Virtue ethics has been charged with being unable to provide solutions to practical moral issues. In response, the defenders of virtue ethics argue that normative virtue ethics exists. The debate is significant on its own, yet both sides of the controversy approach the issue from the assumption that moral philosophy has to tell us what we should do. In this essay, I would like to examine the question regarding the practicality of virtue ethics in a different way. Virtue ethics is (...) an ancient approach shared by both ancient Greek philosophers and classic Chinese Confucians, and indeed, ancient Greeks call ethics practical science. How, then, do the ancients themselves view the issue of practicality? This essay shows that there is a notion of practicality which is prominent in both ancient Greek and ancient Chinese virtue ethics but is neglected in today’s ethics. According to this notion, ethics is to transform one’s life. The essay also raises a prospect of the revival of this notion. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the two versions of divided line create problems that cannot be solved — with or without the hypothesis that the objects belonging to the level of διάνοια on the divided line are intermediates. I also argue that the discussion of arithmetic and calculation does not fit Aristotle’s attribution of intermediates to Plato and provides no support for the claim that Plato had such intermediates in mind when he talked about διάνοια in the Republic. The (...) upshot of my argument is negative: even if Aristotle’s report about Plato and intermediates is correct, there is no evidence for such objects provided in the passages I review from the Republic. If they are to be found in Plato, it will have to be elsewhere that they are found. (shrink)

Broadly speaking, something can be called intermediate for Plato insofar as it occupies a place between two objects, poles, places, time, or principles. But this broad meaning of the intermediate has been eclipsed by the Aristotelian critique of the intermediate objects of the dianoia, so that it has become more difficult to think of the intermediates as functions of the soul. The aim of this paper is to show how, in the Republic, thumos is analogously treated as an intermediate with (...) other kinds of intermediate objects, and tentatively to relate this psychological intermediate in a broader theory with doxa, as its epistemological ground in the course of action. (shrink)

In the Gorgias, Plato has Polus ask Socrates if he would rather suffer injustice than perform it. Socrates’ response is justly famous, affirming a view that Polus himself finds incredible, and one that even contemporary readers find difficult to credit: “for my part, I would prefer neither, but if it had to be one or the other, I would choose to suffer rather than do what is unjust”. In this paper, we take up the part of Socrates’ response that Polus (...) never engages and that has also been completely neglected by contemporary scholars, namely, Socrates’ explicit aversion to being a victim of injustice. We show that this same aversion—though one not nearly as strong as his aversion to doing injustice—appears in several texts, and we argue that the best explanation of such an aversion derives from two important features of Socratic philosophy, both of which have only recently been recognized in Socratic scholarship: his virtue intellectualism, which conceives of virtue as a kind of craft that can be achieved in different degrees, and his conception of moral psychology, which allows for non-rational influences on how we perform the cognitive functions required for proper deliberation. (shrink)

Hegelian readings of Antigone would have us believe that Creon and Antigone are both heroes and villains at once. In this essay, I argue that Creon is in fact the villain of the piece, and a paradigmatic tyrant. Far from representing democratic rationalism, Creon is in fact the antitype of the epistemic humility that was one of the foundational ideals of Athenian democracy. As the Ode to Man and Protagoras’ Great Speech in Plato’s dialogue both suggest, human expertise ultimately reaches (...) its limits in the sphere of ethics, an area overseen by the gods. For both Protagoras and Sophocles, in my reconstruction, democratic and religious practices are not an arrogant attempt to deny this fact, but a way of humbly accepting it. Through the humbling of Creon and the piety and reasonableness of Teiresias, Haimon, and even the Guard, Antigone illustrates an essential characteristic of democracy: its humility. (shrink)

: Metaphysics B considers two sets of views that hypostatize mathematicals. Aristotle discusses the first in his B.2 treatment of aporia 5, and the second in his B.5 treatment of aporia 12. The former has attracted considerable attention; the latter has not. I show that aporia 12 is more significant than the literature suggests, and specifically that it is directly addressed in M.2 – an indication of its importance. There is an immediate problem: Aristotle spends most of M.2 refuting the (...) view that mathematicals are separate; but the B.5 mathematicals are inherent. I argue that the B.5 inherence is compatible with the M.2 separateness, and further, that aporia 12 is more than just a puzzle about the hypostatization of mathematicals. It is also a puzzle about the ontological status of mathematicals relative to sensibles. (shrink)

In this paper we attempt to understand what Socrates says about expertise and virtue in Plato’s dialogue Laches in the light of Socrates’ idea of “human wisdom” in the Apology of Socrates. Conducting a good life requires both “knowledge about good and bad things”, that is, knowledge about human well-being, and “human wisdom”. Socrates aspires to epistemic autonomy: Trust in your own reason, and don’t let any expert tell you anything about your own happiness.

