Gregory Vlastos, Myles Burnyeat
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This is the companion volume to Gregory Vlastos' highly acclaimed work Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher. Four ground-breaking papers which laid the basis for his understanding of Socrates are collected here, in revised form: they examine Socrates' elenctic method of investigative argument, his disavowal of knowledge, his concern for definition, and the complica- tions of his relationship with the Athenian democracy. The fifth chapter is a new and provocative discussion of Socrates' arguments in the Protagoras and Laches. The epilogue "Socrates and Vietnam" suggests that Socrates was not, as Plato claimed, the most just man of his time. The papers have been prepared for publication by Professor Myles Burnyeat with the mini- mum of editorial intervention. This book will be essential reading for all students and scholars of ancient philosophy. SOCRATIC STUDIES SOCRATIC STUDIES GREGORY VLASTOS Formerly Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University and at the University of California at Berkeley EDITED BY MYLES BURNYEAT Laurence Professor of Ancient Philosophy in the University of Cambridge m>;|§gj CAMBRIDGE 0 UNIVERSITY PRESS CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521442138 © Cambridge University Press 1994 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 1994 Reprinted 1995 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Vlastos, Gregory. Socratic studies / Gregory Vlastos; edited by Myles Burnyeat. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and indexes. Contents: The Socratic elenchus — Socrates' disavowal of knowledge - Is the Socratic fallacy Socratic? - The historical Socrates and Athenian democracy - The Protagoras and the Laches - Epilogue: Socrates and Vietnam. ISBN 0 521 44213 3 (hardback) - ISBN 0 521 44735 6 (paperback) 1. Socrates. I. Burnyeat, Myles. II. Title. B317.V57 1994 183'.2-dc20 92-47419 CIP ISBN-13 978-0-521-44213-8 hardback ISBN-10 0-521-44213-3 hardback ISBN-13 978-0-521-44735-5 paperback ISBN-10 0-521-44735-6 paperback Transferred to digital printing 2006 CONTENTS Editor's preface page ix Abbreviations xiii 1 The Socratic elenchus: method is all i Appendix: The demise of the elenchus in the Euthydemus, Lysis, and Hippias Major 29 Postscript to "The Socratic elenchus" 33 2 Socrates' disavowal of knowledge 39 3 Is the "Socratic fallacy" Socratic? 67 4 The historical Socrates and Athenian democracy 87 5 The Protagoras and the Laches 109 Epilogue: Socrates and Vietnam 127 Additional notes 1.1 The chronological order of the dialogues 135 1.2 Elenchus vs. eristic 135 1.3 On Gorgias 508E-509A 137 3.1 Presumptive moral knowledge 138 Bibliography 141 Index of passages cited 145 Index of ancient names 148 Index of modern scholars 150 Index of Greek words 15 2 Vll EDITOR'S PREFACE Socratic Studies is the companion volume to Gregory Vlastos' Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher (1991). It contains, as promised in the Introduction (pp. 18-19) to that work, revised versions of three previously published essays on Socrates plus some new material. Sadly, not as much new material as he had planned to write. Chapter 1 derives from "The Socratic Elenchus," Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 1 (1983), 27-58. It is the most extensively revised, with some substantial changes and numerous smaller ones. The changes are GV's response to comments and criticisms made in the lively discussion that followed the original publication. The 1983 volume of Oxford Studies already contained (at pp. 71-4) GV's "Afterthoughts on the Socratic elenchus," which are here revised, expanded and made consistent with Chapter 1 under the heading "Postscript to 'The Socratic elenchus.'" In the course of entering corrections and improvements from vari- ous dates (the last being 30 January 1991) I have occasionally had to make a decision on whether an omission or change was deliberate or simply a slip in the typing up; I am confident that no point of substance is affected. In the Appendix to Chapter 1 GV started to expand his account of the Euthydemus, but only two inconclusive paragraphs were written; these have been omitted. Throughout the book I have checked references and corrected mistakes of citation. Chapter 2 derives from "Socrates' Disavowal of Knowledge," Philosophical Quarterly 35 (1985), 1-31. The major change is the removal of pp. 23-6 on the "Socratic Fallacy," which was super- seded by the material that appears here as Chapter 3. IX x Editor's Preface Chapter 3 derives from "Is the 'Socratic Fallacy' Socratic?," An- cient Philosophy 10 (1990), 1-16, with minor changes and some addi- tional