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DEFICIENT VIRTUE IN THE PHAEDO

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 August 2020

Doug Reed
Doug Reed*
Affiliation:
University of Rhode Island
*
[email protected]
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Extract

Plato seems to have been pessimistic about how most people stand with regard to virtue. However, unlike the Stoics, he did not conclude that most people are vicious. Rather, as we know from discussions across several dialogues, he countenanced decent ethical conditions that fall short of genuine virtue, which he limited to the philosopher. Despite Plato's obvious interest in this issue, commentators rarely follow his lead by investigating in detail such conditions in the dialogues. When scholars do investigate what kind of virtue, if any, Plato thinks is open to non-philosophers, they typically look to the Republic. But in the Republic Plato sets out an ideal city; therefore, the virtue available to non-philosophers there is likely different from what he thinks is available to them in the real world. If we want to determine Plato's thoughts about the virtue of actual non-philosophers, we must look elsewhere. In this paper, I set my sights on the Phaedo.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 70 , Issue 1 , May 2020 , pp. 119 - 130
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Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2020

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References

1 For instance, Kamtekar, R., ‘Imperfect virtue’, AncPhil 18 (1998), 315–39Google Scholar and Wilberding, J., ‘Plato's two forms of second-best morality’, PhR 118 (2009), 351–74Google Scholar. Even those treatments of non-philosophical virtue that do look at the Phaedo frequently do so in conjunction with this issue in the Republic. For instance, Bobonich, C., Plato's Utopia Recast: His Later Ethics and Politics (Oxford, 2002), ch. 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kraut, R., ‘Ordinary virtue from Phaedo to the Laws’, in Bobonich, C. (ed.), Plato's Laws (Cambridge, 2010), 51–70Google Scholar; Vasiliou, I., ‘From the Phaedo to the Republic: Plato's tripartite soul and the possibility of non-philosophical virtue’, in Barney, R., Brennan, T. and Brittain, C. (edd.), Plato and the Divided Self (Cambridge, 2012), 9–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Adopting the name from Pakaluk, M., ‘Degrees of separation in the Phaedo’, Phronesis 48 (2003), 89–115CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 109.

3 e.g. Vasiliou (n. 1).

4 Translations from Grube, G.M.A. (transl.) and Cooper, J.M. (rev.), Plato: Phaedo, in Cooper, J.M. and Hutchinson, D.S. (edd.). Plato: Complete Works (Indianapolis and Cambridge, 1997)Google Scholar, occasionally modified.

5 Throughout the dialogue Socrates treats fear, honour and shame as bodily.

6 See Gosling, J. and Taylor, C., The Greeks on Pleasure (Oxford, 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Weiss, R., ‘Hedonic calculus in the Protagoras and the Phaedo’, JHPh 27 (1989), 511–29Google Scholar.

7 Kraut (n. 1), 56 takes σκιαγραφία to express an ‘underdeveloped’ understanding of virtue rather than as a condemnation.

8 See Vasiliou (n. 1), 18; cf. Barney, R., ‘Comments on Sarah Broadie> “Virtue and beyond in Plato and Aristotle”’, SJPh 43 (2005), 115–25Google Scholar, at 121–4.

9 Although Socrates focusses on courage and temperance in this passage, he undoubtedly thinks that there are apparent forms of other virtues. Indeed, the popular view of justice in Republic Book 2 is that one acts justly because doing so is most profitable (δοκεῖ λυσιτελεῖν, 359a1), owing to the average person's lack of power. Thus this sort of justice comes from pleonexia and, therefore, from injustice.

10 Generalized from what is called ‘courage’ and what is called ‘temperance’.

11 See Gallop, D., Plato, Phaedo (Oxford, 1975), 99Google Scholar and Kraut (n. 1), 54.

12 Rowe, C., Plato: Phaedo. Text and Commentary (New York, 1993), 146–7Google Scholar suggests that what is called ‘courage’ is fearlessness in general (cf. Hackforth, R., Plato's Phaedo. Translated with Introduction and Commentary [Cambridge, 1955], 57Google Scholar), but this neglects that in a calculation there would be fears on both sides of the ledger. Moreover, because what is called ‘courage’ applies most to philosophers, we know that it cannot be overcoming fear, since they do not fear death. See Gosling and Taylor (n. 6) and Weiss (n. 6).

