Brown; Socrates the stoic - Rethinking Protreptic, Eudaimonism, and the Role of Plato's Socratic Dialogues.pdf
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For a Philosophy Colloquium,
University of Massachusetts-Amherst
11 November 2005 *
SOCRATES THE STOIC?
Rethinking Protreptic, Eudaimonism, and
the Role of Plato's Socratic Dialogues
ERIC BROWN
Department of Philosophy
Washington University in St. Louis
eabrown@wustl.edu
* Note to the Reader: I will not have time enough to read all of
this at the colloquium on 11 November, and will instead talk
through a detailed outline on a handout. Still, this unwieldy
draft records what I currently think I want to convey on 11
November, and I'd be happy to have errors and weaknesses in
this draft brought to my attention.
1. Introduction
In the
Euthydemus
, Socrates and young Cleinias agree, "Not one of
the other things is good or bad, but of these two, one—wisdom—is good,
and the other—ignorance—is bad" (281e3-5).
1
To some, this is the
outrageous and characteristically Stoic claim that wisdom is the only good.
2
This essay grew out of comments on an essay by Naomi Reshotko for the 1999 Central
Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association, and I am grateful to Naomi for
much discussion. (Her essay has since been published as "Virtue as the Only
Unconditional—But not Intrinsic—Good." For further details on this and all other works
cited, please see the list at the end of the paper.) The first full draft received helpful
comments at the Ninth Annual Arizona Colloquium for Ancient Philosophy and my Spring
2004 seminar on Socratic ethics; I especially thank Mark McPherran, Don Morrison, and
Sara Rappe.
1
References to Plato's works are to Burnet's
Platonis Opera
, and translations are mine,
though my translations of the
Euthydemus
borrow shamelessly from Sprague's
rendering in Cooper's edition and my English for 281e3-5 steals from Long, "Socrates,"
166.
2
For elaborate defenses, see Ferejohn, "Socratic Thought-Experiments," and Irwin,
"Epicurean?" See also Annas, "Virtue as the Use of Other Goods," 55, and
Platonic
Ethics, Old and New,
45; Cooper, "Aristotle on the Goods of Fortune," 305; Irwin,
Plato's
Ethics,
57; Long, "Socrates in Hellenistic Philosophy," 166-167; Rappe, "Tracking the
Cynics," 293; and Striker, "Plato's Socrates." Unlike these latter scholars, many of
whom are addressing the relation between Socrates and the Stoics and not aiming to
provide an extended reading of Socrates or the
Euthydemus
, I try to respond more fully
Brown, Socrates the Stoic? —
2
Others, however, insist that the context qualifies the point: wisdom is the
only good by itself or independently or unconditionally.
3
The Stoicizing
readers think that health, wealth, and other "conventional goods" are not
goods at all, except for wisdom. The denying readers, on the other hand,
think that "conventional goods" other than wisdom are, in fact, goods,
though dependent or conditional goods.
The terms of this disagreement can generate confusion. To head off
that problem, I stipulate that the phrase 'conventional goods' is shorthand
for those things conventionally recognized as goods. As I use the phrase, it
neither assumes nor denies the goodness of the things conventionally
recognized as goods. By contrast, I understand dependent goods and
conditional goods to be goods. So on my terms, the question that divides
Stoicizers and deniers is this: when Socrates argues that conventional goods
other than wisdom are not unconditional or independent goods, does he also
conclude that they are not goods, or does he allow that they are conditional
or dependent goods?
In this essay I argue for the Stoicizing answer. This conclusion by
itself is not original, but my argument is. I take the deniers' reasons
seriously, and to answer them, I call for rethinking the nature of protreptic
argument, Socrates' eudaimonism, and the role of Plato's Socratic dialogues.
to the non-Stoicizing reading of the
Euthydemus
. Unlike Ferejohn and Irwin, I respond
by finding resources
within
the
Euthydemus
.
3
Vlastos (
Socrates
, 228) pulls 'just by itself' from
auta kath' hauta
in 281d8-1, and insists
that the qualification must be extended on pain of invalidity (230n97). I will explain
why it does not when I consider the argument in some detail in §4. Many others (e.g.,
Penner, "Socrates," 135) use 'in itself' to mean the same thing, although Vlastos finds 'in
itself' objectionable because it suggests the intrinsic/extrinsic distinction and thereby
suggests that all conventional goods other than wisdom are merely extrinsically good
(
Socrates
, 305). 'Independently' fits the technical vocabulary of independent and
dependent goods preferred by Brickhouse and Smith,
Plato's Socrates
, esp. 106-110.
