Second, I'm curious why courage is a virtue. Socrates says that "bad movement ... is a restrained or hindered motion" (415d), while virtue is possessed by a good sound which is "always unimpeded" and whose movement is "unrestrained and unhindered and so is always flowing" (415d). If the function of courage is opposing bad flows, and bad flows are flows which are restrained, then does courage simply slow down those bad flows even more? Or does the "opposition" take the form of breaking up the hindered flow? That is, to act in an opposite manner to vice would be to oppose the hindering of flow. I guess that's a better understanding.
(2) 414c. "Yes, Socrates, but getting it to do so is like trying to haul a boat up a very sticky ramp!" Well said, Hermogenes!
(3) 417b. "the good penetrates everything". I don't know what this means. Here are some options: the good is the cause of everything, the good is present in everything, the good is more powerful than everything, and the good controls everything.
I'm still with y'all! Happy reading, everyone!
IanH: Thanks for your comments.
ReplyDelete(1) It does indeed look like we get a derivative account of courage here. A useful comparison might be Rep. IV, where courage is (again, somewhat derivatively) the preservation of wisdom.
(3) Given the earlier mention of Anaxagoras in the dialogue, and knowing what we do about Socrates's interpretation of Anaxagoras from the _Phaedo_, your first and fourth options jump out as most immediately likely, though your third option might also follow from them. The only trick with the second option is how to understand the "present in" relation, given that we're talking about Plato and the Good. I guess what I'm saying is: all of those seem like good options to me, when understood in the right way.
A few more slightly bizarre moments:
415c-d: Aporia is a vice?
417b-c: "the good ... is the fastest of the things that are"?
418b-c: "women ... are the best preservers of the ancient language"? Don't get me wrong, I find Socrates's various mythic and divine women quite interesting. I was just surprised to see them showing up in this particular context, for this purpose. I also have no idea what could possibly justify this claim.