1 Harvard University Political Theory Colloquium For 11 March 2010 ...

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(345e4-346b5, trans. Taylor, modified in translation of ekontes, akontes and
cognates, and in making the sentence after the ellipsis refer to a plural subject, as
in the Greek, rather than an individual one, as well as other minor points)
In a neat move of strong poetic interpretation, Socrates in effect moves a comma in the
poetic quotation from after ‘voluntarily’ to before it, so making it modify the poet’s own
speech rather than the claim about some doing evil. In other words, rather than parsing
the poet’s lines so as to read ‘All who do no wrong voluntarily/ I praise and love’, he
parses and interprets them thus: ‘All who do no wrong / voluntarily I praise and love’.
This passage is important for two reasons. First, it introduces the topic of whether or not
doing what is bad (and known to be bad) is voluntary action. Notice that in this way,
Socrates has before embarking on the so-called ‘denial of akrasia’ already accepted that
akrasia is at least apparently phenomenologically possible: the question is not of its
possibility but of its modality (whether or not it consists in truly voluntary action).
Second, the passage gives a notable example of intrapsychic conflict and its resolution in
the virtuous man. That resolution involves appeal to intrapsychic ‘forcing’, though
balancing this with intrapsychic calming and befriending. The upright or good man both
forces himself to praise and, when he (as a whole) has become angry, calms himself
down. Such forcing is a voluntary action: although she has to exert force upon herself,
the good person does this voluntarily, in line with her understanding of the good. She
does not act without knowledge of the good in doing so, rather she exercises her
knowledge of the good in acting virtuously. The language of ‘making friends’ with
oneself in fact echoes the Republic Book IV. Self-integration as the achievement of inner
friendship by the exercise of virtue is available to Plato here even without the Republic
framework of the tripartite soul. In other words, outside the narrow context of the
refutation of the many, the Socrates of the Protagoras can account both for anger and for
virtue.
It is worth noting that the third-person language of ‘forcing oneself’, which seems
to objectify part of oneself, is not actually an objectification at all. It is a way of
describing the project of exerting virtue in and through practical reason. The good man