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ABSTRACT
Aristotle famously claims that Plato, unlike Socrates, separated the forms. Some argue that Plato's dialogues provide a record of this disagreement, with the Socratic and Platonic theories presented in different groups of dialogues. Nicholas Smith defends a novel version of this view, arguing that the Socratic theory is integrated with virtue intellectualism – the doctrine that virtue is knowledge. The resulting metaphysical view is the Constitution Thesis (CT): the virtue-forms are constituted by ethical knowledge. We raise two objections against CT. The first is a type-token dilemma: whether the virtue-forms are constituted by types or tokens of ethical knowledge, intolerable consequences follow. Second, the reasoning leading to CT depends on a questionable inference from claims about virtue as a psychological condition to claims about virtue-forms. We conclude by defending an alternative explanation of the presence of different characterizations of forms in different dialogues – an explanation based on the distinction in the Republic between shorter and longer explanatory routes (435c9–d5). The conception of forms as separate emerges when Plato pursues the longer route by studying the forms through the prism of the soul's desire for wisdom.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to the anonymous referees for this journal for their helpful comments.
Notes
1 Interpreters who have defended differing accounts of developmentalism about forms include Allen, Plato’s Euthyphro, 129–157; Allen, “Plato’s Earlier Theory”, 332–334; Dancy, Plato’s Introduction of Forms, 70–79; Dancy, “Platonic Definitions and Forms”, 70–84; Fine, On Ideas, 60–64; Prior, “Socrates Metaphysician”, 1–14; Prior, “Socratic Metaphysics”, 90–93, and Vlastos, Socrates: Ironist, 46–80.
2 For similar remarks, see Gerson, “The Myth”, 414.
3 To be clear, the dependence of forms on the existence of knowers is needed to distinguish CT from the view that forms are independently existing objects of knowledge. Smith takes the latter view to be Platonic but not Socratic (“Socratic Metaphysics?”, 432).
4 Even if Socrates believes that some people have partial or approximate knowledge, it would not be plausible to claim that this kind of knowledge constitutes the virtue-forms. The knowledge in question must be sufficient to make a person genuinely virtuous and to constitute the essences associated with the virtue-terms. It is hard to see how partial or otherwise defective knowledge could fulfil these roles.
5 Abandoning the claim that forms exist only if they are known would yield a version of the view of Socratic forms as objects of knowledge – the view to which Smith aims to offer an alternative.
6 The expression ‘SocratesE’ is Smith’s way of referring to Socrates in the First Group of dialogues.
7 We believe a similar problem arises in Smith’s discussion of the part-whole relationship among virtues. From the fact that the virtues, conceived as psychological states or conditions, are parts of a whole it does not follow that the virtue-forms are parts of a whole. The unity of the virtues is a doctrine about virtue, not virtue-forms.
8 This would make it difficult, though perhaps not impossible, for developmentalists to treat all of Republic I–IV as a locus of the early, Socratic view. Thanks to an anonymous referee for raising this issue.
9 Sedley, “Socratic Intellectualism”, 76–87, raises a complementary question about the middle books of the Republic: why do those books feature Platonism about metaphysics but a moral psychology which is much closer to Socratic intellectualism?
10 Our discussion of the two routes owes a considerable debt to Scott, “Justice and Persuasion”, though Scott does not focus on the question about different conceptions of forms. Smith, Summoning Knowledge, 34–35, notes the distinction between the two routes but does not offer an account of how they differ.
11 For similar remarks about the difficulty and length of the account needed to discern the true nature and structure of the soul, see Phaedrus 246A. Following these remarks, Socrates introduces the famous model of the tripartite soul – the charioteer and the two horses. Thus, in the Phaedrus as in the Republic, the partitioned soul is presented as belonging to the shorter, less precise route.
12 Smith, Summoning Knowledge, 34–35, emphasizes the provisional nature of the tripartite soul.
13 Socrates refers to the virtues defined in book IV as popular or demotic (500d–e). In the Phaedo, this kind of virtue is regarded as non-philosophical and second-best (82b–c). In the eschatology, those who have practiced the popular and civic virtues achieve a good outcome in the afterlife but retain their bodies and ultimately die, only to be reborn as social animals or human beings (82b–c, 111b–114c).
14 Another important linguistic allusion is the use of ‘suggenēs’ to refer to the kinship that exists between the soul and the forms. We discuss the significance of this notion just below.
15 An anonymous referee correctly emphasizes the speculative nature of claims about the longer route. The same referee suggests that these passages in other dialogues describe the longer route but do not traverse it, even in part. We defend the stronger claim that these dialogues include elements of the longer route, including the general focus on philosophy and even specific argument-strategies and methods. A clear example of this, discussed just below, is the argument in the Phaedo that seeks to derive conclusions about the structure of the soul from a consideration of the nature of forms. This strategy is explicitly associated with the longer route in T1. So while we agree that the longer route is not completed in the dialogues, we hold that it is undertaken in part in those dialogues that focus on philosophy, its objects, and its effects on the soul. Some passages suggest that completing the longer route might in fact be impossible. At Phaedrus 246A, for example, Socrates claims that determining the true nature of the soul by completing the longer account is a task for a god. Thanks to the anonymous referee for helpful remarks on this issue.
16 Our claim is not that these two conceptions must be altogether unrelated but only that they are different in substance.
17 This passage and its context receive helpful discussion in Scott, “Justice and Persuasion”, 73.
18 Here again we are referring exclusively to Paradigm as defined above, not to every notion of forms as paradigms found in the dialogues.
19 Fine, “Immanence”, considers the possibility that forms are not conceived as separate in any of Plato’s dialogues.
20 The description of the soul as most like the uniform (monoeidēs) things is relevant to the question about parts because in the Republic, the parts of the soul are sometimes referred to as forms or kinds (eidē, see e.g. 612a5–6).
21 The passages cited in this paragraph repeatedly describe the forms as alone by themselves. In T3, this expression is used in connection with the rejection of immanence. Thus, in the Phaedo as in the Symposium, the separation of forms is emphasized in contexts that focus on philosophy and its effects on the soul.
22 Sedley, “Socratic Intellectualism”, 87, argues that the philosophical virtues described in the Phaedo reappear in the middle books of the Republic – the books in which philosophy is the focus.
23 This focus is signaled in the outer frame of the dialogue. Phaedo tells Echecrates that Socrates’ last day was spent immersed in philosophy and that the specific conversations were of the philosophical sort (59a3–4).