Abstract
In his interrogation of Meletus in Plato’s version of Socrates’ defense speech, Socrates offers an interesting argument that promises to provide important evidence for his views about crime and punishment—if only we can understand how the argument is supposed to work. It is our project in this paper to do that. We argue that there are two main problems with the argument: one is that it is not obvious how to make the argument valid; the other is that the argument seems to rely on a distinction that Socrates himself rejects ––a distinction between voluntary and involuntary wrongdoing. Earlier discussions of the argument require Socrates to be using a premise here that he regards as false. In this paper, we argue that Socrates actually regards the critical premise as true, and thus we end up providing a significantly new interpretation of Socrates’ view that all wrongdoing is involuntary. We claim, that even this position (which most scholars regard as unproblematically attributed to the Platonic Socrates) must accommodate the idea (contained in the critical premise of the Apology argument) that some people really do voluntary harm to others.
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Notes
- 1.
All translations from Plato’s Apology provided herein will be taken from Brickhouse and Smith (2002).
- 2.
There is virtually unanimous agreement among contemporary scholars that Socrates is committed to the view that all action is motivated by a desire for the good of the agent, and that vice and wrongdoing are always bad for the agent. There is also widespread agreement that his view that no one ever does wrong voluntarily follows directly from these two doctrines. For more about this “Socratic intellectualism,” which these views are often collectively called, and the various ways in which scholars have understood it, see Brickhouse and Smith (2010, esp. Chap. 2). For more on the harm vice and wrongdoing do to the agent, see Chap. 4 of the same volume.
- 3.
Trans. D. Zeyl from Cooper (1997).
- 4.
Meletus plainly supposes that the specific way(s) that Socrates corrupts the youth is by teaching them false things about the gods and other divine things. But Socrates has not yet gotten to the part of the indictment that talks explicitly about the gods and ‘new divine things’ with Meletus, so these topics may or may not be included in what Socrates says Meletus does not care about. What Socrates says later about this (at 35d7–8) would seem to indicate that Socrates may well have included these issues among those that he says Meletus does not care about. Whether we assume these matters are included in the things that Socrates supposedly did wrongly either willingly or unwillingly will make no difference to the issue we seek to raise and resolve in this section of the paper.
- 5.
Socrates also famously claims that wronging others damages the soul of the wrongdoer and so (perhaps most of all) damages the wrongdoer himself. Hence, any wrongdoing of any kind turns out to damage the wrongdoer. For discussion and analysis, see Brickhouse and Smith (2010, Chap. 4).
- 6.
For a full review of these, see Allen (2000).
- 7.
Rowe (2007, p.36).
- 8.
- 9.
So see, most famously, Stone (1989).
- 10.
We cite other examples of other forms of punishment that Socrates discusses without any indication of disapproval, in Brickhouse and Smith (2010, p.110).
- 11.
Brickhouse and Smith (2010). Our original position owes much to a paper by Daniel Devereux, ‘Socrates’ Kantian Conception of Virtue ’ (Devereux (1995)), though his and our views are importantly different. See also more recently an important amendment to our earlier account in Brickhouse and Smith (2015).
- 12.
So see Brickhouse and Smith (2010, pp. 103–104).
- 13.
So see Brickhouse and Smith (2010, Sect. 1.4 (pp. 30–37)).
- 14.
See, for an instance of this point of view, Hp. Mi. 372a3–5.
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Brickhouse, T.C., Smith, N.D. (2018). Socrates on Punishment and the Law:Apology 25c5-26b2. In: Boeri, M.D., Kanayama, Y.Y., Mittelmann, J. (eds) Soul and Mind in Greek Thought. Psychological Issues in Plato and Aristotle. Studies in the History of Philosophy of Mind, vol 20. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78547-9_3
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