living” (38a5f., cf. Crito 48b4-10). The examined life is the life of a person whose actions are guided by knowledge—by the knowledge that is to be acquired by way of questioning ourselves and ex- amining our and others’ beliefs (Ap. 28a, 37e-38a, 41b-c) as Socrates does in so many of Plato’s dialogues. Knowledge alone is, however, not the source of actions. The source of ac- tions is a person’s character as a whole, in a word: virtue (ἀρετή). Virtue is, above all, agency.2 An agent’s character is a very complex psychological state that consists of beliefs, desires, and emotions. If virtue is the source of good actions, and if good actions require knowledge, the possession of knowledge is, then, a necessary condition for the possession of virtue. Moreover, Socrates claims that a certain kind of knowledge is both neces- sary and sufficient for virtue. Socrates calls it “the knowledge of the good and bad” (Laches 199d4-7, Charmides 174c1-2). The knowledge of the good and bad is the knowledge about human well-being. (We may also call it eudaemonist knowledge, cf. Hardy 2008.) However, what kind of knowl- edge could virtue possibly be?3 An answer to this question comes into sight, if we look at the transition from the necessity to the sufficiency of the knowledge of the good and bad. In various dialogues, Socrates gets his interlocutors agreeing on the thesis that knowledge is necessary for virtuous, that is, good and beneficial ac- tions. He starts from the following observation: Any quality, such as perse- _________ 2 Brickhouse and Smith 1994, 114-117 emphasize that the examined life requires not only possessing a good soul but engaging in virtuous activity. Rudebusch 1999, 119 argues that “the possession of virtue entails its activity.” 3 Socrates himself would certainly ask that question if one of his interlocutors answered to the question “What is virtue?” that virtue is knowledge. In fact, Nicias says in the Laches that courage is knowledge. With this suggestion, he refers to an “excellent saying” that he knows from Socrates. Nicias has often heard Socrates saying “that every one of us is good in what he is wise and bad in what he is ignorant” (194c-d), and Socrates then asks him “what sort of wisdom courage would be.” .
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