Thanks to everyone for yesterday's comments. Two brief, unremarkable comments.
(a) Knowledge-standards seem to be shifting here (or, perhaps, Socrates is talking about two kinds of knowledge). On the one hand, he is happy to say of all sorts of people that they don't know anything. On the other hand, he says, e.g., at 22d-e that craftsmen have knowledge of their crafts. I haven't checked whether this is marked by a difference in the Greek verb.
(b) At 25d-e note the argument that establishes, or presupposes, that nobody does (certain kinds of) wrong willingly.
First, an additional note about Nate's (b): If the proper response to someone's doing wrong unwillingly (because ignorantly) is to get a hold of her "privately, to instruct and exhort" her, then what exactly is the role of law and punishment in the good life? Is punishment always unjust and inappropriate? Are laws mere codifications of our private ethical codes? In other words, what sort of legal theory follows from a so-called Socratic ethics? (Also, cf. 31c-32a ff., Socrates on private vs. public life.)
ReplyDeleteA second, small point: I always enjoy the fact that Socrates lumps in religious folks with the poets when he complains about the poets' lack of wisdom ("poets do not compose their poems with knowledge, but by some inborn talent and inspiration, *like seers and prophets who also say many fine things without any understanding of what they say*" (22c).). This is, supposedly, *right in the middle* of Socrates' attempt to demonstrate his own piety!
23d: three standard charges against philosophers--physics; atheism; deceptive or corrupting argumentative techniques.
ReplyDelete23e: Meletus attacking on behalf of the poets; Anytus for politicians and craftsmen; Lycon for orators: cf. 22d--there is no mention there of orators as having been cross-examined by S.
24a: But Meletus et al are the new accusers, not the old accusers, and their charges are: "Socrates is guilty of corrupting the young and of not believing in the gods in whom the city believes, but in other new spiritual things".
24d: Suppose that M thought that S was a corrupter of the young. Why should it follow that M must know who is an improver of the young? Is this about the sort of knowledge required for judging that S is a corrupter? I wonder whether there is anywhere in the corpus--I suspect there probably is--where S says that a doctor needs to know about both health and disease in order to practice?
Is this similar to the example of the just person knowing how to steal, at Resp. 333e-334a. If an argument is defective--as Polemarchus' argument seems to be--it might nonetheless contain accurate principles, e.g., "the one who is most able to guard against disease is also most able to produce it unnoticed", Resp. 333e.
26c: atheism.
28d: S compares himself to Achilles.
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ReplyDeletePryio--that's a good point about 24d. The connection with Rep. I is definitely there, and useful to think about.
ReplyDeleteWhatever the inference is supposed to be, does it require that living well, or being an improver of the young, is a techne?
A bit more on 24d ... You might think that the reason that medicine requires that the doctor know about both the prevention of disease and its production is that medicine is about one and only one thing--the care of the body (Gorg. 464a-465a). [NB. It is also caring for the body in a way that somehow parallels justice, rather than legislation--whatever that means.] So long as there is a single thing that is the focus for a practice or a craft, e.g., bodily health, then the practitioner will need to know both about the presence of that thing, and the absence of it also. And perhaps the care of the youth (education) is one single thing, such that he who knows about its absence must know about its presence.
ReplyDelete-- Does Plato anywhere suggest that there are some apparent-crafts that are not actually crafts, because they focus on more than one distinct thing? (I am thinking of something like his analysis of moneymaking, at Resp. 341c, ff.)
On Nate's question: I am not sure whether S's claim requires that being an improver of the young is a techne; I think I'd need to know a bit more about Socrates' conception of techne.
On knowledge, @Nate (a) : You only give one exact reference (22d, where the Greek has ἐφίστημι repeated. σοφία also occurs in the passage.
ReplyDeleteI believe the fluctuating status of ἐφίστημι (and related terms) can be understood as a case of Socratic irony (see Gregory Vlastos on this notion, especially the first chapter of his book Socrates, Ironist and moral philosopher). He is pointing out the tension between the common usage of a term - "to know", ἐφίστημι - and what would be expected from such a (bold) term according to philosophical criteria. The point would then be: They (especially craftsmen, each credited with his excellent τέχνη) claim they know, yet the do not know; what counts is the difference between opinion presenting itself as knowledge and genuine knowledge.
@Pryio, on phony crafts: at least one example can be found in the beginning of Book X of the Republic, where S. claims (n an obviously provocative manner) that running around with a mirror amounts to a τέχνη capable of reproducing even unseen things...
@Tuomas: thanks for the pointer! Apologies for the delay in moderating your comment: I must get into the habit of actually checking and moderating ...
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