One puzzling feature of Plato’s Republic is the First City or ‘city of pigs’. Socrates praises the First City as a “true”, “healthy” city, yet Plato abandons it with little explanation. I argue that the problem is not a political failing, as most previous readings have proposed: the First City is a viable political arrangement, where one can live a deeply Socratic lifestyle. But the First City has a psychological corollary, that the soul is simple rather than tripartite. Plato sees (...) this ‘First Soul’ as an inaccurate model of moral psychology, and so rejects it, along with its political analogue. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine the problem of the so-called Mathematical Objects within the context of the Divided Line. I argue that Plato believes that there are such objects but their distinctness and the mode of cognition relative to them can only be understood in relation to the superordinate, unhypothetical first principle of all, the Idea of the Good. The objects of mathematics or διάνοια are, unlike the objects of intellection or νόησις, cognized independently of the Good.

Many have argued that Plato’s intermediates are not independent entities. Rather, they exemplify the incapacity of discursive thought to cognizing Forms. But just what does this incapacity consist in? Any successful answer will require going beyond the intermediates themselves to another aspect of Plato’s mathematical thought - his attribution of a quasi-numerical structure to Forms. For our purposes, the most penetrating account of eidetic numbers is Jacob Klein’s, who saw clearly that eidetic numbers are part of Plato’s inquiry into the (...) ontological basis for all counting: the existence of a plurality of formal elements, distinct yet combinable into internally articulate unities. However, Klein’s study of the Sophist reveals such articulate unities as imperfectly countable and therefore opaque to διάνοια. And only this opacity, I argue, successfully explains the relationship of intermediates to Forms. (shrink)

In this paper I defend a reading of eikasia as the viewing of an image as an image; this condition need not involve any confusion of image and original. The “standard reading” of eikasia, on which experiencing this state involves mistaking images for originals, is unsatisfactory, despite the fact that it offers an attractive account of the relation of the line and the cave. The initial description of eikasia makes the suggestion that Socrates believes that anyone consistently mistakes images for (...) originals implausible. Furthermore, the similarity later described between eikasia and dianoia, the third highest state on the line, supports the claim that eikasia can sometimes involve the successful study of an object through its image. After outlining my view of eikasia and explaining these arguments against the “standard” view, I return to the cave and attempt a pairing of the line and the cave that accords with my account of eikasia. (shrink)

As a cognitivist about emotions, Socrates takes the fear of death to be a belief that death is a bad thing for the one who dies. Socrates, however, thinks there are reasons for thinking death is not a bad thing at all, and might even be a blessing. So the question considered in this paper is: how would Socrates explain the fact that so many people believe death is bad?

In the so-called ‘dialogues of definition,’ Socrates appears to endorse the ‘priority of definition.’ This principle states that an agent cannot know anything about F-ness (its instances, examples, properties, etc.) without knowing what F-ness is (the definition of F-ness). Not only is this principle implausible, it is also difficult to square with Socrates’ method. In employing his method, Socrates appeals to truths about the instances and properties of F-ness, even while pursuing definitional knowledge; meanwhile, he holds that one cannot know (...) those truths without already knowing the definition. Thus, there is a tension between Socrates’ principle and his method. Commentators have tried to resolve this problem in various ways, though typically without a careful examination of his ‘What is F-ness?’ question. I argue that Socrates employs the ‘What is F-ness?’ question as a way of introducing two distinct types of investigation into F-ness (conceptual and causal). With this established, the relationship between Socrates’ principle and his method comes to light, and the tension is resolved. (shrink)

