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

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  8  an alternative approach in terms close to those of Moran and, especially, McGeer. Like them, Plato develops the self-governing executive authority of reason which issues in self-integration, doing so however in his characteristic terms of virtue. 9 IV. Socrates in the Protagoras Come now, Protagoras, and reveal this about your mind: What do you think about knowledge? Do you go along with the many or not? The many think that knowledge (epistêmês) is neither strong (ischuron) nor fit to lead (hêgemonikon) nor fit to rule (archikon); instead, [they think that] while knowledge is often present in a man it is not knowledge itself which rules (archein) but something else, whether anger, pleasure, pain, at times love, often fear – they think of his knowledge as if it is being dragged about by all these other things like a slave (hôsper peri andrapodou, perielkomenês upo tôn allôn apantôn). Does it seem (dokei) like that to you, or that knowledge (epistêmê) is something noble and such as to rule a man (kalon…hoion archein tou anthrôpou), and if someone were to know the good and the bad, he would not be forced (kratêthênai) by anything to act other than as knowledge commands (epistêmê keleuêi), and so knowledge (phronêsin) would be sufficient to save a man. (352b-c, my translation, partly following Lombardo and Bell in Cooper, with thanks to Raphael Woolf for suggesting the translations of ‘fit to lead’ and ‘fit to rule’ to bring out the –ikos endings) This passage, which I situate as the ‘inner frame’ for the putative ‘denial of akrasia’, will be central to my understanding of the Protagoras, and is discussed in detail below. Here, I use it to put on the table the ‘measure doctrine’ which Socrates opposes to the contention ascribed to ‘the many’ and which is a locus classicus for his purported intellectualism. Against the claim that pleasure, pain, anger and the like can overcome reason, which he attributes to the many in the ‘inner frame’ just quoted, Socrates eventually advances the view that these passions and emotions do not independently determine action. Rather they are simply data which reason then measures correctly, by
  9  means of the art of measurement, or incorrectly, when acting in ignorance. When reason exercises the ‘art’ or ‘knowledge’ of measurement, it is able to measure pleasures and pains correctly against one another, and so (for example) to pursue greater long-term benefits instead of lesser immediate ones (347a-c). It is this contention – that ‘those who make mistakes with regard to the choice of pleasure and pain…do so because of a lack of knowledge’, and specifically a lack of the knowledge of measurement – which is widely taken to constitute the ‘denial of akrasia’: not passion, but ignorance, explains the failure to act according to what knowledge would prescribe. My reading of the Protagoras and of the measure doctrine’s putative denial of akrasia hinges on three aspects of the surrounding text, which for convenience (though not entirely aptly, as noted in the next footnote) are labeled here as three frames. 10 - The outer frame of the poetic exposition by Socrates of the poet Simonides, which is the first context in which the ‘denial of akrasia’ claim that ‘no one does wrong voluntarily (ekôn)’ is actually raised. On my reading, this poetic exposition demonstrates a correct analysis of how a virtuous person would handle anger (thus showing both that a virtuous person is liable to experience anger, and how he would handle it). Accordingly, interpreting what Socrates later says about the so-called ‘denial of akrasia’ should be done in light of this earlier statement of a richer moral psychology in which he allows for emotion (and perhaps desire) in the framework of virtue. - The middle frame returns to the dialogue’s earlier discussion of whether wisdom, temperance, courage, justice and piety are five names for the same virtue, or are different virtues, and the immediate part of this frame relevant to our interests is Protagoras’ assertion (giving up his earlier ‘parts of a face’ answer) that four of them are fairly close but that courage is completely different. - The inner frame is Socrates’ interrogation of Protagoras as to whether or not the sophist believes that knowledge is inherently ruling and powerful, and Protagoras’ agreement that this is so. It is this putative agreement which is the real object of
Page 1 and 2:   1  Harvard University Politic
Page 3 and 4:   3  (Pettit 2004: 68). Plato
Page 5 and 6:   5  self-knowledge understood
Page 7:   7  achieved through self-inte
Page 11 and 12:   11  ruling. On this basis, we
Page 13 and 14:   13  exercises his virtue by -
Page 15 and 16:   15  ‘inner frame’ for the
Page 17 and 18:   17  failure to exert integrat
Page 19 and 20:   19  resolution to the aporia,
Page 21 and 22:   21  but to reject altogether
Page 23 and 24:   23  who is believed to be jus
Page 25 and 26:   25  that reason’s rule is i
Page 27 and 28:   27  agreement at 480e: ‘I t
Page 29 and 30:   29  Moran, Richard (2001). Au
Page 31 and 32:   31          
Page 33 and 34:   33          
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