In support of an interpretation of the techne-analogy not as a doctrine about virtue, but as a dialectical tool employed by the Platonic Socrates, I analyze an atypical example: the 'healthy city' of 'Republic' II. First, I survey the more 'typical' uses of the techne-analogy in Book I, where Socrates seeks to understand justice by comparing it to various 'technai'. Then, I proceed to show that Socrates' Healthy City, essentially an association of craftsmen, is used in a very similar manner (...) to provoke questions about the relation of virtue to knowledge. Finally, I speculate on the kinds of considerations about justice that Socrates tries to draw his interlocutors to by means of the Healthy City, looking backward to Book I and forward to the rest of the 'Republic'. (shrink)

In this paper I try to solve some problems concerning the interpretation of Socrates' conversation with Gorgias about the nature of rhetoric in Plato's Gorgias (448e6-461b2). I begin by clarifying what, ethically, is at stake in the conversation (section 2). In the main body of the paper (sections 3-6) I address the question of what we are to understand Gorgias as believing about the nature of rhetoric: I criticise accounts given by Charles Kahn and John Cooper, and suggest an alternative (...) account of my own. In the final section I spell out some of the implications of my account for the interpretation of the Gorgias, and of Plato more generally. (shrink)

While it is generally accepted that we need to use our intelligence in order to get what we want, it is thought to be a cardinal error to imagine that by reasoning we can discover what we ought to want. Reason can in no way constrain the choice of ends, it can only constrain the choice of means once an end has been adopted. In Plato's philosophy we find a view strongly opposed to this attitude towards reason. It is widely (...) held, however, that to arrive at a position which is plainly opposed to common sense, Plato must have grossly confused reasoning about means with reasoning about ends. Evidence of this confusion is found in Plato's use of analogies between statecraft and navigation, and between virtue and skill. But the diagnosis of confusion rests on a misunderstanding of how Plato wanted to use the word translated ‘skill’, i.e. ‘ technē ’, and this misunderstanding is shared even by those who see Plato as rejecting the virtue/skill analogy. (shrink)