Socrates’ Aversion to Being a Victim of Injustice

In the Gorgias, Plato has Polus ask Socrates if he would rather suffer injustice than perform it. Socrates’ response is justly famous, affirming a view that Polus himself finds incredible, and one that even contemporary readers find difficult to credit: “for my part, I would prefer neither, but if it had to be one or the other, I would choose to suffer rather than do what is unjust” (Gorgias 469c1-2). In this paper, we take up the part of Socrates’ response that Polus never engages and that has also been completely neglected by contemporary scholars, namely, Socrates’ explicit aversion to being a victim of injustice. We show that this same aversion—though one not nearly as strong as his aversion to doing injustice—appears in several texts, and we argue that the best explanation of such an aversion derives from two important features of Socratic philosophy, both of which have only recently been recognized in Socratic scholarship: (i) his virtue intellectualism, which conceives of virtue as a kind of craft that can be achieved in different degrees, and (ii) his conception of moral psychology, which allows for non-rational influences on how we perform the cognitive functions required for proper deliberation.     

Two Types of Refutation in Philosophical Argumentation

In this paper, I highlight the significance of practices of refutation in philosophical inquiry, that is, practices of showing that a claim, person or theory is wrong. I present and contrast two prominent approaches to philosophical refutation: refutation in ancient Greek dialectic (elenchus), in its Socratic variant as described in Plato’s dialogues, and as described in Aristotle’s logical texts; and the practice of providing counterexamples to putative definitions familiar from twentieth century analytic philosophy, focusing on the so-called Gettier problem. Moreover, I discuss Lakatos’ method of proofs and refutations, as it offers insightful observations on the dynamics between arguments, refutations, and counterexamples. Overall, I argue that dialectic, in particular in its Socratic variant, is especially suitable for the philosophical purpose of questioning the obvious, as it invites reflection on one’s own doxastic commitments and on the tensions and inconsistencies within one’s set of beliefs. By contrast, the counterexample-based approach to philosophical refutation can give rise to philosophical theorizing that is overly focused on hairsplitting disputes, thus becoming alienated from the relevant human experiences. Insofar as philosophical inquiry treads the fine line between questioning the obvious while still seeking to say something significant about human experiences, perhaps a certain amount of what Lakatos describes as ‘monster-barring’—a rejection of overly fanciful, artificial putative counterexamples—has its place in philosophical argumentation.

     

The individualization of conscience: what Daybreak (9, 10, 544) and The Gay Science (117) tell us about the sovereign individual

ABSTRACT

The figure of the sovereign individual has stood for about two decades at the center of an exegetical debate concerning its identity and ideality. What is often lost sight of in these debates is the role of the sovereign individual in Nietzsche’s genealogy of guilt and bad conscience in the Genealogy’s second essay. I argue for the following claims. First, that the figure of the sovereign individual is not a singular occurrence in Nietzsche’s published writings but is present in sections from Daybreak and The Gay Science that have not been pursued in this context in the Anglophone literature; sections that shed new light on the sovereign individual. Second, that examination of these texts reveals that the sovereign individual is for Nietzsche embodied by Socrates and the Socratic individual. Third, and most importantly, that with the sovereign individual there emerges individualized conscience – the capacity for self-laceration that concerns one’s misdeeds alone and involves the belief that one’s misdeeds are entirely one’s own individual fault, rather than the fault of the community or the gods. A fourth, rather negative consequence, is that at the end of the day Nietzsche, in the Genealogy, does not manage to provide us with a genealogy of moral guilt.     

LOYALTY AND THE ART OF WISE LIVING: THE INFLUENCE OF PLATO ON THE MORAL PHILOSOPHY OF JOSIAH ROYCE

This essay investigates Josiah Royce's sustained interest in the Platonic dialogues by focusing not only on Royce's explicit commentary on Socrates and Plato but also on significant philosophical connections between Royce and these figures. In section 1, we explain the nature of loyalty according to Royce and how Socratic loyalty exemplifies Royce's ideas in both evident and surprising ways. In section 2, we claim that Royce's treatment of “lost causes” (particularly truth as a lost cause) relates to Socrates' dedication to the logos; the Platonic dialogues are reinvestigated in order to make this point. In section 3, we explain the nature of “cause” both in Royce's thought and in the Platonic dialogues in order to see how loyalty to a cause culminates in the art of wise living—Socrates' philosophical practice.     

