William Samuel Jacobs

In his recent article "Remorse, Regret, and the Socratic Paradox" (Analysis 35.5 (1975) p.159-166) Professor C.‘ Grant Luckhardt attempted to show why those who deny that there is weakness of will need not be troubled by the phenomenon of remorse or regret. He did this by arguing (1) that contemporary formulations of the Socratic "To know the good is to do the good" principle are unacceptable and must be qualified and (2) that once the Socratic principle is properly qualified remorse and regret will not constitute evidence against the truth of the Socratic principle. In my response I show (1) that Professor Luckhardt's proposed qualifications of the Socratic principle are unnecessary and that if we merely understand what the original principle asserts, then it is clear that the unqualified principle is not subject to the two sorts of difficulties that Luckhardt raises and (2) that even if the Socratic principle is modified in the proposed manner, it is still unable to answer the remorse/ regret objection.

In Republic V Socrates offer three successive waves of paradox, the first being that amongst the rulers men and women will be assigned to fulfill the same social functions and the second being that amongst the rulers the traditional private family will be abolished. In her article “Philosopher Queens and Private Wives: Plato on Women and the Family” (Philosophy and Public Affairs (1977)) Susan Moller Okin argued that Plato’s argument is that the second wave of paradox implies the first. In this note I rebut Okin’s arguments and show, in part based on evidence adduced by Okin herself, that for Plato it is the first wave of paradox that implies the second.