The Unity of the Virtues in Plato's Protagoras and Laches
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 10700461 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Daniel Devereux (corresponding author), Daniel T Devereux |
| Year | 1992 |
| Volume | 101 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 765 |
| Publication date | 1992-10-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Philosophical Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0031-8108 • E-ISSN: 1558-1470 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/2185924 |
| OpenAlex | W2318732517 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 27 |
perhaps most striking of Socratic paradoxes is claim that being a good person is strictly a matter of intellect. As Aristotle remarks, Socrates seems to take no account of character in his conception of virtue. 1 In Plato's early dialogues, Socrates argues that a certain type of (knowledge of good and evil) is sufficient for being a just, courageous, and temperate person, and for behaving in way such a person would behave. But this claim does not capture what is most paradoxical about his view of relationship between virtue and knowledge. Even soberminded Aristotle held that a certain type of knowledge-phrone~sis or practical wisdom-is sufficient for virtue. But being a good person is not simply a matter of having a certain kind of for Aristotle, since he also believed that one could not be practically wise without having a good character. Socrates made further claim that all virtues are knowledge; that is, he held that each of virtues is definable simply in terms of either a single type of or several types corresponding to several virtues.2 It is this stronger view that people have in mind when they speak of Socrates' intellectualism; there is no need to tame unruly passions-knowledge of good ensures that one will have right aims and intentions, and will act accordingly. In Protagoras, Plato has Socrates argue not only that all virtues are knowledge, but also that they somehow form a unity. Exactly what sort of unity Socrates has in mind is a matter of controversy. According to one interpretation, Socrates regards different virtues as distinct parts of a whole-distinct in sense that each has its own separate definition.3 The thesis that the virtues are knowledge is understood as claim that each virtue
Analytic philosophy · Contemporary philosophy · Epistemology · General interest · Classical Philosophy and Thought · Philosophy
Becoming Godlike
Plato on Education and Art
Plato's Metaphysics
Plato on Love
Socrates, the primary question, and the unity of virtue
Horace and Practical Philosophy
Aristotle on Virtue and Happiness
The Stoics’ Ethical Psychology
Plato in his Time and Place
Plato and Platonism
Socrates' Kantian Conception of Virtue
Socratic Moral Psychology
Plato's Philosophy of Language
The Oxford Handbook of Plato
Aristotle’s Ethical Psychology
Plato's Introduction of Forms
The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Ethics
The Stoics on Virtue and Happiness
Plato's Epistemology
The Sophist on Statements, Predication, and Falsehood
Trials of Reason
The Unity of the Ideal Virtues
Socrates, the ‘What is F-ness?’ Question, and the Priority of Definition
Immoral authorities
Good Life, Brave Death, and Earned Immortality
Can virtue be unified? An Aristotelian justification on “unity of virtue”
Unity of the intellectual virtues
| Citations per year | 0.87 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 1995 - 2025 (31) |
| Highly cited | No |