Marina McCoy

This dissertation offers an interpretation of moral knowledge and moral education in Plato's Protagoras. The dialogue develops the deeply antagonistic views of Protagoras and Socrates about these and related topics. I examine their competing views about several important questions, including: What is moral wisdom, and how is it related to the other parts of virtue? Can arete be taught, and if not, how else might it be acquired? Is the good reducible to natural human desires, or does it in some way transcend the natural world? The dissertation includes a detailed analysis of all sections of the dialogue, as well as of relevant sections of the Theaetetus. In the Introduction and Conclusion I also compare Protagoras' and Socrates' views to those of other moral philosophers. ;I argue that for Protagoras, arete is the ability to plan well and to exert control over external circumstances in order to promote one's own survival and pleasure. Moral reasoning is a techne, a tool for maximizing human desires. An analysis of the Great Speech shows that Protagoras is an ethical naturalist: the good is survival. Justice and shame are valuable in that they promote this end. Socratic dialectic reveals that, for Protagoras, wisdom has priority over any virtues with which it conflicts. Socrates' analysis of hedonism elicits Protagoras' assumption that pleasure is the good, an assumption inconsistent with Protagoras' view that courage is a virtue. ;Socrates, by contrast, is not an ethical naturalist; the good is not an object of the natural world. Moral knowledge is not technical, for it requires self-knowledge. While arete depends upon moral knowledge, our knowledge is always incomplete: we may progress towards excellence, but can never fully attain it. The human soul has an openness to the good, but we must articulate and test our intuitions through conversation with others. Moral teaching, understood as the simple transmission of knowledge, is impossible, but moral learning through philosophical exploration of moral intuitions and their limits is possible. Philosophy, so understood, better preserves ordinary moral experience than does Sophistry