Perhaps the most popular qualifier is 'unconditionally': see, e.g., Santas, "Socratic
Goods,"
passim
(but "alone by itself" on 43); and Reshotko, "Virtue as the Only
Unconditional—But not Intrinsic—Good," 332.
Brown, Socrates the Stoic? —
3
I start in the next section by introducing the deniers' reasons and my
strategy for responding.
2. Facing up to Denial
The deniers' case comes in three parts. First, they appeal to
apparently conflicting evidence within the
Euthydemus
. Their starring
evidence comes from the argument that leads to the Stoic conclusion.
Socrates begins with the premise that health and wealth and such are goods
(279a4-b3),
4
and as he continues, he asserts that "if ignorance leads them,
<the conventional goods other than wisdom> are greater evils than their
opposites, to the extent that they are more able to serve the leader which is
bad, while if prudence and wisdom <lead them>, then they are greater
goods <than their opposites>" (281d6-8).
5
But these are premises in a
protreptic argument, an argument that is designed to exhort a non-
philosopher to take up the philosophical life. Socrates seeks to convert
young Cleinias, to turn him from ordinary values to the love of wisdom. So
Socrates begins with a list of conventional goods, and he gradually
introduces reasons to pare the list down until only wisdom is left. As I will
show in more detail below (in §3), this protreptic requires that Cleinias
successively discard false ordinary views as he more closely approaches the
wisdom-loving truth. If he follows Socrates' reasoning, he comes to see that
the ordinary premises are
false
. To read those premises as evidence of
4
As noted by Vlastos,
Socrates
, 229. For another reply, see also Annas, "Virtue as the
Use of Other Goods," 57n10.
5
As noted by Brickhouse and Smith,
Plato's Socrates,
107. Other replies to this evidence
seem to me less felicitous. Irwin ("Epicurean?" 204) proposes that when Socrates says
that health is a greater good with wisdom controlling it than sickness, he might mean
that health is more of a good, that is, closer to being a good. Annas (
Platonic Ethics
,
44) seems to say that Plato has just failed to say exactly what he means, perhaps
because of his limited technical vocabulary (43).
Brown, Socrates the Stoic? —
4
Socrates' views, against the evidence of the wisdom-loving conclusion,
perversely misunderstands the protreptic nature of Socrates' argument.
Interestingly enough, there is no more counter-evidence to the Stoic
claim in the
Euthydemus
. After Socrates reaches his Stoic conclusion, he
respects it with great consistency. He immediately uses the word 'things'
(
prãgmasin
, 282a3) where a denier should expect to see 'goods' (
égayo›w
),
and he later takes care to discuss wisdom's beneficial use of wealth without
allowing that wealth itself is beneficial.
6
In fact, deep into the second
protreptic scene, Socrates says plainly and without a qualification anywhere
in the neighborhood that "Cleinias and I agreed that nothing is good except
a kind of knowledge" (292b1-2).
7
In other words, once the protreptic nature of the crucial argument is
understood, the evidence of the
Euthydemus
is perfectly univocal. So the
deniers need another move. Accordingly, they point to other dialogues in
which Plato gives us a similar Socrates who seems to accept the existence of
goods other than wisdom.
8
The deniers here make two assumptions. First,
6
See especially 289a1-3, where Socrates asks, "For unless we know how to use the gold,
it is not beneficial, or don't you remember?" According to Don Morrison, this question
conversationally implies that gold is beneficial, i.e., good. I disagree. What a sentence
conversationally implies depends on what conversation it is in. Were this sentence
uttered without context, it would imply that gold is good. But it has a context, as
Socrates reminds Cleinias ("don't you remember?"), and in this context, Cleinias should
know better than to infer that gold is beneficial (at all) from the claim that it is not
beneficial without wisdom. Nor should the context be at all in doubt, given the rest of
the evidence I note above.
