Download - Socratic Definition
-
8/12/2019 Socratic Definition
1/7
North American Philosophical Publications
Socratic DefinitionAuthor(s): John BeversluisReviewed work(s):Source: American Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 11, No. 4 (Oct., 1974), pp. 331-336Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of the North American Philosophical PublicationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20009548 .Accessed: 01/11/2011 13:30
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
University of Illinois Press and North American Philosophical Publications are collaborating with JSTOR todigitize, preserve and extend access to American Philosophical Quarterly.
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=illinoishttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=napphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/20009548?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/20009548?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=napphttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=illinois -
8/12/2019 Socratic Definition
2/7
American Philosophical QuarterlyVolume ii, Number 4, October 1974
VIII. SOGRATIC DEFINITION
JOHNBEVERSLUIS
VT reader of Plato's early dialogues can fail to be-*-^ struck by the centrality and the philosophicalimportance ascribed to definition1. Socrates is con?
stantly asking the What-is-X? question, constantlylooking for that character or complex of relationscommon to a number of instances whose presence
accounts for their being, and for our calling them,X's. Wittgenstein has called this tendency the
craving for generality and holds that its correla?
tive, the contemptuous attitude towards the par?
ticular case,
has shackled philosophical investigation ; for it has not
only led to no results, but also made the philosopherdismiss as irrelevant the concrete cases, which alone
could have helped him to understand the usage of the
general term. When Socrates asks the question, what
is knowledge? he does not even regard it as a pre?
liminary answer to enumerate cases of knowledge.2
Plainly, there is one sense in which such a
characterization of the Socratic attitude towardthe particular case cannot be faulted. For Socrates
typically does reject out of hand every attempt toanswer the What-is-X? question in terms of
examples, thereby manifesting his contempt forthem. But there is another, and no less typical,strategy which he is wont to employ in the earlydialogues; and the frequency of its occurrencerenders Wittgenstein's characterization significantly
incomplete. That strategy consists in an appeal to
particular casesas counterexamples to a proffered
definition, and whose function, as such, is to providean apparently conclusive demonstration of the
necessity for amending or abandoning it. Such an
appeal betrays none of the contempt of which
Wittgenstein speaks; on the contrary, insofar as it
implies that a compatibility with what we would
say is a necessary condition to be satisfied by anyadequate definition, it appears to confer
a nor?
mative status upon the particularcase.
This extraordinary ambivalence on the part ofSocrates cries out for clarification. Accordingly, in
this paper I wish to examine the traditional in?
terpretation of the Socratic Theory of Definition. I
wish, on the one hand, to render epistemologicallyintelligible the sense in which Socrates does, in
fact, dismiss the particular case, and thereby ex?
hibit the philosophical sources of the craving for
generality peculiar to his methodology. On theother hand, I wish to show that his appeal to par?ticular cases is radically inconsistent with hissimultaneous dismissal of them as irrelevant for
answering the What-is-Jf? question. On the hy?pothesis that the traditional interpretation is areliable explication of the texts, I shall argue thatthe Socratic Theory of Definition does not admit ofa coherent formulation.
I. The What-is-X? Question:Logic and Metaphysics
Euthyphro provides a convenient point of de?
parture. Like many interlocuters encountered bySocrates in the early dialogues, Euthyphro initiallyresponds to the What-is-X? question by producing
what he takes to be an example of an X. Havingbeen asked what Piety is, he confidently declares:
Piety is doing as I am doing; that is to say, prose?cuting any one who is guilty of murder, sacrilege,or of any similar crime . . . (5e). As everyone
knows, Socrates is never pleased with such a reply.But what exactly is it that displeases him ?
