One thing that surprised me is that I found surprisingly few illustrations of the Iliad, when I searched. At least, few that suited me. Doubtless scenes from the Iliad have been drawn or painted hundreds or thousands of times over the years, but my first searches have been less than satisfactory.

So, in the first book of the Iliad, we learn that Apollo has brought a plague down upon the Grecian army, and it is revealed that in order to appease him, Agamemnon must return the captured Chryseis to her father, who is Apollo’s priest, together with an appropriate sacrifice. Agamemnon will only agree if he is compensated for his loss, but Achilles is angry at this, decrying Agamemnon’s greed. Agamemnon then declares that he will return Chryseis, and take Briseis, Achilles’s ‘prize’, as his compensation.

Enraged at this treatment, Achilles would kill Agamemnon, but his hand is stayed by Pallas. Instead, he declares he will not serve Agamemnon any longer, and begs his mother, Thetis, to ask a boon of Jove, that he would aid the Trojans in order to teach Agamemnon the value of Achilles, who he treated so poorly. Thetis does this, and extracts a promise from Jove to exalt Achilles above all others, and give success to Troy.

The first book consists of about 750 lines, so it’s a fairly quick read. I had feared, initially, that I might find it difficult to read a translation that was more than 200 years old, and, indeed, when first I began to read it, though, I read too quickly, and, unused to Cowper’s style, lost the thread of the story a bit. I stopped and then reread from the beginning more slowly, and found that Cowper’s translation was very understandable. I wonder if some of the other translations are equally intelligible. I would like, eventually, to read Pope’s 1715 translation and Chapman’s 1615 translation, as well. I think I will first read Cowper’s translation of the Odyssey, though, before beginning on any new translations.

This post is, I guess, much shorter than is usual for me, on account of the brevity of the first book of the Iliad, but there will be 23 more posts on the Iliad before I’ve read it all, so I suppose it will all work out.

When the Crito begins, Crito has already arrived, early in the day, to see Socrates, and convey to him the news that the ship from Delos is soon to arrive, and so the time of Socrates’s execution is at hand. He pleads with Socrates (apparently not for the first time) to allow him to bribe the guards to allow Socrates to escape, or, if Socrates fears the financial burden on him, his friend, then to allow some others, strangers to him, who have offered to pay to bribe the guards instead. Anticipating also that Socrates might fear for their safety, having helped him escape, Crito implores Socrates to forget any such fear, for he friends would be justified in running such a risk to save him. So he asks Socrates to escape and, if he will go to Tessaly, some friends of his there will welcome and keep him.

Then Crito brings to bear the argument that one imagines he is most hopeful of convincing Socrates: that what Socrates is doing (i.e. not escaping) is unjust, for several reasons. First, he says, doing this allows his enemies to have what they desire, to destroy Socrates. Second, he is betraying his sons by leaving them, showing no concern for their fate. He says that Socrates is taking the easier path, rather than the right path. Furthermore, he says, all of Socrates’s friends will be regarded as having cared more for themselves and their money than their friend Socrates, not having either stopped him being convicted or else spirited him away to avoid his fate, and so Socrates will also harm his friends by doing this.

Socrates dismisses Crito’s concern for how he and Socrates’s other friends will be seen, saying that they should not care for the opinions of such people, even though if Socrates’s friends have a bad reputation the masses may even (as Socrates himself points out) kill Crito and the others. He says that they should not be concerned with living, only living well, and that as for all those concerns Crito raises, they properly belong to those who easily put men to death. For Socrates and Crito, Socrates says, the only question is whether they would act rightly in escaping.

Socrates then defends his position that to escape would be wrong by essaying to speak in place of the laws of Athens, as though they, the laws, would ask him to give an account of himself, and justify the harm that he does to them, which he has agreed to be bound by, since he has lived his life in Athens, and not left, as he was free to do.

Ultimately, Crito can offer no convincing argument to Socrates, and so Socrates remains captive, and awaits his execution.