The Relationship Between Aesthetic Value and Cognitive Value

Recent attention to the relationship between aesthetic value and cognitive value has focused on whether the latter can affect the former. In this article, I approach the issue from the opposite direction. I investigate whether the aesthetic value of a work can influence its cognitive value. More narrowly, I consider whether a work's aesthetic value ever contributes to or detracts from its philosophical value, which I take to include the truth of its claims, the strength of its arguments, and its internal consistency. I argue that aesthetic value does have such an impact, at least sometimes and to some degree. The aesthetic merits of some works help to preserve their consistency, and the aesthetic defects of other works render them self‐contradictory.     

Finding one's way home: Notes on the texture of moral experience

In this article, I seek to illuminate the texture of moral experience. I pursue that aim through a close reading of David Lean's film, Brief Encounter, produced in 1946. The chief protagonist in the film undergoes a moral odyssey that reveals and tests all that she has understood about how to conduct a life. Her experience sheds light on the constituents of an individual moral sensibility as well as how its enactment appears in practice when one confronts a heartfelt difficulty. I argue that moral experience is best understood through the idiom of narrative and character, rather than through ethical language that places formal or universal principle at the center of the moral life. In the workshop of the moral self, as Lean's protagonist reveals, the task is not to fashion or take on universal principles but rather to cultivate virtuous relations with other people in the here-and-now.     

The Early Stoics and Aristotelian Ethics

Aristotle's philosophical legacy should be accepted as one of the historical influences that shaped Stoic moral and psychological thought,even if this influence needs to be demonstrated in each individual case rather than be taken for granted in general.Having discussed the methodological issues raised by the state of our documented evidence,I focus upon the particular philosophical agenda bequeathed by Aristotle,the issue of the structure of the human soul,and the theory of character and emotion.I argue that Aristotle's influence upon the Stoics is not only a matter of their adoption of Aristotelian themes or concepts but that,given the aporetic quality of much of Aristotle's writing,they accepted options as discussed,and actually rejected,by Aristotle.In particular,the Stoics have been influenced by deliberations in which Aristotle discusses,adapts or rejects positions associated with the philosophical hero of the Stoics,Socrates (in particular in De an.II,9-10 and EN Ⅶ,1-11).Seen in this light,the Aristotelian legacy appears to be even more relevant to explaining distinctive and in particular Socratic features of Stoic moral psychology than has been previously assumed.     

The Unacknowledged Socrates in the Works of Luce Irigaray

In Luce Irigaray's thought, Socrates is a marginal figure compared to Plato or Hegel. However, she does identify the Socratic dialectical position as that of a ‘phallocrat’ and she does conflate Socratic and Platonic philosophy in her psychoanalytic reading of Plato in Speculum of the Other Woman. In this essay, I critically interpret both Irigaray's own texts and the Platonic dialogues in order to argue that: (1) the Socratic dialectical position is not ‘phallocratic’ by Irigaray's own understanding of the term; (2) that Socratic (early Platonic) philosophy should not be conflated with the mature Platonic metaphysics Irigaray criticizes; and (3) that Socratic dialectical method is similar in some respects with the dialectical method of Diotima, Socrates’ instructress in love and the subject of Irigaray's “Sorcerer Love” essay in An Ethics of Sexual Difference.     

Fernando Pessoa’s Art of Living: Ironic Multiples,Multiple Ironies

In The Art of Living, Alexander Nehamas argues that Michel de Montaigne, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Michel Foucault undertook a particularist art of living—a unique project of self‐construction. In so doing, argues Nehamas, they based their lives on the life of Socrates, that quintessentially ironic character. To this list of self‐fashioning philosophers, I add Fernando Pessoa, the twentieth‐century Portuguese writer. I argue that Pessoa, via the writings of his heteronyms, also took Socrates as the model for constructing a self. Moreover, Pessoa employed all three kinds of irony that Nehamas argues is present in Plato’s writing, and did so not just to investigate the nature of the self, but to question its very existence. This is Pessoa’s formulation of the problem of the self. But Pessoa also borrowed from Nietzsche’s views on multiplicity, redeploying them in order to fabricate multiple selves. Pessoa’s solution to the problem of the self thus consists in the heteronymic device, which acts as a deus ex machina, unifying the disparate fictional voices and establishing Pessoa as a new, authentic self. Accordingly, Pessoa borrows from both Platonism and anti‐Platonism, distinguishing himself from both, so as to contrive—and simultaneously exemplify—an original art of living.     