It needs to be noted that Socrates' displeasuredoes not arise from any disagreement or doubt onhis part as to whether the alleged example of X is,in fact, an example of it. Indeed, he typically con?cedes this point at once. Rather his displeasurearises from his dissatisfaction with the kind of
answer which his question has elicited: instead ofhaving addressed himself to the discovery of theeidos of Piety, Euthyphro has simply made ostensivereference to a particular action which he believesis pious. That is, he has confused definition with
331
1This essay is a revised version of a paper read to the Tennessee Philosophical Association Nov. n, 1972. I wish to ac?
knowledge my indebtedness to my commentator, Martha Osborne of the University of Tennessee, and to C. Grant Luckhardlof Georgia State University and Anthony Nemetz of the University of Georgia.2 The Blue and Brown Books (Oxford, 1958), pp. 19-20.
-
8/12/2019 Socratic Definition
3/7
332 AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
enumeration, thereby evidencing his misunder?
standing of Socrates' question.Two radically different accounts of how this
question is to be elucidated co-exist uneasily in theliterature. Some commentators3 have supposed
that,in
askingthe What-is-Z?
question,Socrates
is interested in discovering the meaning of a word.
According to their view, the request for an eidos neednot be taken as carrying with it any ontologicalcommitment; for the question: What is Piety? isreducible without remainder to: What is the
meaning of piety ?Other commentators4 bristle at this analysis. On
their view, the What-is-Z? question is to be con?strued neither as primarily nor even as importantlyconcerned with the meaning of a mere word. For itis a request for a real definition, a request, that is,for the eidos of the thing (pragma) Piety. According?
ly, the ontological character of the question is to beregarded as central and irreducible.
It is sufficient for my purposes in this paper
simply to have mentioned these two quite dissimilaraccounts. For I have thereby rendered harmless inadvance one particular objection which mightotherwise possess a certain cogency, namely, that
the What-is-Z? question is not analyzable solely interms of a request for a definition; an objection
which some philosophers would want, and surelyought, to put forth against any thesis which dependsupon so controversial an analysis. My thesis, how?
ever, is such that it does not matter which of these
existing accounts one accepts. For it applies to both
with equal force. However the What-is-Z? questionis elucidated, whether as a logical claim about
meaning or as a metaphysical claim about the eid?,
there remains a more fundamental issue involvingthe relation of epistemological priority between a
knowledge of an eidos on the one hand and an
ability to recognize its instanceson the other.
Despite their disagreement concerning the properelucidation of the What-is-X? question, the two
positions do not differ concerning this epistemo?logical issue; their respective accounts are, in fact,identical. Hence I shall argue that,
owingto this
common epistemological thesis, the Socratic Theory
of Definition is incoherent on either account of theWhat-is-X? question.5
II. The Epistemological Priority Thesis
Given his wish to discover the X-ness common to
those things which are X, there is somethinglogically peculiar about Socrates' characteristic
rejection of particular examples as irrelevant forthis purpose. For if it is the common character that
he wishes to discover, how can he systematicallydisallow a concern with those very particulars to
which it is common ? Far from being irrelevant, isnot such a prior gathering of instances the necessary
starting-point of the inquiry ?The awkward fact is, however, that this pre?
sumably self-evident claim does not appear to have
impressed Socrates himself as being self-evident at
all ; for his usual response to the production ofan
example on the part of some interlocuter is that ofa rebuke followed by a restatement, and often
painstaking elaboration, of his original question.But without recourse to particular cases and the
ordinary meanings of words, how is the inquiryeven to begin ?More pointedly, what sense are weto attach to a request for that which all X's have incommon which includes as one of its proceduralstipulations that, in answering it, we are not to
take into account any X's ?The Socratic rejection of examples is, therefore,
problematic. It can, however, be rendered more
intelligible once it is grasped that what is at issueis not simply the distinguishing of definitions from
examples, but the relation of epistemologicalpriority which, according to the traditional in?
terpretation, Socrates believes to hold betweenthem. At Euthyphro 6d-e he declares :
Tell me the nature of the idea of Piety and then (hina)I shall have a standard (paradeigma) to which I may
look and by which I may measure actions. . .Then I
shall be able to say that such-and-such ... is pious and
that such-and-such ... is not.
