Virtue, Happiness, Knowledge

This volume is a Festschrift for Gail Fine and Terence Irwin on their retirement from the University of Oxford and Cornell University. The honor is exceedingly well-deserved: Fine and Irwin are two of the leading ancient philosophers in the generation succeeding G. E. L. Owen and Gregory Vlastos. Their many publications have been of seminal influence in shaping the fields of ancient ethics, epistemology, and metaphysics. Their teaching has been just as significant: they have taught and mentored some of the most distinguished ancient philosophers of the present generation. I, and many others who have not had the good fortune to have studied with them, have nevertheless benefited enormously from engaging with their work and having them as paradigms of rigor and precision in doing ancient philosophy.The volume consists of fifteen essays and a valuable introduction sketching Fine's and Irwin's careers and their influence on the field. As is only fitting given its honorees, the papers display careful scholarship and thorough philosophical analysis.Space limitations allow me to raise questions about only a few of the papers. In her fascinating essay, Lesley Brown argues that previous scholars have misunderstood the meaning of homologein (usually translated as “to agree”). She claims that in standard cases, when X asks Y “do you/does she homologei that p?” there is no implication, unlike the English “to agree,” that the speaker (or some salient other person) believes p. Brown then notes the consequences of this for Socratic elenchus: it makes it more difficult to establish whether Socrates shares the belief to which he asks the interlocutor homologein.This is an important and intriguing suggestion and deserves extended analysis. I cannot here examine all of Brown's texts, but let us consider Brown's first example, which “makes it crystal clear that the use of homologein does not signify a shared belief” (22). In Menander's Samia, a Samian concubine, Chrysis, helps two young lovers by pretending that the woman's baby is Chrysis’s own child. When explaining the situation to his father, the young man, Moschion, says, “She [Chrysis] is doing me a favor, agreeing that the baby is hers [homologous’ hautês]” (line 524). Brown is obviously right in saying that homologein cannot here express a shared belief for the simple reason that neither Moschion nor Chrysis believes that the child is hers. But note that Brown holds that in English “agree that p” in its second and third person uses typically conveys “agree with the speaker [or some salient other person] that p” (19). This is why she thinks that “agree” is sometimes a mistaken translation of homologein. But the translated sentence above is, I think, a semantically acceptable and readily intelligible use of “agree” in English. And in the context provided, it is “crystal clear” that it does not convey a shared belief.But it would be a mistake, as Brown would also think, to infer that “agree” in English does not typically convey a shared belief. In this context, Chrysis is expressing her intention to go along with and make assertions compatible with Moschion's knowingly false suggestion that the baby is hers (even if Moschion was not the first to suggest it, cf. lines 77–79). But for the stiltedness of it, she might, for example, have asserted to others “I agree with Moschion that the baby is mine” intending them thereby to come to believe that the baby is hers and that both she and Moschion believe this. But a situation in which the speaker and the person said to agree intend to deceive others (although no longer Moschion's father) about the facts and about their own beliefs is not a typical context, and what sentences containing the word express in such contexts need not be what such sentences convey in typical contexts. Brown does not consider this possibility and thus does not, I think, give us reason to reject the standard account of homologein by means of this example at any rate. I lack, however, the space to consider her other examples.Dominic Scott considers the Republic's arguments in favor of justice, focusing on how far such arguments appeal to the Platonic Forms and how restricted an audience they have. Scott argues that Plato thinks that as part of an argument justifying the rule of philosophers, nonphilosophers should be “given some outline of what it is that philosophers use as a model” (73), but that the “level of detail remains unclear” (74). Whether this involves “talking about the metaphysics of the Forms” is a “further question” (74) that Scott does not attempt to answer. But as part of an ethical argument about the value of justice, Scott holds that referring to the Forms while talking to a nonphilosophical audience would be pointless. Those incapable of knowing Forms would be unable to live a just and contemplative life (74).I note, in passing, that