notes. Chapter 4 derives from "The Historical Socrates and Athenian Democracy," Political Theory 11 (1983), 495-515. Apart from a few corrections, the only change is on the first page: a recasting of the first of the two theses GV will argue for. Chapter 5 on the Protagoras and the Laches is entirely new and caused some editorial problems. Readers should be warned that it is not a completely finished piece of work. (i) In section 11 (A) GV altered the numbered steps in his analysis of the Terminal Argument in the Laches without adjusting the num- bers used to refer to them in the subsequent text. I have attempted to straighten things out, in consultation with Alan Code, Terence Irwin, Richard Kraut, David Sedley, and an older draft of the chapter. The result is to some extent conjectural, but I believe that it is faithful to GV's thought. (ii) It is not made as clear as it might be that, in addition to his main line of argument for dating the Laches later than the Protagoras, GV is simultaneously, and characteristically, engaged in a dialec- tical critique of his own earlier self. In the Appendix, "The argu- ment in La. igyEff.," to Chapter 10 of Platonic Studies, he urged that the Terminal Argument in the Laches is meant to strike the reader as invalid: this allows the Platonic Socrates to hold on to both Prem- ise (1), "Courage is knowledge of fearful and confidence-sustaining things," and Premise (2), "Courage is a part of virtue." A few years later, in the older draft I have already mentioned, he accepted that the argument is meant to be valid (cf. also Platonic Studies, 2nd edn., starred note at pp. 443-5) and resurrected for it his celebrated description of the Third Man Argument in Plato's Parmenides: "a record of honest perplexity." The perplexity was about how to ad- just Premise (1) to make it compatible with Premise (2), which GV always defended as good Socratic belief. In the new version printed here (dated 18 November 1990) that perplexity is replaced by an answer. GV planned to round off Socratic Studies with a sixth chapter on the Lysis. But the work he did for this is not substantial enough to Editor's Preface xi print. The Epilogue "Socrates and Vietnam" which stands here in its place was not part of GV's own conception of the book. But it matches so well the Epilogue "Felix Socrates" in Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher that it seemed right to include it. MFB ABBREVIATIONS Ap. Apology Ch. Charmides Cr. Crito Eu. Euthyphro Eud. Euthydemus G. Gorgias HMa. Hippias Major HMi. Hippias Minor La. Laches Lg. Laws Ly. Lysis M. Meno Phd. Phaedo Pr. Protagoras R. Republic Smp. Symposium Sph. Sophist ThL Theaetetus Ti. Timaeus PS G. Vlastos, Pi Socrates G. Vlastos, Socrates:Sc Ironist and Moral Philosopher (Cambridge and Ithaca 1991) xin THE SOCRATIC ELENCHUS: METHOD IS ALL1 In Plato's earlier dialogues2 - in all of them except the Euthydemus, Hippias Major, Lysis, Menexenus - Socrates' inquiries display a pattern of investigation whose rationale he does not investigate. They are constrained by rules he does not undertake to justify. In marked contrast to "Socrates" speaking for Plato in the middle dialogues, who refers repeatedly to the "method" (neGoSos) he follows (either in general3 or for the special purpose of some particular investiga- tion4), the "Socrates" who speaks for Socrates in the earlier dia- logues never uses this word5 and never discusses his method of inves- tigation. He never troubles to say why his way of searching is the way to discover truth or even what this way of searching is. He has An earlier draft of this essay was delivered as one of a series of lectures on "The Philosophy of Socrates" at the University of St. Andrews in the Winter and Spring Terms of 1981. Duly revised, it appeared under the title "The Socratic Elenchus," in Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 1 (1983), 27-58 and 71-4. On the chronological order of Plato's dialogues see additional note 1.1. "Our customary method" (R. x, 596A5-7). This is the method of "investigating from a hypothesis" (££ OTTOOKTECOS crKOTTEicrOai) borrowed from the mathematicians (Meno 86E-87B) - a hypothesis whose standard content for Plato, in the middle dialogues, is the existence of (Platonic) Forms (Phaedo 99D4-100B7), thus predicating the search for "What the Fis" on the epistemological implications of this grand metaphysical "hypothesis": see Socrates, 63-4, beginning with the comment on texts quoted there as TIO, TI I, T12, T13. R. iv, 435D, where the "method" followed in the tripartite analysis of the structure of the soul is said to be a makeshift for the "longer route" which would have been ideally desirable (investigation of the Form of the soul).