And at Lysis 223b he muses:
O Menexenus andLysis,
how ridiculous that you two
boys and I, an old boy, who would be one of you, should
3See, for example, R. G. Cross, Logos and Forms in Plato, in Studies in Plato's Metaphysics, ed. by R. E. ?Allen (London,
1965)* PP- 27-294 See R. S. Bluck, Logos and Forms in Plato: A Reply to Professor Gross, in Allen, op. cit., pp. 34 ff; Sir David Ross, Plato's
Theory of Ideas (Oxford, 1951), p. 16; I. G. Kidd, Plato, The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. by Paul Edwards (New York, 1967),Vol. VII, p. 484.
5?Although it ismisleading to speak of the What-is-Z? question as a request for a definition, I shall continue for two reasons to
use that term: (i) the precedent (however misleading) for doing so provided by the literature; (ii) the difficulty of hitting upona linguistic alternative which is not equally misleading, even more obscure, and stylistically tedious as well (for example, the
apprehension of.. .).
-
8/12/2019 Socratic Definition
4/7
-
8/12/2019 Socratic Definition
5/7
334 AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
yet able to manifest a recognitional ability of itsinstances. For it is precisely this phenomenon whichtheir account of epistemological priority precludes.
The later Plato had, of course, attempted toaccount for the occurrence of true belief, the state
of mind midway between knowledge and ig?norance, by invoking the Theory of Recollection.It was by an appeal to the eidos as the dimlyperceived standard, which this theory introduced,that he both acknowledged and attempted toaccount for such genuine perceptions of reality as
men have. But the Theory of Recollection iswhollyabsent from the pre-Meno dialogues. While the factof its absence is well-known, the epistemologicalconsequence for those committed to the traditional
interpretation has not, tomy knowledge, been made
fully explicit. It needs to be emphasized, therefore,that the foregoing account of epistemological
priority, taken in conjunction with the fact that the
Theory of Recollection is absent from the prt-Menodialogues, jointly entail that in those dialogues therecan be no consistent account of the state of mindknown as true belief. The Socratic dichotomybetween knowledge and ignorance must,
conse?
quently, be sharply distinguished from the view ofthe later Plato, a view with which it is too oftenconfounded.
Accordingly, the intended state to which one isto be reduced by Socratic dialectic must be takento be that of acknowledged ignorance, real and total.
For in the absence of bothknowledge
and true
belief, the attempt to live the good life provesabortive at its very inception. Hence the inter
locuter's presumed, but premature, confidence
must be undermined; everything must be throwninto question. Indeed, the dialectic is not to be
regarded as having run its full course until theinterlocuter has been brought to see that he can?
not say a word in reply to Socrates. On any other
account its cutting edge is blunted, and the moral
urgency attaching to its aporetic, and purportedly
therapeutic, character is trivialized beyond recog?nition.
Theearly dialogues, then,
must be read as
demonstrating this again and again :Charmides is
ignorant concerning Temperance, Euthyphro con?
cerning Piety, Laches concerning Courage. Noteven Friendship emerges intact. As outrageous and
implausible as itmay seem, the Socrates of the earlydialogues must be interpreted as holding that, if youcannot define Friendship, you cannot know what afriend is. Nor whether you have any. Nor how to beone. The logic of the position admits of no other
alternative.
IV. The Contradictory of the Thesis
and its Corollary
I mentioned earlier that Socrates' typical re?
sponse to the production of examples on the partof some interlocuter is that of a rebuke followed bya restatement of his original question. Occasionally,however, this procedure is set aside in favor of a
very different one. In Laches, for example, he de?viates from his customary policy by allowing theenumeration of
particularinstances of
Courage,including those courageous in war, amid perils ofthe sea, pain, and in overcoming their own desires ;and having done so, asks for that common
quality which is the same in all these cases, andwhich is called
fiCourage
'(191 d-e).
