BMCR 2008.12.05, Maurizio Migliori, Plato Ethicus

Maurizio Migliori, Linda M. Napolitano Valditara, Davide Del Forno
(ed.), Plato Ethicus: Philosophy is Life: Proceedings of the
International Colloquium, Piacenza (Italy) 2003. Lecturae Platonis; v.
4.  Sankt Augustin:  Academia Verlag, 2004.  Pp. 353.  ISBN
9783896653277.  EUR 49.50.

Reviewed by Gerald A. Press, Hunter College and CUNY Graduate Center
([email protected])
Word count:  2517 words
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[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review.]

The papers in this interesting volume are from an international
colloquium of the same title held in Piacenza in 2003; they are
published here in English, though they have now also appeared in
Italian (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2008). Although they represent a variety
of approaches to Platonic ethics, they are united in favoring
over-arching readings of the Platonic works over the (mere) analysis of
particular stretches of Socratic argument. As a group they also
constitute a sign of another major change taking place in Plato
scholarship, away from the older assumption that Plato, like Aristotle
and other philosophers, can be said to have a separate part of
philosophy called "ethics."

Given the number of papers, I will offer only a few general
observations after summarizing the contributions.

One complaint made against contemporary Platonic esoterism, is that it
ignores or devalues Plato's constant concern with ethical and political
questions. Berti reviews the debates and concludes that, given the
coincidence of One and Good, there is an ethics in the "unwritten
doctrines," which is "founded on an extremely precise ontology" (48).

The claim that virtue is knowledge has often been taken as the basis of
Plato's ethics. Bravo reviews discussions of episteme from Ryle (1949)
and Gould (1955) through Vlastos (1973) and some more recent
interventions (Stalley 2000, Tsouna 2001). He concludes that for Plato
episteme is both knowing that and knowing how but also "involves the
acting self-consciousness of...the subject who obtains it...[and]
includes as an essential element self-restraint, namely the capacity of
dominating the impulses opposed to virtue...which is equivalent to a
return of the soul to the Good" (61).

Brisson criticizes books about Plato's ethics and politics  -- e.g.,
Irwin 1995 and Bobonich 2002 -- that reduce "Plato's ethics to that of
Aristotle interpreted in the light of Kant" (63) and fail to deal with
the myths. He argues that Plato's ethics don't make sense without the
idea of transmigration of the soul and that "myths play a fundamental
and permanent role" in this, since in them "we witness the emergence of
a tendency to orient ethics towards physics...by resituating man within
his place on the scale of all living things" (63). According to
Brisson, Plato originated the idea of post-mortem retribution, a nexus
of ideas that is physicalized and hierarchialized in the Timaeus. Like
several other contributors, Brisson's Plato is rather Neoplatonic.

Next come two papers on the much-debated question of the unity of
virtue. Casertano argues that, although Protagoras and Laws are as
different as comedy and tragedy, they are similar in their treatments
of the relation between virtue and the virtues (unity and multiplicity)
and share the view that discourse (logos) is to be preferred to mere
names and slogans about the definition of virtue. Centrone claims that,
although Plato left it open to discussion, there is a dialectical
relationship between unity and multiplicity. Plato "thought of the
unity of virtue in terms of a holon, or rather a hen-holon, that is an
organic and unitarian totality, consisting of different parts which are
not merely summed up or juxtaposed" (93). So, the identity thesis
should not be ascribed to Socrates. And Vlastos was wrong to see
"erroneous inferences within the final argument of the Laches" (105)
and thus deny that courage, for example, could be the whole of virtue.
Centrone thinks both views are true, in different senses of the term:
courage is the whole of virtue since all virtue is knowledge of good
and evil, but the virtues differ from each other in that of which each
is knowledge.

Erler points out, surely correctly, that in the Gorgias and Phaedo
argument is not only epistemological but also ethical insofar as it is
therapy for the passions, "curing man's irrational elements" (118) as
ethical preparation.

Ferrari compares ethical ideas in the Timaeus with Platonic ethical
ideas that "seem to go back to Socrates' thought" (121)  -- e.g., some
views about the soul's nature, the proposition that no one does wrong
willingly, the idea of kallipolis, and eudaimonia as the telos of human
life and as assimilation to the divine.  Many of them are proposed
again in the Timaeus, but involve, he argues, a de-Socratisation of
their theoretical framework in favor of something more cosmic. Ethics
is subsumed to physics, practical reason to theoretical.

The opposition between philosopher and politician is an ethical topos
in several dialogues. Gastaldi examines it in the Republic, Gorgias,
and Theaetetus as well as in Aristippus and Antisthenes. The
confrontation, in her view, involves different kinds of knowledge as
well as different ways of life; but she thinks the opposition is less
stark than is often supposed, and overcoming it is "the main objective
in the project of the Republic" (145).

