From the Beginning to Plato

316 FROM THE BEGINNING TO PLATO
own claim to lack the expertise that is virtue 88 prohibits him from supplying a
more substantive moral theory. Perhaps this is yet another way in which Socrates
stands at the beginning of moral philosophy. Many, if not all, of the subsequent
Greek moral philosophers may be seen as completing the work that Socrates
could only begin.
NOTES
1 From Guthrie [9.33]. Other translations are my own unless otherwise noted.
2 See Aristotle The Parts of Animals 642a28 and Metaphysics 987b1–4 and
1078b17.
3 See the title of the present essay. See also Guthrie [9.33], 97–105. Indeed, much of
what I have to say here in the introductory section regarding this tradition and the
puzzle it raises follows Guthrie’s remarks. My response to this puzzle, however,
diverges significantly from Guthrie’s.
4 Socrates is also mentioned in the Frogs and the Birds.
5 His other Socratic works are the Apology, Symposium and the Oeconomicus.
6 Not counting those dialogues which are generally considered spurious. The
Alcibiades I and the Cleitophon have recently garnered some supporters; for the
former see Annas [9.1] and for the latter see Roochnik [9.75]. If they are genuinely
Platonic, then 22 of the dialogues feature Socrates as a primary speaker.
7 Not counting the occasions in which he uses Socrates as an example in various
arguments.
8 Aristotle’s portrait agrees in most essentials with the Platonic portrait.
9 I am hedging here because I am well aware that there are many first-rate Socratic
scholars who do not accept Vlastos’s solution. See, esp. Kahn [9.40], [9.41], [9.
42], [9.43], [9.44], [9.45], [9.46], and [9.47]. Moreover, even among those scholars
who accept the substance of Vlastos’s approach, few would accept it in all of its
detail. Nevertheless, Vlastos’s well-deserved scholarly reputation, the plausibility of
the approach, and the characteristic clarity and force of his argument will likely
make his approach the paradigm for years to come. In any case, I believe the basic
outline of the approach to be correct.
10 Vlastos [9.94] was published posthumously under the editorship of Myles
Burnyeat.
11 Actually, Vlastos’s dismissal of Aristophanes is made explicitly only in Vlastos [9.
91]. I am somewhat more sympathetic to Aristophanes’ portrait than is Vlastos.
12 The Platonic dialogues have traditionally been divided into three groups,
corresponding to their supposed order of composition: the early dialogues (in
alphabetical order): Apology, Charmides, Crito, Euthydemus, Euthyphro, Gorgias,
Hippias Major, Hippias Minor, Ion, Laches, Lysis, Menexenus, Protagoras,
Republic I; the middle dialogues (in alphabetical order): Cratylus, Parmenides,
Phaedo, Phaedrus, Republic II–X, Symposium and Theaetetus; the late dialogues
(in alphabetical order): Critias, Laws, Philebus, Politicus, Sophist, Timaeus. (I have
excluded the Meno from these three groups, because it is commonly taken to be
transitional between the early and middle periods, containing elements of both.)
While more fine-grained orderings have been proposed, they have never received