I find Socrates’s defense of his decision to accept his punishment both interesting and a little insufficient. His argument that he has, by living in Athens and benefiting from its laws, agreed to be bound by those same laws himself, is compelling. It is not a total defense of the rule of law–in particular it does not justify the application of laws to the young, or, if we strictly follow Socrates’s argument, even necessarily those who have fared poorly or often left the city. Still, it is a solid defense of accepting the dictates of the law, even if the outcome seems to him to be unjust, in this instance. The law is just, and Socrates had an opportunity to defend himself, or else ask that his punishment be exile if he would prefer to leave and not be bound by the City’s laws, so he must do as the law demands.

His argument (or, really, simple assertion) that all the possible consequences of Socrates’s death are the sole concern of the jury is not so satisfactory. Certainly they should be concerned with whether the punishment they set is just, but, if they act unjustly, are all other men bound to accept injustice, even if they should have the power to correct the injustice? I do not think that Socrates himself would find that men are justified in ignoring injustice merely because they are not directly responsible for its coming to pass–and, in this case, Socrates is, if not culpable for the injustice, certainly not wholly uninvolved with it. Indeed, he has said during his trial that a good man must come to the help of justice.

He dismisses the harm that he does to his friends if their reputations suffer for his insistence on accepting his punishment. That Crito and the others should not care what the masses say isn’t wrong, but Socrates’s argument only supports that Crito should not act on the advise of the masses, or simply for fear of their disapproval, for they are not experts in the important matters. But, Crito is not concerned merely with their disapproval: he is concerned that real harm may befall him as a result of their disapproval. And Socrates himself agrees that this could happen. So, if, by choosing to escape or remain, Socrates has the power to bring harm or prevent harm to his friends, and if helping or preventing harm to one’s friends is a moral obligation, then it seems to me that Socrates must consider his choice as having meaningful consequences–as one option being just and the other unjust, or at least less just. Certainly, as a practical concern, one must balance the harm of being known to have bribed Socrates’s guards with the harm of being known not to have bribed the guards, but whatever the result of this calculus may be, Socrates has simply dismissed the issue without a thought.

Finally, Socrates’s argument that it would be unjust to escape hinges on the assumption that to flout the laws and escape would be to willfully damage the laws and the City. But, one might argue that if the law causes unjust consequences, the law itself may be flawed, and that to accept the unjust consequences is to be complicit in the commission of the injustice, and any future injustices that come about as a result of the same process. The counterargument to Socrates, then, is that it is the higher duty–better serving justice–to refuse unjust consequences and seek to correct the flaws in the law.

In the end, Socrates is content with his situation, but I do not share his apparent satisfaction with the arguments he has presented, and frankly I suspect that Crito, too, was unsatisfied. But Socrates would not be dissuaded from his course, and the rest is history.

Plato’s Apology of Socrates describes Socrates’s defense against the charge of impiety for which he was eventually sentenced to death. Once again, I read Grube’s translation.

Socrates begins his defense by disclaiming any skill at speaking, except insofar as a speakers skill lies in speaking the truth, and begs the indulgence of the jurors that they allow him to speak in the way he is accustomed to do. He indicates that, apart from defending himself from the present charge brought against him by Meletus, he must first defend himself against his earlier accusers who have for many years spoken against him, and so poisoned the minds of the jurors against him.

Socrates insists that he does not teach, and has no wisdom that may be taught, but offers an explanation for the source of these “slanders” against him. He recounts that his friend Chaerephon had once gone to Delphi and asked the oracle whether any man was wiser than Socrates, and the oracle replied that no one was wiser. Socrates was very confused by this, he said, for he knew that he was not wise at all. So, he set out to test what the oracle had said, seeking out men said to be wise that he might point out a man wiser than he.

Socrates was not to succeed in this endeavour, however. With each man he approached, he would find the same: that they were not wise at all. He would think to himself: “I am wiser than this man; it is likely that neither of us knows anything worthwhile, but he thinks he knows something when he does not, whereas when I do not know, neither do I think I know; so I am likely to be wiser than he to this small extent, that I do not think I know what I do not know.”

