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

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What is wrong with the many’s account of akrasia is not their contention that
knowledge sometimes fails to rule. It is rather their contention that the cause of this
failure is the success of a rival in ruling, as if knowledge were simply one contender
among others (including pleasure, pain, etc) to wield the scepter of executive authority.
Getting measurement right is indeed part of the task of knowledge, but it is only part.
Knowledge must succeed in ruling, and to do so, as the Simonides exegesis showed, it
must operate in conjunction with the virtue of self-control or temperance. Hence the
solution to phenomenal akrasia is not the art of measurement conceived as a theoretical
instrument which will provide knowledge in the form of a possession. It lies rather in the
virtue of self-control of which Socrates in his exegesis of Simonides spoke, and in the
view of knowledge as inherently exercising rule with which he presented the many as
disagreeing. 20
Sôphrosunê as the exercise of the rule of knowledge
In the Protagoras, we encounter the role of sôphrosunê or temperance in this kind of
argument only indirectly. In explicating Simonides, Socrates spoke of the kalos kagathos
and of the agathos, and his language of forcing suggested an effort at restoring the
virtues, implicitly in particular the virtue of temperance which is what anger disrupts.
Even earlier in the dialogue, Protagoras’ ‘parts of a face’ view had been attacked by a
Socratic argument concluding (with Protagoras’ agreement) that wisdom and temperance
are the same thing (333b). I suggest that we are meant to read the refutation of the many
as involving this already agreed identity (given that the middle frame treats only the
status of courage vis-à-vis wisdom as still to be established), though the nature of the
identity is notoriously not unpacked in this or other dialogues celebrating the unity of the
virtues. So if wisdom and temperance are here to be spoken of as the same thing, what
might that mean in respect of the executive rule, or role, of knowledge?
Here a moment in the Gorgias may help us. There, at a certain stage of the
argument, Callicles has ascribed intelligence and bravery to the ‘superior’ men he
admires, describing them as phronimous and andreious, and has redefined justice too as
their having a greater share, as rulers, than do the ruled (491cd). But he balks at
Socrates’ introduction of sôphrosunê: this is the one virtue that he wishes not to redefine,