This paper examines Socrates’ refutation of Protagoras’s view of knowledge in the Theaetetus (151e–186e). I show that the argument against Protagoras is not intended to be a purely abstract one about inconsistent premises. Instead, Socrates’ success in argumentagainst Protagoras depends upon Theaetetus’s character and his beliefs about knowledge and expertise. I also explore how understanding that section of the dialogue in this way better exhibits Socrates’ description of himself as akin to a midwife. Plato affirms a notion of the “rational” as inevitably embedded in the experiences of the particular interlocutors with whom Socrates speaks. The Theaetetus recognizes the existence of a competing intellectual position that from its own standpoint is not fully “captured” by the Socratic position, while still dialectically affi rming the Socratic/philosophical standpoint.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Aristotle on False Reasoning: Language and the World in the Sophistical RefutationsMarina Berzins McCoyAristotle on False Reasoning: Language and the World in the Sophistical Refutations. Scott Schreiber. Albany: SUNY Press, 2003. pp. 240. $68.50, hardcover; $22.95, paperback.Scott Schreiber's Aristotle on False Reasoning is the first full-length English commentary on Aristotle's Sophistical Refutations in the last century. Aristotle's Sophistical Refutations is a text that has received relatively little attention in the last century of scholarship, despite a revival of interest in other aspects of Aristotle's work concerned with the nature of good argument and rhetoric. (The 1995 French translation and commentary by Loius-Andre Dorion is a notable exception.) Schreiber finds the primary reason [End Page 92] for inattention to this text to lie in the tendency of contemporary Anglo-American philosophy to resolve problems in reasoning through linguistic clarification (xiv). Aristotle's claim that some errors are due to language while others lie outside the realm of linguistic error is not one to which contemporary analytic philosophy has been particularly sympathetic. The Sophistical Refutations has been neglected in light of contemporary logic. Schreiber's book attempts to return to Aristotle's project on his own philosophical terms, in order to better understand why Aristotle classified errors in reasoning as he did. Schreiber's approach is to examine each of the twelve types of false reasoning that Aristotle lays out in the Sophistical Refutations, with particular attention to Aristotle's examples, in order to understand the principles behind the overall system.Schreiber argues that Aristotle had good reason for separating errors due to language from those outside of language: Aristotle's classification of error is tied to his notion of the resolution of false arguments. To understand how to resolve a sophistical argument, we must first understand how it could have been believed to be true. Since Aristotle's aim in the Sophistical Refutations is to show why certain sorts of arguments are deceptive to some who hear them, his method of explaining errors is less a pure examination of their logical errors than of how such erroneous arguments can deceive. Aristotle is concerned with two types of problems with sophistical argument: first, why such an argument is false; and second, why it might appear to be true. Schreiber shows that most commentators have not given sufficient attention to the second of these concerns in their attempts to understand Aristotle's taxonomy. As Schreiber puts it, "Examples of false reasoning are unified into groups and differentiated into subgroups not by the nature of the confusions that they engender but by the different ways that confusion is cleared up" (54). False reasoning is due not only to mistakes in logic, but also to mistaken beliefs about language and reality. Careful examination of Aristotle's thinking allows us to see the importance of beliefs about the world in good and bad argument.For the most part, Schreiber's examinations of Aristotle's examples are lucid and helpful in understanding both the particular example at hand as well as the general picture of Aristotle's classifications. Schreiber continually returns to the importance of Aristotle's own view of language and argument in contrast to the approaches of contemporary linguistics and logic. For example, while some twentieth-century scholars have attempted to explain Aristotle's distinction between homonymy and amphiboly in terms of the contemporary distinction between semantics and syntax, [End Page 93] Aristotle seems to distinguish the two according to whether a general predicate signifies many particulars regardless of context, or in a propositional context (31). In the end, Schreiber does not think that the categories of homonymy and amphiboly can be completely distinct, even on Aristotle's own grounds, but still finds the categories useful. Schreiber is also careful to provide criticism of Aristotle's categories when warranted, both defending Aristotle against his contemporary critics when he thinks they have misunderstood him, and pointing out genuine weaknesses in Aristotle's arguments.Schreiber's book is clearly intended as a response to the contemporary Anglo-American reading of Aristotle. Much of the book assumes at least some familiarity with the ways in...