Socrates made enemies as he proceeded to seek out and test men said to be wise, showing each in his turn his own ignorance–the wiser in repute, the more deficient in fact. After testing the politicians, he sought the poets, but found that they were not wise either–that evidently they composed their great works not through wisdom, but by inspiration, like seers and prophets. Despite this, he said, the poets thought their talent and inspiration made them wise in many matters of which they knew nothing. Craftsmen, too, thought that their expertise in a craft granted them wisdom in other matters of which they were ignorant.

Moreover, he claims, bystanders who heard him pointing out the ignorance of these men reputed for their wisdom falsely assumed that he possessed the wisdom that he proved they lacked. So, he acquired an undeserved reputation for wisdom. He speculates that the oracle meant that “this man among you, mortals, is wisest who, like Socrates, understands that his wisdom is worthless.”

Socrates then addresses the charges that Meletus laid against him: that he corrupts the young and does not believe in the gods of the city, but in other spiritual things. For the first, he asks Meletus whether he means that all the Athenians improve the young, and that he, Socrates, alone corrupts them; Meletus agrees that this is what he means. This, Socrates dismisses as absurd: “it would be a very happy state of affairs,” he says, “if only one person currupted our youth, while the others improved them.” He dismisses this, saying that it is obvious that Meletus has never had any concern for the youths of the city, and had never given them any thought. For the charge that he willfully corrupts the youth, Socrates notes–and Meletus agrees–that men are harmed if they keep bad company, and so he, Socrates, could not possibly intentionally corrupt the youth, whose company he keeps, for he would thereby be harmed; Meletus has already agreed that no man wants to be harmed.

For the second charge, he again asks Meletus to clarify, whether he means that Socrates believes in other gods than those of the city, or whether Socrates believes in no gods at all. Meletus indicates that he means the latter. Socrates once more gets Meletus to agree that no man can believe in spiritual activities without believing in spirits, and that spirits are either gods or children of gods. Since Socrates was charged with believing and teaching spiritual matters other than concerning the gods of the city, Socrates states that it is clear that Meletus has spoken a contradiction–has charged Socrates with believing in no gods and believing in gods.

For the remainder of Socrates’s defense, he defends that he pursues philosophy. He is concerned, he says, with the improvement of men, and seeks to teach them to seek first for the good of their souls, before they seek wealth or other things. He says that he “was attached to this city by the god . . . as upon a great and noble horse which was somewhat sluggish because of its size and needed to be stirred up by a kind of gadfly.”

Socrates says that he will continue to do as he has done, though he may risk death, for no one should fail to act rightly out of fear of death, nor indeed should anyone fear death, for they do not know it to be an evil. Socrates does not beg and plead for his life, for he regards such actions as unworthy–that for men regarded as superior to behave like that would be a disgrace. Yet, he says, he has seen men “doing amazing things as if they thought it a terrible thing to die, and as if they were to be immortal if you did not execute them.” Such acts, Socrates argues, should not stay the hand of the jury. Rather, he says to them, “you should make it very clear that you will more readily convict a man who performs these pitiful dramatics in court and so makes the city a laughing-stock, than a man who keeps quiet.”

The jury, though, gives its verdict of guilty, and Meletus asks for the penalty of death. Socrates indicates that he regards this as an injustice, and says that he will not argue the penalty, for he would not claim to believe himself deserving of any punishment. Rather he says, “if [he] must make a just assessment of what [he deserves], [he asesses] it as this: free meals in the Prytaneum,” for he has been their benefactor, and deserves it far more than an Olympian victor. At length, Socrates offers as penalty a fine of thirty minas, which Plato, Crito, Critobulus, and Apollodorus bid him, and offered to pay.

The jury will not have it, though. Socrates is sentenced to death. He says that they “will acquire the reputation and the guilt . . . of having killed Socrates . . . [although] if they had waited but a little while, this would have happened of its own accord,” for Socrates is old and has not long to live in any case. Though he has been caught by death, Socrates says that his accusers have been caught by wickedness. To those who convicted him, he prophesies that vengeance will come upon them immediately after his death; that many men, who he had held back, will now come to test them, and they “will be more difficult to deal with as they will be younger.”

