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es, and demands something more from his philosophical hero.
Even if the core of Socrates' reply not to do politics remains unaltered
during the teacher's of Plato lifetime, Vlastos cannot rest upon
it and feel satisfied with the Socratic silence and its offspring: moral
defect. Therefore, the moral blank in Socrates is still obvious in
Vlastos' point of view as follows.
Given the Socratic attributes, especially the moral ones, principally
apparent in the historical Socrates of the early Platonic dialogues,
whom Vlastos saw exclusively as a moral philosopher, not
as the ontologist or the epistemologist of the later dialogues, it seems
that the Greek philosopher of the 20 th century is eager to create one
more Socratic portrait, more politically-centred, fulfilling the idea
and the requirement of practising justice in the best possible way.
The reason for stressing such an idea, which is a quality, a virtue, is
not only his personal demands from Socrates — which, since not
applied during the occasions of Syracuse and Mytilene, contain disappointment
in Vlastos' viewpoint and thus create the Socratic moral
blank —, but the lines that close the death-scene in the Phaedo:
“Such, Echecrates, was the end of our companion — a man we
might say, who of all those we came to know was the best and, in
any case, the wisest and the most just". 8 Undoubtedly, what caused
the problem and paved the way for the emergence of this moral
blank, is the word “most". Vlastos does not examine whether Socrates
was just or not. He questions whether he was the most just person
among so many who, we know from the Platonic dialogues at
least, weren't more just than Socrates. He questions “the punch-
-word in the epitaph: ‘and most just' " (Vlastos' italics). 9
In the Phaedo, a maturer work of Plato, 10 not an early one (just
as Crito, Laches, Protagoras, Apology, Gorgias), we witness the
Platonic portrait of Socrates, on which, regarding the three virtues
most honoured among the Greeks, courage, sophrosyne and piety,
the Athenian philosopher's character appears “flawless, granite-solid".
11 Therefore, so far as the Platonic “most just" conviction is
concerned, “Plato feels so sure that on this score too the record is
perfect that he has Socrates say he will face divine judgement in the
nether world confident that he 'had never wronged anyone, man or
god' ". 12 The equivalent of such a humanly possible perfection as
8 G. Vlastos, ibid., p. 127.
9 Ibid.
10 Probably of the second period following a tripartite division of his works:
1) early dialogues, 397—387 B.C., 2) maturer works: 386—367 B.C. and 3) 367—
347 B.C.
11 G. Vlastos, ibid., p. 127
12 Ibid., pp. 127—128. Regarding Socrates passage see Plato, Gorgias, 522d.
98