Plato uses the myth of Er in the Republic in order to carve out space for political freedom and responsibility for human freedom in the ordinary polis. While much of the Republic concentrates on the development of an ideal city in speech, that city is fundamentally a mythos presented in order for Socrates and his friends to learn something about political and individual virtue. The city in which Socrates and his friends exist is an imperfect city and myth of Er is intended for those audience members. Its emphasis on the necessity for personal responsibility in the midst of freedom can be understood as a political claim about the place of individual choice in a world that is constrained by both political and cosmic "necessity". Platón utiliza el mito de Er en la República con el fin de abrir un espacio para la libertad y la responsabilidad políticas en la polis común y corriente. Mientras que gran parte de la República se centra en el desarrollo de una ciudad ideal en el discurso, esa ciudad es fundamentalmente un mythos presentado para que Sócrates y sus amigos aprendan algo acerca de la virtud política e individual. La ciudad en la que viven Sócrates y sus amigos es una ciudad imperfecta y el mito de Er está dirigido a esos miembros del público. El énfasis que hace el mito en la necesidad de la responsabilidad personal en el ámbito de la libertad puede entenderse como una afirmación política acerca del lugar de la elección individual en un mundo constreñido tanto por la "necesidad" política como la cósmica.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Philosophy and Religion in Plato's Dialogues by Andrea NightingaleMarina Berzins McCoyAndrea Nightingale. Philosophy and Religion in Plato's Dialogues. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. Pp. 308. Hardback, $39.99.Andrea Nightingale has written a scholarly work that will prove indispensable to restoring the centrality of religion and theology to Platonic philosophy. She demonstrates that Plato uses the language of Greek religion to inform his metaphysics and his very conception of philosophy. She deftly interweaves classical scholarship with close readings of a wide range of texts in order to build her claims. She gives especially good treatments of Eleusinian mysteries and Orphic ritual. She also explores the way in which the epiphanic nature of the encounter with the Forms has a transforming influence on the philosopher's soul.In the introduction, Nightingale presents an overview of key "divinity markers" (8–23) present in the dialogues—occurrences in which the Forms are described as godlike, references to Eleusinian and Orphic mysteries, poetic narratives of epiphanic encounters, and references to the sacred spectacle. She also assesses why these references are so often overlooked in contemporary scholarship, noting many contemporary scholars' unfamiliarity with the specific nature of Greek religion, and a general movement toward secularism in philosophy. She acknowledges some notable exceptions (e.g. Mark McPherran's work), but she might have given attention to others as well. Specifically, Jill Gordon's Plato's Erotic World: From Cosmic Origins to Human Death (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012) characterizes Platonic philosophy in terms of both striving for and alienation from the divine, and Ross Romero's Without the Least Tremor: The Sacrifice of Socrates in Plato's Phaedo (Albany: SUNY Press, 2009) on religious sacrifice in the Phaedo is another example. Still, Nightingale is accurate in her assessment of the field's tendency to ignore religious language or to assimilate it too quickly to later monotheistic traditions. Her book convincingly argues that religious language can serve a philosophical purpose in suggesting how union with Beauty and the Good is experienced. The book as a whole provides precious information about many connections between Greek religion and culture that add depth and richness to particular Platonic passages.Chapter 1 sketches out a theory of the Forms and argues that as a group they are treated as "divine." The Phaedo connects the Forms to concepts of eternality, unchangingness, and intelligibility (50). Human beings can connect with the Forms through contemplation (51). Similarly, the Republic describes the Forms as divine and the soul that contemplates them as undergoing a kind of divinization. The Form of the Good is the highest divinity, and its pursuit is an encounter with the divine. Nightingale notes that this does not mean that the Good can be grasped completely. But insofar as we can contemplate the Forms, Plato thinks that we can come to know the Good and become more like it.In chapter 2, Nightingale turns to the topic of human longing, focusing on the Symposium. We humans, Plato believes, have two different but related kinds of longing for immortality. While human beings long for a divine kind of immortality that is ultimately unreachable, they can have a partial kind of immortality through desiring the Good and giving birth to "children" of the soul. The vision of the Beautiful can be a kind of divine epiphany that leads to wonder. Nightingale delves more deeply into the concept of epiphany through texts such as the Homeric Hymn to Dionysius and Herodotus, as well as sanctuary inscriptions. Epiphanies validate the Greek religious system. Similarly, Plato's metaphysics is validated [End Page 149] by a philosophical vision of the Forms. Nightingale's detailed account of Eleusinian mysteries brings together a wide range of source material with which many philosophers will be unfamiliar, and which is especially valuable for scholars seeking to interpret Platonic passages that allude to the mysteries. Nightingale also offers an engaging interpretation of Alcibiades as one who has encountered the divine in Socrates yet failed to understand it, and so has "profaned" the mysteries in the context of human relationship (107–13).Chapter 3 examines Socrates's accounts of the soul and immortality in the Phaedo. Whereas those...

The concept of wonder has gained prominence in environmental ethics as an experience that predisposes us to act ethically towards the natural world. This paper contends that the cultivated capacity to wonder, especially at non-natural beings, is a virtue central to acting ethically in relation to the environment. The paper argues wonder is not merely affective but also epistemic, or heuristic, insofar as in wonder, encounters with non-natural beings can act upon us such that our paradigms are transformed. The paper focuses on two interrelated kinds of wonder, questioning-wonder and awe-wonder, as demonstrating these epistemic features. The paper also contends wonder provides a bridge between subjective experience and objective value and informs what is meant by intrinsic value. Lastly, the paper takes up the role of horror-wonder in virtuous life.