To those who voted for his acquittal, Socrates says that death shall do him no harm. If death is as dreamless sleep, it shall be better than the majority of days of his life, and if otherwise it is a change to another place, he will be in good company, and will spend his time with other men who died though an unjust conviction, and may test men there, as he did in Athens, to see who is wise and who is not.

At last, Socrates exhorts his accusers: “when my sons grow up, avenge yourselves by causing them the same kind of grief that I caused you, if you think they care for money or anything else more than they care for virtue, or if they think they are somebody when they are nobody. Reproach them as I reproach you, that they do not care for the right things and think they are worthy when they are not worthy of anything. If you do this, I shall have been justly treated by you, and my sons also.”

He leaves, saying: “Now the hour to part has come. I go to die, you go to live. Which of us goes to the better lot is known to no one, except the god.”

I have perhaps given too extensive a summary in some respects, while omitting much that might have been worthy of inclusion. Enough of that, though.

Of course, as with Plato’s other works, there is no reason to assume that this is truly how the event in question happened. I would say, rather, that Plato believes this is the best, truest defense of Socrates, and perhaps how Socrates, too, would have wished to defend himself. However they may match in the particulars of the defense, the outcome is the same–Socrates was found guilty and sentenced to die. It is a foregone conclusion, for in the intervening 2400 years, Socrates’s fate has become well-known.

Knowing then, as Plato did when he wrote the Apology, that Socrates is to die, much of what he says seems to be less a defense, and more reproach of his killers. Little wonder, if Socrates had given such a defense, that he was found guilty: at every turn he demeans and insults his accusers, members of the jury among them. Too, Socrates raises himself up as a spectacular man, a gift to the city from the god, such as they will not see again, unless the god favors them despite their foolishness.

Though we are told well of Socrates’s opinions about how he has conducted himself, there is less philosophical content here than in other of Plato’s works. What else then may be learn from this? Socrates says that “if it were the law with us, as it is elsewhere, that a trial for life should not last one but many days, you would be convinced, but now it is not easy to dispel great slanders in a short time.” Evidently Plato felt that such trials should last many days, for he certainly felt that it was an injustice to kill Socrates. Too, Plato, through Socrates, has expressed that he feels the jurors, rather than judging on the facts, decide guilt or innocence based on how well the defendant speaks, whether he begs, and their own emotions.

Well, I agree with these things. No less true is it today than two and a half millennia ago, that men are not all sound judges, unmoved by emotion, nor any less true that care ought to be taken when deciding a trial for life–more care, perhaps, than we do take, even now. Evidently, it is a rather profound kind of ignorance, when a person indicates that he feels that such failures belong to recent days alone–people have changed surprisingly little, for all else that we have done these 2400 years.

First, a few words about the concept under discussion. In the Meno, Socrates tries to find a definition for virtue, and in the Euthyphro for piety. Though these are distinct concepts, they seem, to me, to be somewhat related–if, in some sense, piety is to act rightly, and virtue guides right action, then their definitions may be similarly entangled. Of course, it does not help that definition is exactly what’s being discussed, and worse still that I am reading these works in translation–truly, it is likely to be impossible for me to fully grasp the issue, since I do not understand Greek, and so cannot really understand exactly what was being discussed. Still, it will be helpful to know, at least generally, what the Greeks understood these words to mean. So: the Meno is concerned with ἀρετή, arete, which means ‘goodness’ or ‘excellence’ or, indeed, ‘virtue’, and can also refer to specific virtues; the Euthyphro is concerned with what is ὅσιος, hosios, which means ‘pious’, ‘hallowed’, or ‘sanctioned by the gods’, and, according to Wiktionary, can refer to things which are ‘allowed by divine law but not sacred.’ Of course, Socrates will want much better and more precise definitions than these.

