J. Angelo Corlett

Professor William Lane Craig argues that a particular set of concerns about the Christian doctrine of penal substitution (namely, that Jesus of Nazareth was sacrificed for the sins of humanity) can be satisfied. This article provides rebuttals to said replies in an attempt to render plausible the claim that God exists to the extent that God is perfectly just, and that divine justice requires, among other things, that God never engage in the harming of innocents, consistent with any doctrine of retributivism worthy of the name. The doctrine of God, then, must remain consistent with unqualified negative retributivism. Any theism which might suggest otherwise violates such vital considerations of justice and fairness and must be rejected.

It has recently been argued that there is probably no theory of punishment to be found in Immanuel Kant's writings, but that “if one selects carefully among the many remarks and insights that Kant has left us about crime and punishment, one might even be able to build such an edifice from the bricks provided.”1 In this paper, I seek to provide part of a foundation of a Kantian theory of punishment, one which is consistent with many, if not all, of Kant's own insights on justice. Finally, I assess the plausibility of Kant's view.

This chapter presents a Kantian–Marxian–Rawlsian critique of open borders approaches to US immigration policy insofar as they argue that such approaches are vulnerable to the objection that it inadvertently uses new immigrants as mere means to the ends, as Immanuel Kant might put it, of capitalist profits by way of stagnated working class wages due to the ongoing increased “surplus army” of workers, while at the same time, as Karl Marx might add, alienating such underemployed and unemployed US blacks throughout the United States from the very economy that they and their ancestors helped build through slavery and since then. Simultaneously, open borders accounts inadvertently continue to undermine since the start of European contact the cultural preservation of indigenous nations throughout the United States due to the environmental damages that occur via conspicuous consumption by US citizens. New immigrant workers are pitted against other struggling US workers, while capitalism continues to increase its wealth. This practice of immigration is unjust and unfair and even racist insofar it violates John Rawls’ Difference Principle and his Fair Equality of Opportunity Principle in making the ethnically least advantaged (US blacks and indigenous nations) worst-off rather than better-off. It also destroys the environment by human overpopulation due to land load capacity disregard, leading to water shortages and other problems that ruin the environment. This too leads to the oppression of indigenous nations. In the end, open borders policies in the United States continue to harm the least advantaged also by providing billions of dollars annually in resources for new immigrants while providing nothing substantial in terms of US compensatory reparations to the most oppressed peoples in US history.

Given the hundreds of articles and books that have been written in epistemology over the span of just the past few decades, relatively little has been written specifically on epistemic responsibility. What has been written rarely considers the nature of epistemic responsibility and its possible role in epistemic justification or knowledge. Instead, such work concerns philosophical analyses and arguments about related concepts such as epistemic virtues or duties, rather than epistemic praiseworthiness and blameworthiness.2 It is epistemic responsibility in the blameworthiness and praiseworthiness senses that is the primary concern of this paper, though the duty sense of epistemic responsibility is explored in terms of its pertinence to epistemic virtue. What is epistemic responsibility? And what, if anything, is its relationship to justification and knowledge?

In my book, Interpreting Plato’s Dialogues, I provide a critical assessment of numerous arguments proffered by Julia Annas, Terence Irwin, Richard Kraut and some others in favor of the philosophically prominent Mouthpiece Interpretation of Plato’s dialogues (also referred to by some as the “dogmatic” approach to Plato’s dialogues) according to which it is justified to ascribe to Plato some or all of the informational contents of what this or that character in Plato’s dialogues states beyond mere elements of philosophical method such as argumentation and analysis. The name for this approach to Plato’s dialogues can be found in some of the writings of Gregory Vlastos, among others. According to one of its recent proponents, “The idea is not that Plato held views dogmatically, but that he held views (δόγματα) which he advanced in the dialogues.” (Bevershluis 2008: 85) After exposing the fallacies in the reasoning in support of the Mouthpiece Interpretation and thereby rendering dubious that approach to the dialogues (Corlett 2005: Chapter 2), I articulate and defend what I call the “Socratic Anti-Mouthpiece Interpretation” according to which Plato’s employment of the dialogue form itself either intentionally or unintentionally prohibits readers’ abilities to discern the substantive philosophical mind of Plato himself. Instead, the informational contents of Plato’s dialogues ought to be studied as the philosophically profound works that they are in encouraging us to think analytically about the nature of justice, art, knowledge and education as we read the Republic, of knowledge and reality as we read the Theaetetus, of compensatory justice as we read the Gorgias, of law and punishment as we read the Laws, etc.. For even if one were to assume the controversial authorship of the Seventh Letter as do many proponents of the Mouthpiece Interpretation, there is inadequate direct textual evidence from the Corpus Platonicum that Plato purports to somehow expound his positive substantive philosophical beliefs, doctrines or theories in his dialogues, and secondary evidence from one or more of his students in the Academy (most notably, Aristotle) is problematic. My Socratic Interpretation of Plato’s dialogues is a species of the Anti-Mouthpiece Interpretation, also called the “non-dogmatic” approach by some, and the Anti-Mouthpiece Interpretation is misleadingly referred to as the “dramatic” approach by others. While the full name I have given my approach to Plato’s dialogues is the “Socratic Anti-Mouthpiece Interpretation,” I shall hereafter refer to it by its abbreviated name: the “Socratic Interpretation.”

