From the Beginning to Plato

SOCRATES AND THE BEGINNINGS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 307
matters that face the Assembly,—not merely the just and the unjust, but shipbuilding,
wall-building and the rest, he is forced to concede that it is only on
matters concerning the just and the unjust that the rhetor genuinely gives expert
advice—a concession that ultimately leads to Gorgias’ downfall. Finally, in the
Euthydemus, the two eristic experts —the brothers, Euthydemus and
Dionysodorus—claim to be the best teachers of virtue alive. 41 But in the
Euthydemus, especially, there can be no doubt that Socrates rejects this claim.
Nevertheless, in rejecting the sophistic moral perspective Socrates need not be
rejecting the sophistic view that virtue is an expertise. He may instead reject the
view that virtue is the particular expertise that the sophists proclaim it is. And
indeed, this is precisely what he does, as the Euthydemus makes clear. 42
Following the eristic brothers’ claim to teach virtue, Socrates asks them to
display their expertise at persuading the young Cleinias to pursue the love of
wisdom (philosophian) and the care for virtue (aretēs epimeleian). 43 The next
portion of the dialogue consists of two pairs of displays: first the eristic brothers’
display (275c–277c), then Socrates’ example of what he had in mind (277d–
282e), another eristic display (282e–286b), and then again another Socratic
example picking up where the first left off (288b–292e). The two Socratic
displays are frequently referred to as the first and second protreptics.
In the first protreptic Socrates maintains that everyone seeks happiness or to
fare well (278e3–279al) 44 and that in order to be happy or fare well one must
possess goods (279al–4). Next, Socrates argues that the only genuine good is
knowledge or wisdom, all other prima facie goods are good only in so far as they
are guided by knowledge (279a4–281e5). 45 Consequently, Socrates concludes
that everyone should seek to become as wise as possible (282a5–6). Socrates
asks whether one should ‘acquire every sort of knowledge (epistēmē) or whether
there is one sort of knowledge which it is necessary for the one who is happy and
a good man to possess, and if so what it is’ but the question is not pursued until
the beginning of the second protreptic.
In the second protreptic Socrates argues that not just any knowledge or
expertise is the one necessary for happiness or faring well. The relevant
knowledge or expertise is one which combines ‘making something and knowing
how to use what it makes’ (289b5–6). This eliminates lyre-making (luropoiikē)
and pipe-making (aulopoiikē), since these expertises fail to know how to use
what they make. But it also eliminates perhaps more plausible candidates: the
speech-making expertise (logopoiikēn technēn), the military expertise (strategikē)
and the political expertise or the expertise of a king (hē potitikē kai he basilikē
technē). The first two are eliminated because they fail to know how to use what
they make; 46 the last is rejected because what it makes is too difficult to
determine. In each case, Socrates rejects an expertise as the one required to make
us happy—that is, he rejects an expertise as virtue—but it is not because it is an
expertise, but because it is an expertise of the wrong sort. What sort of expertise
is required can, however, be gleaned from elsewhere.