The sentence setting the stage for the philosophical investigation within the Philebus is, naively translated, “He says that to enjoy is good.” Instead of the predicate adjective “good,” most interpreters prefer to translate with a definite description, “the good,” with consequences that affect the interpretation of the dialogue as a whole. Part one defends the naïve translation, both in the context of Socrates’ first seven speeches and viewing the dialogue as a whole. Part two considers and rejects the reasons given (...) against the naïve translation on the basis of grammar, idiosyncratic Platonic style, immediate context, and later restatements. (shrink)

In this paper we attempt to understand what Socrates says about expertise and virtue in Plato’s dialogue Laches in the light of Socrates’ idea of “human wisdom” in the Apology of Socrates. Conducting a good life requires both “knowledge about good and bad things”, that is, knowledge about human well-being, and “human wisdom”. Socrates aspires to epistemic autonomy: Trust in your own reason, and don’t let any expert tell you anything about your own happiness.

This paper examines whether Socrates provides his interlocutors with good reasons to seek knowledge of what virtue is, reasons that they are in a position to appreciate. I argue that in the Laches he does provide such reasons, but they are not the reasons that are most commonly identified as Socratic. Socrates thinks his interlocutors should be motivated not by the idea that virtue is knowledge nor by the idea that knowledge is good for its own sake, but rather by (...) the idea that knowledge is needed to recognize what to aim at. His argument reaches the potentially life-altering conclusion that we should all seek knowledge of what virtue is. It is powerful precisely because it relies on uncontroversial premises that his interlocutors could be expected to accept. In laying out this argument, I distinguish different ways in which someone could count as a teacher of virtue. At the end of the article, I situate the argument within the debate about whether virtue is teachable. (shrink)

This is a study of Plato's use of the character Socrates to model what philosophy is. The study focuses on the Apology, and finds that philosophy there is the love of wisdom, where wisdom is expertise about how to live, of the sort that only gods can fully have, and where Socrates loves wisdom in three ways, first by honoring wisdom as the gods' possession, testing human claims to it, second by pursuing wisdom, examining himself as he examines others, to (...) achieve a more well justified set of beliefs about how to live, and third by trying to live wisely, insofar as he can, which includes exhorting others to care about living wisely than anything else. The essay also includes some suggestions about how Plato criticizes and revises this model of philosophy outside the Apology. (shrink)

Plato is commonly considered a metaphysical dualist conceiving of a world of Forms separate from the world of particulars in which we live. This paper explores the motivation for postulating that second world as opposed to making do with the one we have. The main objective is to demonstrate that and how everything, Forms and all, can instead fit into the same world. The approach is exploratory, as there can be no proof in the standard sense. The debate between explaining (...) Plato’s ontology with a single world and requiring a two-world model to make sense of the same thing is typically about scouring the Platonic corpus for evidence and turning to Aristotle for help where we need it. The aim here is to dig deeper than what either of them, or anyone else, has said or implied about the number or worlds, searching instead for any insight that might be gained from the way Forms are supposed to exist versus what we ourselves might understand by existence. Although the paper is, at its most basic level, about the existence of the Forms, the intention is not to prove that they exist, nor to evaluate the proofs and objections already on record, but to consider how they might exist and what follows if they do. Dialogue toward consensus on why we think the Forms exist, and why we think they do not, could perhaps provide a smoother “second sailing” in waters where we have been unable to agree whether they do and where they would if they did. (shrink)

In this chapter, I offer an overview of current scholarly debates on Plato's Lysis. I also argue for my own interpretation of the dialogue. In the Lysis, Socrates argues that all love is motivated by the desire for one’s own good. This conclusion has struck many interpreters as unattractive, so much so that some attempt to reinterpret the dialogue, such that it either does not offer an account of interpersonal love, or that it offers an account on which love is, (...) in fact, an other-regarding state. Others, notably Vlastos, criticize Socrates’ theory as implausibly and repellently egoistic. I maintain, against the first group, that Socrates is indeed offering an egoistic theory of love. I argue, against the second, that, while Socrates’ theory may be repellent, it possesses considerable explanatory power and avoids certain weaknesses which infect contemporary approaches to love. (shrink)