This chapter provides a taxonomy of approaches to the Platonic Question and articulates the Socratic Anti-MouthpieceSocratic (Anti-Mouthpiece) Interpretation InterpretationMouthpiece interpretation of Plato’s dialogues. It then provides in-depth criticisms of the Mouthpiece Interpretation of Plato’s dialogues, exposing various logical errors employed by its supporters. It also seeks to differentiate the Socratic Anti-Mouthpiece Interpretation from other anti-mouthpiece approaches, clarifying that while some objections to the latter might be plausible and render problematic some of the other anti-mouthpiece approaches, they do not render problematic the Socratic Anti-Mouthpiece Interpretation.

This chapter defines and critically discusses “The Socratic Question,” which asks whether or not it is justified to attribute to either the historical Socrates or Plato’s Socrates any proposition of philosophical substance found in Plato’s dialogues. It discusses the Socratic Question largely in the context of the discussion found in Thomas C. BrickhouseBrickhouse, T.C. and Nicholas D. SmithSmith, N.D., Socratic Moral Psychology. In the end, it is argued that just as many philosophers commit themselves to some or another version of the Mouthpiece interpretation of Plato’s dialogues pertinent to the Platonic Question, Brickhouse and Smith appear to commit themselves to some version of the Mouthpiece Interpretation relative to the Socratic Question. However, various difficulties loom for the Mouthpiece Interpretation of the Socratic Question.

What appears to be the accepted view by most philosophers on Plato and punishmentPunishment is that Plato was a moral educationMoral education theorist about punishment. This chapter examines and exposes this view to be incorrect and poorly established by way of the informational contents of the Platonic corpus. Given the plausibility of the Socratic (Anti-MouthpieceSocratic (Anti-Mouthpiece) Interpretation) Interpretation, what the Platonic corpus tells us is nothing at all about Plato’s theory of punishment. Nor does it reveals Plato’s views on punishment. Nor does it reveal a theory of punishment at all. Indeed, it at best reveals what is expressed by Plato’s Socrates about punishment. But what it reveals through the words of Plato’s Socrates is hardly a moral educationMoral education theory of punishment. Instead, what it reveals is mostly a retributivist view (not a theory), coupled with some words consistent with a utilitarian view of punishmentPunishment, and comparatively very little about moral education and punishment.

This chapter explicates many of the words of Plato’s Socrates on the problem of distributive justice. One of the main points of this chapter is to demonstrate how the Socratic Anti-MouthpieceSocratic (Anti-Mouthpiece) Interpretation Interpretation can and ought to function when it interprets the words placed in Socrates’ mouth by Plato. One of the leading contemporary philosophers of Plato, Richard KrautKraut, R., argues that Plato has a theory of distributive justice. However, while this chapter will argue that there is no theory of distributive justice found in the words of Plato’s Socrates, there are philosophically interesting concepts and arguments which are articulated and may be useful to contemporary moral, legal, social and political philosophers.

This chapter explicates Plato’s Socrates’ words pertaining to the alleged moral obligation to obey the law. It provides a novel interpretation of the meaning of Socrates’ words. For Socrates, he has no moral obligation to obey the Laws of Athens in that he has been unjustly convicted of atheism and corruption of (some of) the Athenian youth by teaching some of them philosophy. Since he was not an atheist and since he had not genuinely corrupted the youth, Socrates, when presented with the coercive offer and threat that if he ceased doing philosophy his life would be spared but if he did not he would be compelled to drink the hemlock and die, decides to exercise an ultimate act of civil disobedience and thereby expose Athens’ anti-philosophical values. Socrates would rather die than to live without philosophy and to live in Athens where genuine philosophy is not respected. In the end, Plato’s Socrates renders a graphic public moral indictment against Athens’ anti-philosophical morality.

This chapter provides an in-depth set of replies to several objections that either have been raised or might be raised to the Socratic Anti-MouthpieceSocratic (Anti-Mouthpiece) Interpretation InterpretationMouthpiece interpretation of Plato’s dialogues. It is the goal of this chapter to defend the Socratic Anti-Mouthpiece Interpretation as the most plausible approach to Plato’s dialogues because it is the least problematic and because there are no discernible objections to it that render it implausible. This chapter also articulates the value of the Socratic Anti-Mouthpiece Interpretation in explaining their purpose as the Platonic Question raises the problem of Plato’s purpose in composing philosophy in mostly dialogue form.