Gerson is more candid than several other contributors in presenting a
Neoplatonic interpretation of Plato's ethics. He is surely right that
it offers an interesting alternative to the usual Anglo-American
version found in scholars such as Irwin (1977, 1995). Irwin doesn't
even consider the passage that was "the key to the Neoplatonic
interpretation" (151), Theaetetus 176a5-c5, with its necessity of evil,
flight from the world, and likeness to god, which coheres with Timaeus
90b1-d7. For Gerson, a Neoplatonic version of Plato, "does not so much
contradict the mainstream interpretations...as it does supersede them
in its comprehensiveness" also making "it impossible to view Plato's
ethics as autonomous or metaphysically innocent" (164).

In an explicitly "exploratory and provisional" way (176), Gill tries to
initiate a more nuanced discussion of the role of mathematics in
Plato's ethics. He raises objections to the "maximalist" views of the
esoteric theorists (such as Berti, Migliori, and Reale in this volume)
about the identity of the One and the Good and of Burnyeat that
mathematics is the core of Plato's vision of the world.

Migliori, one of the editors of the volume, unfortunately allowed
himself the longest chapter in the volume. At 50 pages it is more that
four times the length of the papers by Gill and Notomi and plumped up
with unnecessary quotations. Migliori attempts to resolve the apparent
conflict between positive valuations of pleasure in some dialogues and
the generally anti-hedonistic tone of many others by relating it to
what he considers the fundamental ontological relation between unity
and multiplicity. The key is his somewhat mystifying claim that the
"structural polyfunctionality of the points of view which Plato adopts
case after case,...allow[s] his concepts to undergo often quite diverse
adjustments" (223).

Assuming, perhaps rather optimistically,, that the history and
operation of dialectic are well understood, Napolitano Valditara claims
that eunoia,  eumeneia, praotes, and philia are prerequisites to it and
constitute the ethics of dialectic. They are not merely empty and
superficial, but "formal and methodological obligations" (239) for both
dialectical participants; and they do not reduce dialectic to something
merely emotional because it arises from a cognitive acknowledgement of
not knowing. Although the paper is properly contextual, she reads the
dialogues uncritically as direct instruction and takes Socrates as
Plato's mouthpiece.

Plato's way of doing ethics is "historical" rather than "systematic,"
according to Notomi, although "dialogical" might be a more accurate
word for what he means. Instead of defining the various virtues, Plato
uses dramatic dates, settings, and characters in the dialogues to
evaluate the specific lives of Socrates and his interlocutors and the
ethical issues they raise. Socrates' conversation with Critias in the
Charmides illustrates this. Although Critias' statements often sound
like Socratic ideas, Plato uses them and other dialogical details to
reveal the aristocratic or oligarchic interpretations Critias put on
them, thus distinguishing Critias' views from Socrates' and defending
Socrates against contemporary and later attacks.

Even more than Migliori, Reale uses long and unnecessary quotations --
approximately one half of this short paper  -- to support the claims
that the henological (read: esoteric) metaphysics of One and Many is
the basis of Plato's ethical position and is distinct from the
Aristotelian ontological metaphysics of being, becoming, and not-being.
As appears from the Philebus, the One is the conceptual basis of the
ideal city, the moral life, the "great metaphor of the soul" (261), and
health of soul and body in the Republic, as well as assimilation to
God.

Like many other contributors, Rowe asserts that "ethical concerns
permeate and inform the whole of the Platonic corpus" (265), but his
main point is to argue that the principle that all our desires are for
the good is already present in early or transitional dialogues, such as
Gorgias,  Meno, Euthydemus, Symposium, and Lysis. All the theorizing
about ethical goods in these dialogues, Rowe thinks, presupposes the
cosmic perspective that becomes explicit in Republic, Philebus, and
Timaeus.  For Plato, "there is no physics or metaphysics, or indeed
much else, without ethics ... and no ethics without physics and
metaphysics" (268). Like most other contributors, he takes Socrates'
words to be Plato's despite writing, "I am of course perfectly aware
that Plato never actually says anything to us himself" (268n8).

Santa Cruz deals with "a few...aspects of the Platonic conception of
equality in the fields of ethics and politics" (273) in Laws,
Politicus, and Republic. She connects proportionate equality (isotes)
in Laws with mean or measure (metrion) in Politicus and argues that
that conception of equality was first instantiated in the Republic's
admission of women into the guardian class.

The best chapter in the book is Scolnicov's elegant and sophisticated
argument that  "...irony is Plato's and his Socrates' main tool for
escaping the limitations imposed by the nature of the dialogue form,
live or purportedly 'reproduced,' without forfeiting its crucial
personal character" (290). Like Notomi, he shows the philosophical
import of a literary and dramatic feature of the dialogues; but, beyond
this, the paper is the best brief analysis of irony in Plato's
dialogues  -- what it is and what it does  -- currently available.
Scolnicov's critiques of interpreters such as Beversluis passim),
Vlastos (293), Hadot (294, 297), and others and of interpretive
approaches such as dogmatic metaphysics and the esoteric theorists'
pursuit of the ungeschreibene Lehre (297f.) are jewels of precision.

Tulli plausibly ascribes a broadly ethical dimension to the Menexenus.
In it, he claims, Plato offers a mythical history that is the ideal
past of an ideal city (katholou) and that counters the real past of the
real Athens (kath'hekaston) found in Xenophon and Diodorus.