Virtue Without Gender in Socrates

In this paper I argue that Socrates believed that there is no distinction between man's virtue and woman's virtue and that there is no difference in the achievement of virtue between men and women. My analysis shows Plato's position on the moral equality of guardian women and men in the Republic to be a continuation of the Socratic position of nongendered virtue. I thus disagree with Spelman's recent interpretation of the Republic on this issue.     

FEELING WITHOUT THINKING: LESSONS FROM THE ANCIENTS ON EMOTION AND VIRTUE-ACQUISITION

Abstract: By briefly sketching some important ancient accounts of the connections between psychology and moral education, I hope to illuminate the significance of the contemporary debate on the nature of emotion and to reveal its stakes. I begin the essay with a brief discussion of intellectualism in Socrates and the Stoics, and Plato's and Posidonius's respective attacks against it. Next, I examine the two current leading philosophical accounts of emotion: the cognitive theory and the noncognitive theory. I maintain that the noncognitive theory better explains human behavior and experience and has more empirical support than the cognitive theory. In the third section of the essay I argue that recent empirical research on emotional contagion and mirroring processes provides important new evidence for the noncognitive theory. In the final section, I draw some preliminary conclusions about moral education and the acquisition of virtue.     

Narrative Representation and Phenomenological Knowledge

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that narrative representations can provide knowledge in virtue of their narrativity, regardless of their truth value. I set out the question in section 1, distinguishing narrative cognitivism from aesthetic cognitivism and narrative representations from non-narrative representations. Sections 2 and 3 argue that exemplary narratives can provide lucid phenomenological knowledge, which appears to meet both the epistemic and narrativity criteria for the narrative cognitivist thesis. In section 4, I turn to non-narrative representation, focusing on lyric poetry as presenting a disjunctive objection: either lucid phenomenological knowledge can be reduced to identification and fails to meet the epistemic criterion, or lucid phenomenological knowledge is provided in virtue of aesthetic properties and fails to meet the narrativity criterion. I address both of these problems in sections 5 and 6, and I close with a tentative suggestion as to how my argument for narrative cognitivism could be employed as an argument for aesthetic cognitivism.     

That Way Madness Lies: At the Intersection of Philosophy and Clinical Psychology

Abstract: I argue that philosophical practice is a clinically active and influential endeavor, with both positive (therapeutic) and negative (detrimental) psychological possibilities. Though some have explicitly taken the clinical aspects of philosophy into the therapeutic realm via the new field of philosophical counseling, I am interested in the clinical context of philosophers as philosophers, engaged in standard, philosophical pursuits. In arguing for the clinical implications of philosophical practice I consider the relation between philosophical despair and depression, the cognitive etiology of depression and other clinical disorders, selected DSM‐IV entries, attribution theory, and cognitive therapy.     

Bakhtin, Socrates and the carnivalesque in education

In this article, we critically review the application of Bakhtin's literary work to education with the aim of exploring the notion of carnival. We argue that Bakhtin's highly original interpretation of Socrates as a carnivalesque figure has been neglected in the literature. While Bakhtin's references to Socrates are scattered through different texts, he develops an interpretation that extends our modern view of the Socratic ‘method’ of teaching. From his Socratic reading, we argue that Bakhtin develops an epistemology that links authority, carnival and knowledge. As such, we will argue that carnival helps to bridge the gap between ‘authoritative’ and ‘internally persuasive’ discourse in Bakhtin's wider thought and, specifically, application of his ideas to education. In this Bakhtinian interpretation, a Socratic dialogue involves: (1) the subversion of authoritative discourse; (2) the discovery of knowledge through social cross-examination of ideas and (3) educating by personal example. Drawing on empirical educational examples already available in the literature, we will look at the difficulties and benefits involved in applying these aspects of the Socratic dialogue to formal education. Overall, however, we will argue both authority and internally persuasive discourse and carnival gives us an insight into the development of conceptual understanding and enables us to reflect on their application for classroom practice.     

Plato and Socrates: From an Educator of Childhood to a Childlike Educator?

This paper deals with two forms of education—Platonic and Socratic. The former educates childhood to transform it into what it ought to be. The latter does not form childhood, but makes education childlike. To unfold the philosophical and pedagogical dimensions of this opposition, the first part of the paper highlights the way in which philosophy is presented indirectly in some of Plato’s dialogues, beginning with a characterisation that Socrates makes of himself in the dialogue Phaedrus. The second part details Plato’s condemnation of writing in the Phaedrus, and draws on the critique by Jacques Derrida and Gilles Deleuze to establish what is at stake in this condemnation. In the third part, the pedagogical and political implications of this condemnation are reviewed, and Plato is placed in a surprising position in relation to his own teacher, Socrates. Finally, through a comparison between childhood and philosophy, the educational value of putting childhood and philosophy together is questioned. Through a number of questions, the paper ends problematising the pedagogical, political and philosophical value of placing the practice of philosophy in the realm of childhood citizenship education. It also recovers the value of philosophy—as a form of questioning and unlearning what we know and affirming the value of not knowing—in a childlike education.     

