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

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  26  can stand happily on the principle they have espoused, and carry on with their lives. (Woolf 2002: 244) A first challenge to this contention has been developed above. We saw that Socrates in fact draws an explicit injunction to action from his refutation of the many – that the many should go study with the sophists for a fee – even though this is flagged as problematic. So it seems that the views of the many do indeed have ‘normative’ implications (they are not a merely ‘indicative’ logical contradiction, in Woolf’s terms (2002: 233)). If the many hold to their own explanation, they will not feel the need to study with the sophists; if they accept Socrates’ putative refutation, they will make haste to do so. More broadly, Woolf’s argument overlooks the further point raised above, that the many are not the real interlocutors of the passage in any case. On the one hand, they do not themselves avow akrasia but ascribe it to those they characterize as ‘most people’ (pollous); and on the other hand, they themselves are only a briefly imagined proxy for the purposes of the interrogation of Protagoras. And the word-deed inconsistency of Protagoras – one way to loosely describe akrasia – is in fact, in Woolf’s terms, not merely indicative but rather normative: it bears on his acceptance of arguments and of their implications. Such an inconsistency is morally of the highest importance (Lane 1998; cf. Gergel 2000). Protagoras demonstrates normative word-deed inconsistency at the end of the dialogue. Socrates having led him to the conclusion that ‘wisdom about what is and is not to be feared is courage and is the opposite of this ignorance’ on the basis of previous verbal agreements, ‘[h]e would not even nod at this; he remained silent’ (360d, trans. Lombardo and Bell). Subsequently, lashing out at Socrates that the latter wants only to win, he qualifies and undercuts the verbal agreement to which he has been driven, saying that he will agree only in order to gratify Socrates (360d-e). Here the word-deed inconsistency is in relation to the purported agreement itself: both through body language and verbally, Protagoras enacts an undercutting of his own verbal agreement. Strikingly, both Polus and Callicles in the Gorgias exhibit similar normative word-deed inconsistency in which each goes along with the argument while making clear that he does not really accept it. For Polus, consider for example his refusal to enunciate
  27  agreement at 480e: ‘I think these statements are absurd, Socrates, though no doubt you think they agree with those expressed [and agreed to by Polus] earlier’, trans. Zeyl; for Callicles, the response to Socrates’ question ‘Are we to put this down as true?’ as ‘Certainly, if that pleases you more’ (514a, trans. Zeyl). These failures to integrate words and deeds (even at the level of enacting allegiance to their own verbal agreements) model a paradigm failure of the virtue of temperance, arising (we may infer on the basis of the argument of this paper) from a failure of the executive rule of knowledge. In this respect it is the drama of the dialogues more than the purported teaching of the measure doctrine which can instruct us. 26 Bibliography Ainslie, George (2001). Breakdown of Will. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Annas, Julia (1985). ‘Self-knowledge in Early Plato.’ In Dominic J. O’Meara (ed.) Platonic Investigations, 111-38. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press. (Studies in the Philosophy and the History of Philosophy, vol.13.) Bobonich, Christopher (1994). ‘Akrasia and Agency in Plato’s Laws and Republic’. Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 76:1, 3-36. ----- (2002). Plato’s Utopia Recast: His Later Ethics and Politics. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Burnyeat, M.F., and Jonathan Barnes (1980). ‘Socrates and the Jury: Paradoxes in Plato’s Distinction between Knowledge and True Belief’. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume, vol.54, 173-91 and 193-206. Davidson, Donald (2001 [1980]). ‘How is Weakness of the Will Possible?’ In Davidson, Essays on Actions and Events, 21-42. New York: Oxford University Press. Dent, N.J.H. (1984). The Moral Psychology of the Virtues. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Denyer, Nicholas (ed.) (2008). Plato. Protagoras, Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics edn with commentary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ferrari, G.R.F. (1992). ‘Akrasia as neurosis in Plato’s Protagoras’. In John J. Cleary and Daniel C. Shartin (eds) Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Philosophy 1990 (vol.VI), 115-40. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.
Page 1 and 2:   1  Harvard University Politic
Page 3 and 4:   3  (Pettit 2004: 68). Plato
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