The Republic presents the sophist in three ways: through an example, an abstract description in Book Six, and an image. Thrasymachus presents a coherent understanding of justice and is not inconsistent, as some commentators have argued. Both the philosopher and the sophist are intellectuals who value wisdom, but on Socrates’ account, the sophist equates the necessary with the good. The philosopher separates the necessary and the good, and orients himself to a truth outside of himself. However, the Republic suggests that there is no meta-philosophical position by which the philosopher and the sophist can be judged. The separation of the philosopher from the sophist makes sense only from the viewpoint of the philosopher. Socrates’ emphasis on the incompleteness of wisdom also suggests that the philosopher’s understanding of his own activity must remain open to change.

The commentary on Ionescu’s presentation agrees with her main claim that pleasure is developed dialectically, and then departs from her ideas at two points. First, I argue that there are still good reasons to say that pleasure belongs in the class of the unlimited, and ordinary experiences of pleasure bear out this claim. Second, Ionescu’s interpretation makes the Philebus’s concept of a “false pleasure” difficult to understand. I suggest further consideration of whether the difference between the mixed and unlimited is better located in different objects or in different experiences of pleasure.

Plato’s Protagoras plays off the genre of Greek comedy in its expression of its philosophical meaning. This dialogue at points invites us to re-envision Socrates against the backdrop of Aristophanes’ criticisms of Socrates and the sophists. The Protagoras follows some of the conventions of Greek comedy but interrupts its form with moments of lengthier rational discussion absent in Greek comedy. The dialogue’s logos and antilogos lead to aporia, but this aporia shows a limit to reason that recognizes human incompleteness without leading to misology. In contrast to performed drama, the written form of the dialogue both engages its audience’s emotions while allowing the reader to return to the text and to continue their rational assessment of the arguments.

A. G. Long’s slender but significant volume traces a line in the Platonic dialogues from Socratic conversation to dialogical thought. Long’s broader project is to explore the concept that conversation is relevant to philosophy. However, the book’s main focus is more restricted to two ideas: first, whether one needs others to do philosophy, and if so, why; and second, how Socratic conversation connects to the self-sufficient exploration of ideas. Implicit in the book is perhaps also an exploration of how the form of Platonic dialogue fits with contemporary academic philosophy, in which we still pursue critical thinking but rarely write in the form of dramatic dialogue.Long’s main line of argument shows that while ..

Marina McCoy explores Plato's treatment of the rhetoric of philosophers and sophists through a thematic treatment of six different Platonic dialogues, including Apology, Protagoras, Gorgias, Republic, Sophist, and Phaedras. She argues that Plato presents the philosopher and the sophist as difficult to distinguish, insofar as both use rhetoric as part of their arguments. Plato does not present philosophy as rhetoric-free, but rather shows that rhetoric is an integral part of philosophy. However, the philosopher and the sophist are distinguished by the philosopher's love of the forms as the ultimate objects of desire. It is this love of the forms that informs the philosopher's rhetoric, which he uses to lead his partner to better understand his deepest desires. McCoy's work is of interest to philosophers, classicists, and communications specialists alike in its careful yet comprehensive treatment of philosophy, sophistry, and rhetoric as portrayed through the drama of the dialogues.

In this paper, I support the perspectivist reading of the Platonic dialogues. The dialogues assert an objective truth toward which we are meant to strive, and yet acknowledge that we as seekers of this truth are always partial in what we grasp of its nature. They are written in a way to encourage the development of philosophical practice in their readers, where “philosophical” means not only having an epistemic state in between the total possession of truth and its absence, but also growing in selfknowledge as being that kind of a being. I take up three particular qualities of the dialogue: they are multilayered, multivocal, and mimetic. Devices such as Platonic irony, multiple characters’ voices, and a reformulated notion of mimesis that encourages the development of rationality and autonomy are central to Platonic rhetoric and philosophy.