7
Vlastos (
Socrates
, 230n99) inserts his qualifier 'by itself' here, too, on the grounds that
Socrates is referring back to his earlier conclusion and his earlier conclusion must
include the qualifier. This reading, which falls when Vlastos' reasons for qualifying the
earlier conclusion fall, is seriously strained in any case. For on this reading, Socrates
reports the earlier conclusion in a very misleading way, despite the fact that eleven
pages of conversation have intervened. Moreover, on this reading, Crito is in fact
misled, for after the unqualified reminder, he assures Socrates, "Yes, that is what you
said" (292b3). Vlastos would need to explain why Plato would want Crito to be misled
on this crucial point.
8
For Vlastos, the star piece of evidence is
Gorgias
467e (
Socrates
, 228-229, 305-306),
but he also cites
Gorgias
499c-500a,
Lysis
218e, and
Meno
78c and 87e (
Socrates
, 229).
Annas ("Virtue as the Use of Other Goods") seems to agree that the
Euthydemus
is
exceptional—"It is only in the
Euthydemus
that we find the radical conclusion drawn that
Brown, Socrates the Stoic? —
5
they assume that certain of Plato's dialogues share common features that
make them Socratic dialogues. I do not quarrel with this. It seems to me
quite reasonable to group the dialogues that (1) feature a primary character
called Socrates who (2) focuses narrowly on ethical topics and (3) does not
treat himself as a source of important knowledge but seeks or tests
knowledge in others.
9
Such a classification does not depend on contentious
attempts to measure Plato's writing style or chronological hypotheses about
his philosophical development, and it is independent of any particular
interpretation of the theory or theories suggested or assumed in the Socratic
dialogues. Moreover, it rightly makes plain that the
Euthydemus
is a
virtue is the only real good" (55)—but she nevertheless tries to defuse the pressure that
by Vlastos' passages bring to bear by concentrating on
Gorg
467e and arguing that it
makes an instrumental/non-instrumental distinction, at cross-purposes with the
Euthydemus
' conditional/unconditional distinction (57). I do not think that this reply
works. Annas' idea seems to be that health and wealth can be non-instrumental in the
Gorgias
and conditional in the
Euthydemus
, but Vlastos claims that health and wealth
cannot be
goods
(of any sort) in the
Gorgias
and non-goods (of any sort) in the
Euthydemus
. Nevertheless, I think that Vlastos' passages are quite easily defused. In
Gorgias
467e,
Lysis
218e, and
Meno
78c, "Socrates simply asks his interlocutor about
commonly recognized goods, and nothing in the argument depends on his agreeing with
the interlocutor that these are genuine goods" (Irwin, "Epicurean?" 212). (On
Gorgias
467e, see also Brickhouse and Smith,
Plato's Socrates
, 110-111.)
Meno
87e is a
provisional claim taken from what is ordinarily believed, and it comes in for revision.
Gorgias
499c-500a follows on Callicles' belated recognition of good and bad pleasures,
and it is far from clear that Socrates recognizes any good pleasures that are distinct
from virtue. (Rudebusch [
Socrates, Pleasure, and Value
, see esp. 145n6] seems to
allow that there are, but I doubt that he should.) Nevertheless, my goal is not to urge a
Vlastosian to accept that wisdom is the only good in all the Socratic dialogues. I have
my doubts about the tenability of that claim, and more importantly, as will become
clear, I have my doubts about the whole Vlastosian project.
9
Socrates is not a primary character in the
Critias
,
Laws
,
Parmenides
,
Sophist
,
Statesman,
and
Timaeus
. As I understand it, the requirement that Socrates not see
himself as a source of important knowledge rules out the
Cratylus
,
Meno
,
Phaedo
,
Phaedrus
,
Philebus,
Republic
(at least II-X), and
Symposium
. (It is worth noting,
however, that Socrates is keen to credit others (Diotima, priests, etc.) for his most
remarkable claims in several of these dialogues.) The restriction of Socratic dialogues to
ethics, which is dependent upon Aristotle's testimony, rules out the
Theaetetus
. If we
exclude the allegedly Platonic dialogues whose authorship is widely contested and the
Menexenus
, an exceptional work whose position cannot be reasonably established as
Socratic or non-Socratic by the three criteria I have offered, then the remaining,
Socratic dialogues are the
Apology
,
Charmides
,
Crito,
Euthydemus
,
Euthyphro
,
Gorgias,
Hippias Major
,
Hippias Minor
,
Ion
,
Laches
,
Lysis
,
Protagoras
, and (if we allow the
separation)
Republic
I.
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