13 Gallop (n. 11), 99 suggests that virtue terms are misapplied by non-philosophers. In so far as they do not refer to a psychological condition, this is correct. But the many do seem to track fairly reliably which actions are virtuous and which are not. The problem is that, just as we see in other dialogues, non-philosophers here (are reported to) conceive of virtues in terms that emphasize actions—facing death and not getting swept away by passions—rather than conditions in the soul that give rise to these actions. Thus non-philosophers think that courage just is facing death willingly, and that temperance just is not getting swept away by passions.

14 Beere, J., ‘Philosophy, virtue, and immortality in Plato's Phaedo’, Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy 27 (2011), 253–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 280 thinks that, when it comes to virtue, non-philosophers do recognize the necessity of acting for the right reason, they simply fail to do it. But there is no indication here that non-philosophers would deny someone genuine temperance if she abstained from another drink tonight only in order to avoid a headache tomorrow.

15 The same can be said about what is called ‘temperance’. According to the common view, temperance is controlling bodily appetites, regardless of why or how one is doing so.

16 πολιτικὴν ἀρετήν is often translated as ‘political virtue’. The translation ‘social virtue’ is preferable because it indicates that this kind of virtue makes one a good member of a polis rather than an excellent politician.

17 Socrates says ‘the many kai money lovers’. I take the kai to be epexegetical. A close alternative is that Socrates is saying ‘the many who are money lovers’, which leaves open that some of the many are honour lovers.

18 See Vasiliou (n. 1), 17–18.

19 See Kraut (n. 1), 56.

20 Apparent virtue does concern true beliefs about which available action is virtuous in a situation. But such beliefs are not about virtue itself or about the value of virtue.

21 See Irwin, T., Plato's Ethics (Oxford, 1995), 194–5, 234CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Cf. Kamtekar (n. 1), 318.

22 Vasiliou (n. 1) sets out this view in detail (cf. I. Vasiliou, Aiming at Virtue in Plato [Cambridge, 2008], ch. 8, sections 2 and 3). Setting aside the fact that Vasiliou identifies apparent and social virtue, there is independent reason to resist his account. In particular, he maintains that the Phaedonic philosopher does not possess genuine virtue but instead social virtue (at 15–16, 24). However, at 83e4 Socrates explicitly says that philosophers are temperate and courageous, which suggests that they possess these, and presumably all other, virtues. Moreover, Socrates says that philosophers will join the gods after death (69c5–d6, 82b7–c2, 114c3), but that souls with social virtue are reincarnated (82b4).

23 Further, Socrates only says that those with social virtue are the happiest (εὐδαιμονέστατοι) of non-philosophers. In Greek as well as in English, the claim that someone is the happiest member of some group is consistent with that person being unhappy. And given that Socrates has just claimed that a person can only be happy when she is with the divine, immortal and wise (81a4), he must not think that people with social virtue are happy. At Grg. 473d–e Socrates says that one miserable person cannot be happier than another. This indicates that Socrates does not think that people with social virtue are miserable. Indeed, at Phd. 90b1 Socrates says that very few people are wicked and therefore, presumably, few people are miserable. I thank the anonymous referee for calling my attention to this Gorgias passage.

24 For instance, in the Republic there are two ways through which someone naturally inclined to philosophy can develop into a genuine philosopher: guidance from philosophical rulers in a well-ordered state or divine dispensation (Resp. 492e5–7).

25 Socrates refers to ‘the courageous among them’ and ‘the temperate among them’, which indicates that only some non-philosophers have apparent virtues. Thus, while some non-philosophers do exchange pleasures for other pleasures, others, perhaps most, do not. Bobonich (n. 1), 485 claims both that all non-philosophers engage in the wrong exchange and that this is sufficient for apparent virtue. But this incorrectly implies that all non-philosophers have apparent virtue. Even non-philosophers without apparent virtue give up certain pleasures by indulging in other pleasures. But they do not exchange (καταλλάσσω) any pleasures, which requires that one has the pleasures in hand and then trades them away, rather than simply losing out on them (cf. J. Bailly, ‘Commentary on Beere’, Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy 27 [2011], 289–300, at 296).