The Euthyphro opens with Socrates standing in the agora, before the king-archon’s court, where he is met by Euthyphro, who (as he will later explain) has come to lay charges of murder against his father. Euthyphro wonders at Socrates’s presence, and asks him whether he, too, is prosecuting someone. Socrates explains that, rather than prosecuting, he has been indicted on a charge of corrupting the youth–of impiety–by a young man called Meletus, who Socrates describes as having “long hair, not much of a beard, and a rather aquiline nose.” (Here, I admit: I did not know the word aquiline. It means “like an eagle”, and I found a helpful picture which demonstrates its meaning. Apparently, it is commonly used to describe noses.)

Euthyphro is shocked at Socrates’s predicament, and says that Meletus is “harming the very heart of the city by attempting to wrong [Socrates].” When Socrates asks what business Euthyphro is engaged in, he is shocked at his reply. He says that “most men would not know how they could do this and be right. It is not the part of anyone to do this, but of one who is far advanced in wisdom.” Euthyphro agrees, saying that he “should be of no use . . . and Euthyphro would not be superior to the majority of men, if [he] did not have accurate knowledge of [piety and impiety].”

Upon hearing this, Socrates is eager to have Euthyphro teach him what is the pious, and what the impious. Euthyphro’s first response is, like his earlier words, somewhat arrogant: he says that the pious is to act as he is now, and to do otherwise is impious. In support of this (that is, in support of it being pious for him to prosecute his father), he recalls that Zeus is known to have punished his own father, who was behaving unjustly, just as Euthyphro seeks to prosecute his father.

Socrates is unsatisfied with this, as we may expect. He tells Euthyphro that he “did not bid you tell [him] one or two of the many pious actions, but that form itself that makes all pious actions pious” so that he might “look upon it, and using it as a model, say that any action of yours or another’s that is of that kind is pious, and if it is not that it is not.” Euthyphro answers, then, that “what is dear to the gods is pious, what is not is impious.” Socrates thinks this is a splendid answer, if it is correct, and so seeks to find out whether it is true or false.

The gods are known, Socrates reminds Euthyphro, to make war and be at odds with one another. If Socrates and Euthyphro disagreed, he says, “about numbers as to which is the greater” this would not make them enemies, for they would simply count and resolve the issue. Nor would a disagreement about other such matters than can be readily resolved lead to discord. Rather, he says, the subjects on which a difference of opinion might make them angry and hostile would be “the just and the unjust, the beautiful and the ugly, the good and the bad.” And so, he says, and Euthyphro agrees, must it be with the gods.

But, if this is true, then it must be that “the same things are considered just by some gods and unjust by others” and so “the same things then are loved by the gods and hated by the gods”, and therefore “the same things would be both pious and impious.” Of course, this is impossible–they had agreed that the impious was the opposite of the pious, and so no thing could be both pious and impious. Socrates points out then that though Zeus might consider Euthyphro just in prosecuting his father, still Cronus and Uranus might think it unjust, that it may please Hephaestus but displease Hera, and so on. He lets this pass, though, in favor of asking Euthyphro whether he is satisfied with the correction he has proposed in response, that “what all the gods hate is impious, and what they all love is pious, and that what some gods love and others hate is neither or both.”

Euthyphro is prepared to accept this definition, but Socrates takes issue again, asking: “Is the pious being loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is being loved by the gods?” After being made to understand what Socrates is asking (through a rather opaque discussion, though it is possibly the fault of the translation), Euthyphro says that the pious is loved by the gods because it is pious, and not that a thing is pious because it is loved by the gods. ‘Pious’ and ‘god-loved’, then, Socrates says, are not the same. He is right, but his reasoning is enough to make your head spin.

At length, Socrates says that “where there is piety there is also justice, but where there is justice there is not always piety, for the pious is a part of justice,” and asks Euthyphro to tell him “what part of the just the pious is.” Euthyphro replies that “the godly and pious is the part of the justice that is concerned with the care of the gods, while that concerned with the care of men is the remaining part of justice.” Socrates presses this definition, asking whether Euthyphro means ‘care’ in the same sense that a horse breeder cares for horses. At first, Euthyphro says that he does, but retracts this when Socrates asks if he then agrees that “when you do something pious you make some one of the gods better.” He says, then, that he means the kind of care “that slaves take of their masters,” which Socrates says is “likely to be a kind of service to the gods.”

