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The Virtues of Socratic Ignorance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Mary Margaret Mackenzie
Mary Margaret Mackenzie
Affiliation:
New Hall, Cambridge
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Extract

Plato's Socrates denies that he knows. Yet he frequently claims that he does have certainty and knowledge. How can he avoid contradiction between his general stance about knowledge (that he lacks it) and his particular claims to have it?

Socrates' disavowal of knowledge is central to his defence in the Apology. For here he rebuts the accusation that he teaches – and thus corrupts – the young by telling the jury that he cannot teach just because he knows nothing. Hence his disavowal of knowledge is important to Socrates. Why does he make this claim? And how then can he justify engaging in any philosophical activity at all?

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Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 38 , Issue 2 , December 1988, pp. 331 - 350
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1988

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References

1 See, among others, Gulley, N., The Philosophy of Socrates (London, 1968), p. 69Google Scholar; Irwin, T., Plato's Moral Theory (Oxford, 1974), pp. 39ff.Google Scholar; Vlastos, G., ‘Socrates' Disavowal of Knowledge’, PhQ 35 (1985), 1–31Google Scholar; Lesher, J. H., ‘Professor Vlastos on Socrates' Disavowal of Knowledge’, JHPh 25 (1987), 275–88Google Scholar.

2 See Vlastos, ‘Disavowal’; Vlastos argues that Socrates aims to contrast the infallible knowledge sought by philosophers, knowledgee, with the knowledge derived from the questioning process of the elenchus, knowledgee, (a Popperian, ad hoc knowledge). Knowledgee, Socrates disclaims; and he bases his claim to do so upon the knowledge that he does in fact have, knowledgee. My conclusion will suggest that the reverse is true. Compare the discussions of Platonic knowledge as understanding in Burnyeat, M. F., ‘Socrates and the Jury: Paradoxes in Plato's Distinction between Knowledge and Belief’, PAS Supplement 54 (1980), 173–91Google Scholar; Annas, J., An Introduction to Plato's Republic (Oxford, 1981)Google Scholar.

3 Robinson, R., Plato's Earlier Dialectic (Oxford, 1953), p. 15Google Scholar.

4 Vlastos, G., ‘The Socratic Elenchus’, OSAP 1 (1983), 35Google Scholar.

5 I am pleased to find that this contrast was independently suggested by Kraut, , Socrates and the State (Princeton, 1984), pp. 273ffGoogle Scholar.

6 ‘Elenchus’, 33.

7 See here my longer discussion of aporia in ‘Impasse and Explanation: from the Lysis to the Phaedo’, AGPh (forthcoming 1988).

8 Ryle, G., The Concept of Mind (London, 1963), p. 150Google Scholar.

9 Mignucci, Mario offered a similar account of the Charmides in a seminar on ‘Plato's Theory of Relations’, London University, 1988Google Scholar.

10 The exact interpretation of the theory of anamnēsis is, of course, highly controversial; cf. e.g. Vlastos, , ‘Anamnesis in the Meno’, Dialogue 4 (1965), 143–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nehamas, A., ‘Meno's Paradox and Socrates as a Teacher’, OSAP 3 (1985), 1–30Google Scholar; Moravcsik, J., ‘Learning as Recollection’ in Vlastos, (ed.), Plato I (New York; 1971), pp. 53–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar. However, I am inclined to suppose that the theory is designed to answer the worrying question of ‘How does inquiry get off the ground?’ (with some kind of account of the conceptual structure of the mind) as well as to explain the psychological questions ‘What makes us curious?’ and ‘How do we recognise the answer to a question?’. I have benefited here from discussion with Dominic Scott, who does not agree with me.

11 We have, of course, now gone beyond material that can be classified as Socratic.

12 For the dating of the Cratylus, see my ‘Putting the Cratylus in its Place’, CQ 36 (1986), 124–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Hamlyn, D. W., Aristotle's De Anima Books II and III (Oxford, 1968), p. 122Google Scholar.

14 Kosman, L. A., ‘Perceiving that We Perceive: On the Soul III.2’, PR 84 (1975), 499–519Google Scholar.

15 Osborne, C., ‘Aristotle, de Anima 3.2: How Do We Perceive that We See and Hear?’, CQ 33(1983), 401–11CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Cf. Kerferd, G. B., ‘What Does the Stoic Wise Man Know?’, in Rist, J. M. (ed), The Stoics (Berkeley; 1978)Google Scholar.

17 Sedley, D. N., ‘Diodorus Cronus and Hellenistic Philosophy’, PCPS 203 (1977), 95Google Scholar.

18 Early versions of this paper were given at Queen's University Belfast, at Durham University and at Oxford University. My warm thanks to the audiences on those occasions, and to William Jordan, Jim Lesher, Catherine Osborne, Michael Stokes and the Editors for their comments.