It is passages such as this one which account forW. K. C. Guthrie's observation that
the first stage [in the Socratic quest for knowledge of
X] is to collect instances to which it is agreed by both
fellow-seekers that the name [ X ] can be applied.Then the collected examples
. . . are examined to
discover in them some common quality by virtue of
which they bear that name.9
How this puzzling gloss is to be brought into har?
mony with Guthrie's previously cited remarks is farfrom clear. For one cannot simultaneously affirm
(a) that known instances of X are to be scrutinizedfor the purpose of discovering the eidos common to
them, and (b) that one cannot recognize somethingas an instance of X unless one already knows that
eidos. Indeed, these contradictory claims exhibit in
strikingly limpid form the incoherence of thetraditional interpretation. According to (a), theeidos common to a number of instances is, in prin?
ciple,discoverable
inductively.Such a view
pre?supposes, of course, that we are capable of gatheringknown instances of X while lacking a knowledge oftheir eidos. To grant this, however, is to deny therelation of epistemological priority affirmed by (b).
8 The Greek Philosophers (New York, 1950), p. 77. See also F. M. Cornford's similarly Aristotelian remark: . . . from ob?
servation of individual cases, an act of insight discerns the universal latent in [particulars] and disengages it in a generalizationPlato's Theory of Knowledge (London, 1950), p. 185. This despite his own earlier recognition of Plato's break with all theories
deriving knowledge by abstraction from sensible objects ... (p. 4), and his subsequent warning that ... no satisfactoryaccount of Platonic Forms can be given in terms of Aristotelian logic (p. 268).
-
8/12/2019 Socratic Definition
6/7
SOGRATIC DEFINITION 335
But it is precisely that relation which is said to beconstitutive of the philosophical methodologyunderlying the What-is-X? question.
The question we need to ask, therefore, is not
simply how it is that the interlocuter, while lackinga
knowledgeof the
eidos,can be
expectedto
gathera number of its known instances ; the real questionis :how, while remaining in such a state, can he be
expected to gather even one ?It will, nevertheless, be recalled that when
Euthyphro responded to the question: What is
Piety ? with an example, Socrates rebuked him for
having produced only an example of a pious action,instead of a definition of Piety. But, given the fore?
going analysis, this is surely a curious objection onSocrates' part. For if it is the case that
(i) one's having a definition of X is epistemo
logically prior to,and a
necessarycondition
for, the ability to identify something as an
instance of X.
and
(ii) Euthyphro has not produced a definition.
then
(iii) since there are two, and only two, states ofmind with respect to X, knowledge and ig?norance, and since, owing to his failure to
produce a definition, Euthyphro's state ofmind cannot be that of knowledge,
it follows that
(iv) no one, including Socrates himself, since he,too, disclaims having such knowledge,10could possibly be in a position to determine
whether Euthyphro has correctly identifiedan instance of a pious action or not.
Traditional commentators agree that (i), the
epistemological priority thesis, is the Socratic view.Their respective elucidations of the claim that onecan recognize instances (I) only if one is in posses?sion of a definition (D), admit of a common formal
ization, namely,
which, by a few elementary logical moves, yields
~(~D&I).
That is, the epistemological priority thesis entailsthat it is not the case that any one can possess a
recognitional abilitywithout a definition. At the
same time, however, Socrates grants that Euthyphrohas identified an instance of a pious action despitethe fact that he has no definition of Piety. That is,Socrates grants the truth of ~D & I. But in simul?
taneously affirming
(~D&I) and ~(~D&I)he contradicts himself.
Socrates cannot, therefore, consistently hold thata knowledge of the eidos is epistemologically prior toa recognitional ability of its instances, and at thesame time allow that Euthyphro, while lacking the
former, has somehow managed the latter. The logicof his position entails that he simply acknowledgethat neither he nor Euthyphro is in a position toknow whether the alleged instance is, or is not, a
genuine one. Yet, Socrates does not acknowledgethis. Indeed, he allows that Euthyphro has identi?
fied an instance of a pious action.11 His complaintthat it is only an instance does not alter the fact
that, by his own admission, it is one. Socrates
claims, or at least implies, that he knows this. But,
given the truth of his own theory, how can he knowit?