As traditionally interpreted, Socrates in Plato's early dialogues believes virtue is practical wisdom, valuable primarily as a means to happiness, but he has little or nothing to say about what constitutes happiness. I defend a novel interpretation on which Socrates believes happiness consists in being virtuous and virtue is philosophical knowledge. My interpretation makes better sense of all of Socrates' claims. ;Chapter I introduces the exegetic problem and summarizes my solution. Chapter II shows that virtue in Plato's Euthydemus is knowledge (...) of good and bad. It also shows that the value Socrates attributes to it there is instrumental. However, though Socrates does argue that virtue is necessary for happiness, he does not consider it instrumentally sufficient for happiness. ;In the Apology and Crito, however, Socrates claims that virtue is sufficient for happiness and that it cannot be taken away, as Chapter III shows. I argue that the sufficiency-claim comes from Socrates' belief that virtue's intrinsic value makes its possessor happy, supporting this with other evidence from the Apology and Crito. Based on this evidence, I conclude that virtue is for Socrates the sole intrinsic good. ;Chapter IV shows that Socrates thinks he possesses knowledge of good and bad. Socrates expresses a paramount desire to philosophize, even after death if possible; he must therefore expect that philosophizing will yield further results. Given that virtue is Socrates' sole ultimate end, I conclude that virtue in Plato's early dialogues consists in philosophical knowledge, including but not limited to knowledge of good and bad. ;Chapter V shows that Socrates' belief in the invulnerability of the virtuous cannot be fully explained unless he believes that death cannot take away one's knowledge. I show that Socrates' claims about death in the Apology and Crito uphold this interpretation. I also show how my interpretation of Socrates' views about death can be used to corroborate Chapter III's main conclusion. ;Tying together Socrates' views on virtue, death, and philosophy, Chapter VI explains Socrates' belief that injuring others injures the agent: By diminishing one's pool of potential interlocutors, injuring others fails to maximize one's philosophical knowledge. (shrink)

Despite Diotima’s irresistible virtues and attractiveness across the millennia, she spells trouble for philosophy. It is not her fault that she has been misunderstood, nor is it Plato’s. Rather, I suspect, each era has made of Diotima what it desired her to be. Her malleability is related to the assumption that Plato invented her, that she is a mere literary fiction, licensing the imagination to do what it will. In the first part of my paper, I argue against three contemporary (...) ‘majority views’ about Diotima that I regard as false. The first is that we can be certain she is fictional;1 a second is that Diotima is our best evidence for Plato’s feminism; the third, that she is Plato’s mouthpiece for the higher mysteries in the Symposium. After I have set aside what I regard as false, I proceed in the second half of my paper to develop Diotima’s positive contribution to philosophical psychology, her naturalistic account of the psyche as mortal, unified, and developmental. Whether the view Plato assigns to her is one that he held I do not pretend to know; but it is a powerful, defensible, and coherent view that inspired positive aspects of Freudian psychology in the twentieth century. Freud’s insight, in fact, makes clear how erōs can be developed in relation to the bad as well as the good. (shrink)

A commentary on the Symposium as a challenge and a gift to Athens. I begin with a reflection on three dates: 416 bce, the date of Agathon’s victory party, c. 400, the approximate date of Apollodorus’ retelling of the party, and c. 375, the approximate date of the ‘publication’ of the dialogue, and I argue that Plato reminds his contemporary Athens both of its great poetic and legal and scientific traditions and of the historical fact that the way late fourth (...) century Athens appropriated them in some way led to the city’s demise at the turn of the century; thus the dialogue is Plato’s challenge to his contemporary Athens to recognize and overcome its flawed relation to its cultural resources. Heard in this way, the key moments are Aristophanes’ implied critique of Pausanias and Eryximachus and Socrates’ implied critique of Aristophanes and Agathon. Proceeding by a close reading, I argue that Plato exposes, for those moved to rise to his challenge, the failure of his great predecessors to conceive the divine in a way that, worthy of the height and otherness divinity requires, can provide substantive orientation for the burgeoning new reason that animates the city’s culture. (shrink)

The article tries to prove that the famous formula "epekeina tês ousias" has to be understood in the sense of being beyond being and not only in the sense of being beyond essence. We make hereby three points: first, since pure textual exegesis of 509b8–10 seems to lead to endless controversy, a formal proof for the metaontological interpretation could be helpful to settle the issue; we try to give such a proof. Second, we offer a corollary of the formal proof, (...) showing that not only self-predication of the form of the Good, but of any form is not possible, that is: no form of F has the form of F. Third, we apply Spinoza’s distinction between an ens imaginarium and a chimaera to Plato’s Idea of the Good. (shrink)