Scott misstates my position on nonphilosophers in the Republic by claiming that I hold that they are instrumentalists about virtue (75n19). What I did argue (whether rightly or not) was that nonphilosophers in both the Phaedo and the Republic had certain important shortcomings whether or not they were instrumentalists about virtue (Bobonich 2002: 17–18, 20–21, 67–71). I would not bother mentioning this, but the issue is, I think, important for Plato's ethics. Scott seems to move from the claim that some nonphilosophers can value virtue noninstrumentality to an optimistic evaluation of their character (75n19), and I think such a tendency is fairly widespread. But this is too fast. Suppose that I start off valuing virtue only instrumentally, but that there is a psychological tendency (for example, an associative one) such that if I constantly value X instrumentally, I come to value X as a final good. It is far from clear that the result of this tendency is a virtuous character (or a good approximation of it) or even one that is a marked improvement over the instrumentalist character.Ralph Wedgwood acutely examines Plato's conception of knowledge and in particular, provides perhaps the most philosophically subtle defense ever of a modified form of the “Two-Worlds” doctrine as a reply to Fine's influential criticisms of the standard form of the doctrine (as found, for example, allegedly, in Republic, book 5).In an essay that will surely be controversial, Richard Kraut defends Plato's basic criticism of democracy, which is that most citizens lack the qualifications for making good political decisions that achieve the common good. To show this criticism's plausibility, Kraut offers the thought experiment in which a society restricts all political decision-making to people between fifty and sixty years old who have undergone specialized cognitive and moral training from twenty to fifty at state expense. (The government's executive, legislative, and judicial branches are retained, but are staffed exclusively with those qualifying at age fifty.) Everyone has the option of enrolling in such training at twenty, but there is an examination (also open to those not officially trained) at age fifty to determine who are really qualified. Kraut argues that such a society is better governed than any democracy could be.It is well known that in Plato's Laws we seem to find both a conception of moderation as complete harmony between reason and desires and a conception that allows for some conflict. Susan Sauvé Meyer helpfully compiles the relevant passages, surveys previous interpretations, and offers her own. Meyer thinks that the contradiction between the passages is real and that they cannot be resolved into a single, consistent view. She offers instead of a philosophical resolution an explanation in terms of the dialogue's literary features. Although Plato thinks that the harmony model is superior, he (through the Athenian interlocutor) feigns enthusiasm for the conflict model in order to appeal to the “militaristic ethos” of the interlocutors, Clinias and Megillus (108).This is a bold suggestion, but several immediate questions arise. (1) It is well known that the Republic offers both a “harmony” (430DE) and a “conflict” (431CD) account of the city's moderation. And it is widely—if not universally—thought that the Republic offers a harmony account (442CD) and is committed to a conflict account (571BC) of the individual's moderation. At least prima facie, there is something to be said for resolving the same tension in the same way in the two dialogues. But it seems hard to adopt Meyer's Laws solution in the Republic: Glaucon is the interlocutor at both 430DE and 431CD, and it is hard to believe that he has grown more militaristic in that short space. Admittedly, Glaucon is the interlocutor at 442CD and Adeimantus at 571BC, but it is hard to see Adeimantus as more militaristic than Glaucon. (2) Meyer does not consider the philosophical difficulties of a strict harmony account. It seems to require that perfectly licit desires cease to be active when reason has determined that something else is overall best. But what could guarantee such an outcome? Perhaps it is worth considering that individual moderation in the Republic explicitly requires not a full harmony of desires, but rather the agreement of the Appetitive part that the Reasoning part should rule. Since Plato no longer invokes the Appetitive part's agreement in the Laws, he may be left with the possibility of circumstantially immoderate desires in the Laws. (3) Nor does Meyer consider the relation of this point about moderation to other issues in the Laws. For example, if as many think, Plato holds that even a fully virtuous agent would become akratic if given unchecked power, does this better fit the harmony view or the conflict view?Verity Harte considers the role of unsought-for pleasures