From the Beginning to Plato

SOCRATES AND THE BEGINNINGS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 323
the Euthyphro (14c5–6), the search for temperance and piety eventually leads to the
idea that these qualities are forms of knowledge; and if we wish to look outside the
early dialogues, we can find Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics 1144b28–30) and
Xenophon (Memorabilia III.9.5–6) attributing (B) to Socrates.’ Even Brickhouse
and Smith [9.17], ch 4 agree that for Socrates knowledge or wisdom is necessary
and sufficient for virtue. Indeed, it is because they accept Socrates’ commitment to
this doctrine that they are forced to distinguish between virtue—which knowledge
of the good is sufficient and necessary for —and virtuous actions—which
knowledge of the good is neither necessary nor sufficient for. See also Guthrie [9.
33], 130–39, and Taylor [9.84], 137, among others.
76 See Xenophon’s portrait of Socrates mentioned above. One way this issue is
sometimes put is that Socrates collapses the convention (nomos)/nature (phusis)
distinction that the sophists made so much of. (For the sophists’ view of this
distinction see, for example, Kerferd [9.48], 111–131, de Romilly [9.19], 113–116,
and Guthrie [9.32], 55–131.) The idea here is that Socrates is supposed to have
believed that activities enjoined by conventional or traditional morality are
essentially the same as those enjoined by nature.
77 See Gorgias 499e7–500a1. See also 467c5–468c1. See Irwin [9.35], 208 who
correctly points out that Gorgias 499e 7–500a1 really claims that the good is what
we should aim at, but what Polus and Socrates had agreed to earlier was that the
good is what we do aim at. I follow Irwin’s first reading of the latter passage.
78 See Euthydemus 278e3–279a1. The happiness involved here, like the good referred
to in the Gorgias, is the agent’s own. See Vlastos [9.93], 203 n.14, for example.
For the translation of eudaimonia as happiness see Vlastos [9.93], 200–3.
79 See Vlastos [9.93], 204 n 20, for example, who maintains that the identity of
happiness and the good is so obvious to Plato and Socrates that neither of them
feels compelled to argue for it. Vlastos cites their apparent interchangeability in
Socrates’ statement of Callicles’ position at Gorgias 494e–495b. See Irwin [9.36],
92 n. 12 for some reason to worry about this identity.
80 A number of different theses have been delineated under this general title. See, for
example, Vlastos [9.93], 203–9, Brickhouse and Smith [9.17], 103–4 and Irwin [9.
39], 52–3.
81 This is Santas’ prudential paradox; [9.78], 183–89. He cites on behalf of Socrates’
commitment to this principle Meno 77b–78b, Protagoras 358c and Gorgias 468c5–
7. To get the prudential paradox from Socratic eudaimonism we may also need the
claim that there are no non-rational desires or that non-rational desires always
succumb to rational desires.
82 I here sidestep the issues surrounding Brickhouse and Smith’s [9.17] denial that
virtue and so knowledge of the good is sufficient for happiness. Whichever side of
this dispute we favour, someone who acts contrary to his or her own good does so
unintentionally. It is either because the individual fails to know which action
benefits him or her or the individual through some misfortune or lack of non-moral
good is unable to perform the action. Henceforth, I will take Socrates’ position to
be the sufficiency thesis in order to simplify the explication.
83 This is Santas’ moral paradox: that ‘all who do injustice or wrong do so
involuntarily’; ([9.78], 183). He cites the following passages: Gorgias 460b–d,
509e5–7, Protagoras 345c and 360d3.