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Soteres Fournaros
GREGORY VLASTOS' MORAL BLANK
OF SOCRATES
UDC 1 Socrates
An important work on Socrates by a famous Greek philosopher
of the Diaspora, Gregory Vlastos (1907—1991), the Socratic Studies,
reaches its end with a quotation from Abraham Lincoln, which
is combined with Socrates: “[…] this quotation from Lincoln:
To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of
men.
Socrates [Vlastos concludes] has been and always will be my philosophical
hero. But great and good as he certainly was, he would have
been a greater and better man, wiser and more just, if that truth
had enlightened his moral vision" 1 (italics belong to Vlastos). What
is evident in this passage is that there is something lacking from
Socrates' moral vision. There is a moral blank in the teacher of Pla-
1 G. Vlastos, Socratic Studies, Cambridge University Press, 1994, p.133. As
we read in the editor's (Myles Burnyeat's) preface, p. ix, “Socratic Studies is the
companion volume to Gregory Vlastos' Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher
(1991). It contains, as promised in the Introduction (pp. 18—19) to that work, revised
versions of three previously published essays on Socrates, not as much new
material as he had planned to write [Vlastos passed away in 1991]". And in p. xi:
“The Epilogue [where the aforementioned passage belongs] 'Socrates and Vietnam'
which stands here in its place was not part of GV's [Gregory Vlastos'] own conception
of the book. But it matches so well the Epilogue 'Felix Socrates' in Socrates:
Ironist and Moral Philosopher that it seemed right to include it". This 'Socrates
and Vietnam' was a Vlastos' address at the graduation of candidates in Classical
and Modern Languages and Literatures at the University of California at
Berkeley on 20 May 1987.
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