in Plato's Philebus and argues that there, true and pure pleasures are the only good pleasures and that their being unsought is a prerequisite of their goodness.Christopher Shields extends the analysis he has made of Aristotle's criticism of Plato's Form of the Good by focusing on the Nicomachean Ethics objection at 1096a17–23 that there are no Forms for items containing the prior and the posterior and that the Form of the Good is such an item. Shields finds this argument unsatisfactory along with an expanded version of it at Eudemian Ethics 1218a1–15. But drawing on both of these sources, he formulates a more satisfactory argument that bears a family resemblance to the Third Man argument.David Charles, in an important paper, continues his exploration of a “third way” in Aristotle's psychology. In particular, he sees Aristotle as committed to two claims in De Anima 431a8–17.[A] To see something as pleasant is inseparable in definition from sensuously desiring it.[B] To think of something as good is inseparable in definition from pursuing it.In these cases, there is no kind of seeing or thinking that is definable independent of desire: co-occurrence of thought and desire, for example, is not enough. This allows Charles to offer an appealingly economical account of practical truthfulness. It does not involve two components (beliefs and distinct desires), but rather having practical thoughts (for example, seeing x as pleasant or thinking of x as good) will be the very same state as desiring or pursuing x.Paula Gottlieb follows up some of Irwin's work and explores the differences between the treatment of feelings (pathê) in the Rhetoric and the Nicomachean Ethics.Julia Annas provides a very careful and valuable examination of the vocabulary in Aristotle that has often been translated by the deontic terms, “ought,” “should,” and “must”: dei, chrê, and the gerundive forms of the verb. Annas argues that although these terms often have an attractive force appealing to the good or the fine (kalon), they also often have a distinct deontic force, although Aristotle never extracts and analyzes the sort of deontic force that they have (189). Nor does one usage have priority over the other; they rather work together in ethical learning and in giving sense to the notion of a virtue.In her paper, Karen Margrethe Nielsen examines Aristotle's Magna Moralia (interest in which has been stimulated by Irwin's attention to this much neglected work). Nielsen argues that the Magna Moralia has, in comparison with the Eudemian Ethics, an impoverished conception of decision (prohairesis) and a different conception of deliberation. The Magna Moralia's conception of deliberation involves comparing two options to see which is best, whereas in the Eudemian Ethics decision or choice is always of an act for the sake of some particular end. These differences make it likely, Nielsen suggests, that the Magna Moralia is an early work whose mature form we find in the Eudemian and Nicomachean Ethics.John Martin Fischer draws on Irwin's “reasons-responsiveness” analysis of Aristotle's view of moral responsibility to develop his own theory. This theory departs from Aristotle in adopting (1) Nozick's mechanism based model of responsiveness, and (2) an “actual-sequence” mechanism (that Fischer finds in Chrysippus, Locke, and Harry Frankfurt) that does not require freedom to do otherwise.In one of the volume's highlights, Allen Wood compares Aristotle and Kant on virtue. Wood argues that the most significant difference between them is a difference over the structure of practical reason. For Kant, prudence (the exercise of practical reason in pursuing our individual good or happiness) is distinct from, and inferior to, moral practical reason. For Aristotle, there is no such distinction. For moderns, Wood suggests, Aristotle's view is not a genuine option. It seems “high-minded, perhaps, but naïve and hopelessly cut off from the reality of human life” (249).Roger Crisp provides a careful overview of Richard Price, the eighteenth-century theologian and philosopher, focusing on Price's account of virtue and exploring its relation to other central ethical notions, such as happiness and obligation.David Brink attempts to reconcile cosmopolitanism's universal concern with a eudaimonist framework by drawing on elements of Aristotle's views, especially his conception of friendship as interpreted by Irwin. The resulting view keeps universal concern, but gives variable weight to others’ interests. Although this falls short of a universal cosmopolitanism that is also committed to equal weight (e.g., Kant and, on some interpretations, the Stoics), Brink suggests that such a mixed view has its attractions

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• Plato's Utopia Recast

  Christopher Bobonich•Plato's Utopia Recast•2002

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