This paper presents a new interpretation of the objects of dianoia in Plato’s divided line, contending that they are mental images of the Forms hypothesized by the dianoetic reasoner. The paper is divided into two parts. A survey of the contemporary debate over the identity of the objects of dianoia yields three criteria a successful interpretation should meet. Then, it is argued that the mental images interpretation, in addition to proving consistent with key passages in the middle books of the (...) Republic, better meets those criteria than do any of the three main positions. (shrink)

I argue against a formidable interpretation of Plato’s Divided Line image according to which dianoetic correctly applies the same method as dialectic. The difference between the dianoetic and dialectic sections of the Line is not methodological, but ontological. I maintain that while this interpretation correctly identifies the mathematical method with dialectic, ( i.e. , the method of philosophy), it incorrectly identifies the mathematical method with dianoetic. Rather, Plato takes dianoetic to be a misapplication of the mathematical method by a subset (...) of practicing mathematicians. Thus, Plato’s critique of dianoetic is a not a critique of mathematics, as such, but of mathematicians. (shrink)

This paper examines the soul-turning metaphor in Book 7 of Plato’s Republic. It argues that the failure to find a consistent reading of how the metaphor is used has contributed to a number of long-standing disagreements, especially concerning the more famous metaphor with which it is intertwined, the Cave allegory. A full reading of the metaphor, as it occurs throughout Book 7, is offered, with particularly close attention to what is one of the most difficult and stubbornly divisive passages in (...) Book 7, 532b6–d1. (shrink)

This dissertation explores how antiquity and some of its early modern admirers understand the notion of certainty, especially as it is theorized in Quintilian's Institutio Oratoria, a first-century educational manual for the aspiring orator that defines certainty in terms of consensus. As part of a larger discussion of argumentative strategies, Quintilian turns to the “nature of all arguments,” which he defines as “reasoning which lends credence to what is doubtful by means of what is certain” (ratio per ea quae certa (...) sunt fidem dubiis adferens: quae natura est omnium argumentorum, V.10.8). These certainties, he later specifies, include not matters of scientific demonstration or objective fact, but the agreements of various communities: the laws of cities, local customs, and other forms of consensus. As the foundation of persuasive rhetoric, these consensus-based certainties situate argumentation as the practice of crafting agreements rather than demonstrating necessary conclusions. Taking as its point of departure Quintilian's novel understanding of certainty, this study looks to some of Quintilian's intellectual forebears as well as his later readers to show how his work is both a nexus of earlier intellectual developments as well as an important inspiration for later accounts of certainty, even into the early modern period. After illustrating in the first chapters of this dissertation how Quintilian's manual incorporates elements from Aristotelian notions of dialectic and rhetoric as well as from Ciceronian skeptical approaches to epistemology, I show how Quintilian's curriculum for the orator shapes the thought of Italian humanists, especially that of Lorenzo Valla (1406–1457), a reformer of scholastic logic and dialectic, and Giambattista Vico (1668–1744), an influential Neapolitan jurist. Adopting Quintilian's rendering of certainty as a matter of agreements and conventions, these later authors elaborate their own novel approaches to various fields—including law, language, and logic—through this ancient understanding of certum. Contrary to modern notions of certainty as objective or scientific fact, Quintilian's humanist readers continue to root this concept in consensus, both within the courtroom and without. (shrink)

Although most scholars trace the Liar Paradox to Plato’s contemporary, Eubulides, the paper argues that Plato builds something very like the Liar Paradox into the very structure of his dialogues with significant consequences for understanding his views. After a preliminary exposition of the liar paradox it is argued that Plato builds this paradox into the formulation of many of his central doctrines, including the “Divided Line” and the “Allegory of the Cave” and the “Ladder of Love”. Thus, Plato may have (...) been the first to formulate the view that Graham Priest calls dialetheism, roughly, the view that some contradictions are, in an illuminating way, inescapable and true. The paper argues that Plato builds this Liar paradox into the formulation of his signature views because he holds that the attempt by finite human beings to theorize about transcendent realities results in the simultaneous necessity, and impossibility, of transgressing the limits of language—leading to the paradoxes. Finally, it is argued that the existence of these paradoxes in these Platonic doctrines is the direct result of an intrinsic hermeneutical circle in Plato’s aforementioned signature views. (shrink)