Like many other contributors, Vegetti denies the autonomy of a Platonic
ethics. He illustrates the linkage among ethics, politics, anthropology
and psychology by examining pleonexia in Republic and Gorgias. Vegetti
observes, "the dialogues represent the enactment of the philosophical
quest ... [which] will be perceivable as such only subsequent to a
thorough reading of the dialogues..." (316).

The Bibliography (329-44) seems to include only items cited by
contributors, rather than providing more extensive coverage of the
volume's topic; and, since some contributors cite many of their own
publications, it is somewhat lopsided.

The "Introduction" explains why the papers are arranged simply
alphabetically. This choice is understandable, but it makes for a sense
of disorientation when the reader moves, for example, from a discussion
of ethical features of the unwritten doctrines in chapter 1 to the
meaning of episteme in "virtue is knowledge" in chapter 2 and then to
Platonic myths in chapter 3. The footnotes in the "Introduction"
identify a number of interpretive threads of interest connecting
various contributions, e.g., seeing a link between ethics and
metaphysics or ethics and physics, which might have suggested
arrangements more helpful to the reader.

As the "Introduction" says, the contributors share two quite reasonable
beliefs. First, ethical topics are discussed throughout the corpus
because there is no Platonic ethics distinct from other parts of
philosophy, as there is in Aristotle and later philosophers. Second,
the contributors criticize and reject an approach to interpreting
Plato's ethics that used to dominate Platonic scholarship in English.
Napolitano Valditara describes it as, "Anglo-Saxon," "linguistic," and
"pertaining to the ethical propositions and argumentations" (8), but in
practice this turns out to mean opposition to the approach centered on
the reconstruction of a "Socratic philosophy", with its attendant
assumptions and orientations, rather than to Anglo-Saxon approaches in
general. Far more is going on in English writing about Plato's ethics
than is suggested by the repeated (even if deserved) criticisms of
Vlastos and Irwin in this volume.

An attempt to wrest control of the discussion of "Platonic ethics" from
the Vlastosians may still have been a good idea in 2000 or 2001, when
the conference was being planned, but it now seems somewhat outdated,
since the movement appears moribund. It also seems narrow, since many
interpreters have long approached the dialogues without trying to
extract an autonomous ethical theory. Moreover, most contributors
actually share with the Vlastosians a number of developmental,
dogmatic, and non-dialogical assumptions that don't represent either
the state of the discussion or the diversity of present work.
Morcelliana's advertising for the Italian version inaccurately states,
"I testi qui raccolti, andando oltre questi modelli interpretativi,
dimostrano che Platone parla di etica dialogicamente, come di ogni
altro tema." Only the papers by Notomi, Scolnicov, and Tulli can be
described as dialogical.

It is an interesting idea to publish the same papers both in original
languages and in English. Unfortunately, many of the English
translations here are not very good, and there are frequent errors in
grammar, syntax, usage, and idiom. On the other hand, for those who
don't read Italian, German, or Spanish, the volume offers a fine
opportunity to encounter unfamiliar scholars and modes of
interpretation that are interesting and fruitful in various ways, and
certainly worth knowing about. The volume should be read by all who are
interested in Plato's ethical ideas and purchased by all research
libraries.

Table of Contents

Linda M. Napolitano Valditara, Introduction (5-33)
Enrico Berti, Is There an Ethics in Plato's 'Unwritten Doctrines'?
(35-48)
Francisco Bravo, What is the Meaning of episteme in the Socratic
Proposition e arete episteme estin?"(49-61)
Luc Brisson, Myths in Plato's Ethics (63-76)
Giovanni Casertano, Virtues and Virtue: Names and Discourse (77-106)
Bruno Centrone, Platonic Virtue as a 'holon': From the Laws to the
Protagoras (93-106)
Michael Erler, 'Socrates in the Cave.' Argumentations as Therapy for
Passions in Gorgias and Phaedo (107-20)
Franco Ferrari, World's Order and Soul's Order: The Timaeus and the
De-Socratisation of Socrates' Ethics (121-32)
Silvia Gastaldi, The Philosopher and the Politician: Competing or
Comparable Ways of Life (133-50)
Lloyd P. Gerson, The Neoplatonic Interpretation of Plato's Ethics
(151-64)
Christopher Gill, Plato, Ethics and Mathematics (165-76)
Maurizio Migliori, What is Fair and Good about Virtue? (177-226)
Linda M. Napolitano Valditara, An Ethics for Plato's Dialectic?
(227-44)
Noburu Notomi. Ethical Examination in Context. The Criticism of Critias
in Plato's Charmides (245-54)
Giovanni Reale, 'Henological' Basis of Plato's Ethics (255-64)
Christopher Rowe, "All our desires are for the Good." Reflections on
some key Platonic dialogues (265-72)
Maria Isabel Santa Cruz, On the Platonic Conception of Equality
(273-88)
Samuel Scolnicov, Plato's Ethics of Irony (289-300)
Mauro Tulli, Ethics and History in Plato's Menexenus (301-14)
Mario Vegetti, Anthropologies of 'pleonexia' in Plato (315-26)
Bibliography (329-44)