Philosophical parrhesia as aesthetics of existence

According to some interpreters, Foucault's encounter with the Greek and Roman ethics led him to reconsider his earlier work and to turn away from politics. Drawing mostly from Foucault's last and hitherto unpublished lecture course, this paper argues that Foucault's turn to ethics should not be interpreted as a turn away from his previous work, but rather as its logical continuation and an attempt to resolve some of the outstanding questions. I argue that the 1984 lectures on parrhesia should be interpreted as Foucault's philosophical apology, as an attempt to defend himself against the charges of moral and epistemological nihilism, which were raised in response to his earlier work. In his last lectures, the Nietzschean Foucault somewhat surprisingly describes his earlier work as authentic Socratic philosophy and as ethical practice of freedom. In the conclusion, I assess the plausibility of Foucault's apology and speculate in which direction his work might have developed, had it not been cut off by his death.     

Dependent origination and the dual‐nature of the Japanese aesthetic

As most commentators on Japanese aesthetics agree, the Japanese aesthetic is pervaded by a profound affirmation of things in their suchness or original uniqueness, and at the same time is tinged with an element of sadness or melancholy. While the responses of affirmation and melancholy seem rather subjective and may—at first glance—appear inconsistent with Buddhist notions like anatman, or non‐self and the Buddhist demand for non‐attachment, I shall argue that a more careful reading of certain Buddhist doctrines, specifically the doctrine of dependent origination or pratitya‐samutpāda, reveals that the basic tenets of Buddhism are not only consistent with these sorts of subjective responses, but in fact serve to help explain the dual nature of the Japanese aesthetic. Accordingly, I shall suggest that given the undeniable influence Buddhism has had on Japanese culture, it seems likely that the doctrine of dependent origination is not only compatible with, but also contributed to the formation of what we regard as the Japanese aesthetic.     

Enacting the self: Buddhist and Enactivist approaches to the emergence of the self

In this paper, I take up the problem of the self through bringing together the insights, while correcting some of the shortcomings, of Indo–Tibetan Buddhist and enactivist accounts of the self. I begin with an examination of the Buddhist theory of non-self (anātman) and the rigorously reductionist interpretation of this doctrine developed by the Abhidharma school of Buddhism. After discussing some of the fundamental problems for Buddhist reductionism, I turn to the enactive approach to philosophy of mind and cognitive science. I argue that human beings, as dynamic systems, are characterized by a high degree of self-organizing autonomy. Therefore, human beings are not reducible to the more basic mental and physical events that constitute them. I critically examine Francisco Varela’s enactivist account of the self as virtual and his use of Buddhist ideas in support of this view. I argue, in contrast, that while the self is emergent and constructed, it is not merely virtual. Finally I sketch a Buddhist-enactivist account of the self. I argue for a non-reductionist view of the self as an active, embodied, embedded, self-organizing process—what the Buddhists call ‘I’-making (ahaṃkāra). This emergent process of self-making is grounded in the fundamentally recursive processes that characterize lived experience: autopoiesis at the biological level, temporalization and self-reference at the level of conscious experience, and conceptual and narrative construction at the level of intersubjectivity. In Buddhist terms, I will develop an account of the self as dependently originated and empty, but nevertheless real.     

Hume's Dispositional Account of the Self

This paper will argue that Hume's notion of the self in Book 2 of the Treatise seems subject to two constraints. First, it should be a succession of perceptions [THN 2.2.1.2, 2.1.2.3]. Second, it should be durable in virtue of the roles that it plays with regard to pride and humility, as well as to normativity. However, I argue that these two constraints are in tension, since our perceptions are too transient to play these roles. I argue that this notion of self should be characterized as a bundle of dispositions to our perceptions, such that these dispositions are durable and counterfactual-supporting. I argue that Hume confused his ‘philosophical’ notion of dispositions, as nothing above and beyond their effects, with the thicker notion of dispositions to which the passions respond—which explains his mistaken commitment to the durability constraint.