But there is a second, and far stronger, reason for
holding Socrates' procedure to be self-contradictory.This reason emerges most clearly once it is noticedthat Socrates himself, while professing ignorance ofsome general term, is nevertheless able quite con?
fidently to come forward with examples of it. As a
counterexample to Cephalus' definition of Justiceas rendering to every man his due, Socrates
produces the celebrated case of returning a weaponto its mad, though rightful, owner; a case which
every one present unhesitatingly agrees is unjust.On the strength of this single counterexampleCephalus' definition is instantly rejected. But howdo they know ?How, that is, can every one so con?
fidently agree that the action in question is zwjust
10 Some readers may appeal to Socratic irony here. But this diversionary maneuver overlooks the fact that the honorific term
irony is by no means the only possible description of the he-knows-but-he's-not-telling phenomenon. Other commentatorshave not been nearly so flattering. Richard Robinson has appraised Socrates' behavior as insincere, as involving persistenthypocrisy, and as evidencing a negative and destructive spirit (op. cit., p. 22). Gregory Vlastos, too, has raised searchingquestions about Socrates' limited and conditional care for the souls of his fellows. See his The Paradox of Socrates, in
Socrates, ed. by Gregory Vlastos (New York, 1971), pp. 7-8, 16.11That such a concession to Euthyphro on the part of Socrates is not a mere inadvertance of which I am taking unfair ad?
vantage is borne out by the fact that he makes similar concessions to others. See, for example, Laches, 191a, c-e, 193a, 196c;Charmides, i57d-e.
-
8/12/2019 Socratic Definition
7/7
336 AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
while Justice remains undefined ?There is a curious,and wholly unjustified, reversal of epistemologicalpriority in evidence here, a reversal which thetraditional interpretation does not, and cannot,
explain.
The Theory of Definition ascribed to Socrates bythat interpretation requires that a knowledge of theeidos is a necessary condition for the ability to
recognize instances of it. An attentive examination
of the proceedings, however, reveals thata com?
patibility with instances already recognized itselfconstitutes one of the criteria in terms of which the
adequacy of a proffered definition is to be assessed.What this means is that a proffered definition is
sometimes12 rejected by virtue of its being in?
compatible with those things already recognizedas genuine instances. But if the Socratic refutationof a proffered definition depends upon an appeal to
particular cases whose function is to demonstrate itsincompatibility with what we would say, the
indisputably normative character of such an appealis sufficient to contradict any view according to
which a knowledge of the eidos is itself prior. For
surely it cannot be argued simultaneously that a
knowledge of the eidos is a necessary condition forthe ability to recognize instances and that beingcompatible with instances already recognized is it?self a necessary condition to be satisfied by any
adequate definition. If Socrates is consistently to
hold the former, he must be fully prepared to ignorediscrepancies, whether apparent or real, between
what X is and those actions which are convention?
ally said to be instances of X. Why, then, does he sooften appeal to these same conventional views
as a
basis for rejecting a proffered definition? That is,how can part of the application of the elenchus toa definition consist in showing that it is at variance
with conventionally held views about Piety and
Justice, and hence unacceptable, if it is the very functionof knowledge of the eidos as expressed by thedefinition to constitute the sole criterion by referenceto which those same views can be truly assessed ?
The following dilemma can, therefore, be con?structed. Either Euthyphro, without his definition,can identify instances of Piety or he cannot. If he
cannot, why does Socrates himself acknowledge thathe can ? If, on the other hand, he can, why does heneed a definition?
Butler University Received August 21, 1973
12Sometimes, but not always. For occasionally the criterion provided by the ordinary meanings of words is not only inex?
plicably ignored, but scornfully rejected. At Republic 420 if we are briskly assured that the guardiansare really happy, although
the ordinary man (here disparagingly referred to simply as part ofthat undifferentiated mass knownas the multitude ) would
not say so. But if the ordinary man can so unproblematically be pronounced ignorant concerning the nature of happiness, how
can the mere appeal to his opinion at Republic 331c be sufficient in itself to discredit Cephalus' definition of Justice? Why is not
the same sort of appeal sufficient to discredit any definition which is incompatible with what we would say ?How important,after all, is the compatibility requirement? ?And by appeal to what further criterion are we to determine when it is to be appliedand when not ?