26 See Kamtekar (n. 1), 318.

27 He also reports that people confuse rashness for courage, which might be interpreted as an indication that the condition which Socrates identifies as what is called ‘courage’ in the Phaedo is rashness. However, this cannot be the case, since, as we have seen, what is called ‘courage’ applies (most) to those with genuine courage (philosophers), but Nicias claims that rashness opposes genuine courage.

28 Moreover, actions such as facing death in order to protect cubs, which are popularly attributed to lions—one of the animals mentioned in the Laches discussion (196e3)—are not typically considered hedonistic. See also Symp. 207a5–c1, where animals are described as acting for the sake of love, willing to die and face starvation for their offspring.

29 Socrates does say that apparent courage is illogical (ἄλογος, 68d11) in the Phaedo, but this is because it comes from its opposite rather than because it is senseless.

30 Glaucon claims that he is sure that Socrates does not make this mistake, which implies that others do.

31 Plato's view need not be inconsistent across the three passages, as the mistake may well lie with the many who have an incoherent conception of courage (cf. Arist. Eth. Nic. 3.8).

32 See Kamtekar (n. 1), 318 n. 7 and Sedley, D., ‘Socratic intellectualism in the Republic's central digression’, in Boys-Stones, G., Murr, D. El and Gill, C. (edd.), The Platonic Art of Philosophy (Cambridge, 2013), 70–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 84–5 n. 25.

33 In the Myth of Er at the end of the Republic Socrates mentions people who ‘participated in virtue through habit and without philosophy’ (619d1). Vasiliou (n. 1), 9 takes this to be the same sort of state as referred to as ‘social courage’ at 430b. However, given that in the Myth of Er these people participate in virtue through habit, it seems more likely that they are the people with social virtue in the Phaedo (cf. Barney [n. 8], 120).

34 He mentions cowardice but only to say that it is avoided by keeping one's body fit (326c1).

35 Cf. Resp. 500d5, where Socrates refers to ‘temperance, justice and the whole of δημοτικῆς virtue’. Recall that in the Phaedo Socrates employs the same word when identifying social virtue (τὴν δημοτικὴν καὶ πολιτικὴν ἀρετήν). Thus even in the Republic Plato appears to limit ‘social virtue’ to temperance and justice. See Kahn, C., Plato and the Socratic Dialogue: The Philosophical Use of a Literary Form (Cambridge, 1996), 217–18, 223Google Scholar and Adkins, A., Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values (Oxford, 1960)Google Scholar.

36 See Irwin, T., Plato's Moral Theory (Oxford, 1977), 162, 322Google Scholar and Irwin (n. 21), 235 n. 16. Irwin (n. 21), 384 also argues that social virtue is a superior species of apparent virtue. As we shall see, there does not seem to be any space for this view in the Phaedo.

37 One might wonder why Socrates thinks that those with social virtue in particular (and not apparent virtue in general) are the happiest non-philosophers. The most likely explanation is that Socrates thinks that there is not a unity of apparent virtue and that those who only possess apparent courage are more likely to act viciously than those with apparent temperance and justice.

38 Pace Bobonich (n. 1), 17 (cf. Kraut [n. 1], 55).

39 In light of this agreement, it seems that non-philosophers are not subjectivists. Indeed, although they are hedonistic and take pleasure as the standard of value, they do not seem to think that their own pleasure determines what is virtuous.

40 See Long, A. and Sedley, D., The Hellenistic Philosophers, Volume 1: Translations of the Principal Sources, with Philosophical Commentary (Cambridge, 2007), 21MGoogle Scholar.

41 Long and Sedley (n. 40), 21O.

42 Long and Sedley (n. 40), 22A.

43 This is not meant to deny that there are significant differences between the hedonism in the Phaedo and Epicurus’ view. For instance, unlike Epicurus, the body lovers in the Phaedo do not identify pleasure as the absence of pain or recognize the existence of intellectual pleasure.

44 Indeed, decent non-philosophical souls are rewarded in the afterlife for their good actions while embodied (113e1).

45 I thank Dan Devereux and Jenny Reed for many valuable discussions about this issue. I also thank David Talcott for his comments on a version of this paper at a meeting of the New England consortium for ancient philosophy in 2015. Finally, I thank an anonymous referee and Patrick Finglass at CQ for assistance on the final stages of the paper.