Socrates asks then, whether Euthyphro would say that piety “a knowledge of how to sacrifice and pray”, that is, “a knowledge of how to give to, and beg from, the gods.” Euthyphro agrees, and Socrates comments that “to beg correctly would be to ask from them things that we need” and “to give correctly is to give them what they need from us,” and summarizes that “piety would then be a sort of trading skill between gods and men.” When Socrates asks what gifts we could give the gods, Euthyphro says that we can give honor, reverence, and gratitude, and that the pious “is of all things most dear to them.”

Socrates calls out Euthyphro, here, for saying that the pious is what is dear to the gods, when they had already agreed that this could not be so. Therefore, either they were wrong before, or they are wrong now. Therefore, Socrates says, they must “investigate again from the beginning what piety is.” Euthyphro is unwilling, and claims that he must go, for he is in a hurry, upon hearing which Socrates mourns that he shall not “escape Meletus’ indictment by showing him that [he] had acquired wisdom in divine matters from Euthyphro.” And so ends the dialogue.

Well, I agree with Socrates’s objections to Euthyphro’s definitions, though as far as answering Socrates’s question myself, I can certainly do no better. I will note, though, that although Euthyphro declared that it was not being loved by the gods that made a thing pious, it is not logically inconsistent to say the opposite. In fact, the idea that morality is a product of religion (i.e. that moral actions are those demanded by some god or gods and immoral actions are those so proscribed) is known as the divine command theory of ethics, or theological voluntarism.

Though divine command theory is not logically inconsistent, it is, in my opinion, unsatisfactory. If we accept that theory, then an action’s moral status would change if Zeus changed his mind, and any action, however horrible, would be moral if commanded. Furthermore, it does not allow us to say that God is morally good, since that would merely mean that God acts as He chooses to act–a vacuous statement. If we would judge God’s goodness by other standards, such as whether his actions are benevolent or just, then we are back to the other side of the argument, that the morality of actions is not dependent on divine command. Altogether, an unsatisfactory situation.

The essential question of the Euthyphro is what is the basis of morality. This question has not been satisfactorily resolved by philosophers in the two millennia and change since Plato wrote the dialogue, so I think that Euthyphro may be forgiven for failing to provide an acceptable answer.

The Meno begins with Meno asking Socrates whether virtue can be taught, or otherwise how men come to possess it. Socrates replies that he does not know, nor even does he know what virtue is, and moreover he has never yet met anyone who did know. So begins the first part, in which Meno attempts to define, to Socrates’s satisfaction, what is virtue.

At first, Meno says that “a man’s virtue consists of being able to manage public affairs and in so doing to benefit his friends and harm his enemies and to be careful that no harm comes to himself.” Of a woman, he says that “she must manage the home well, preserve its possessions, and be submissive to her husband.” For the rest, he says that “the virtue of a child, whether male or female, is different again, and so is that of an elderly man, if you want that, or if you want that of a free man or a slave.”

Socrates is unsatisfied with Meno’s response, and says “I seem to be in great luck, Meno; while I am looking for one virtue, I have found you to have a whole swarm of them.” Socrates insists that Meno should give him a definition of virtue, rather than naming some collection of virtues. As an example, at Meno’s insistence, he gives definitions of shape and color, contrasting them with definitions of a shape or a color.

After a bit more discussion, Meno admits that he does not know what virtue is. He says that he has “made many speeches about virtue before large audiences on a thousand occasions, very good speeches as [he] thought, but now [he] cannot even say what it is.”

Here begins the second part, in which Socrates and Meno discuss knowledge, and how one may come to know a thing. Meno asks Socrates how he will look for a definition of virtue, if, since he claims not to know what it is, he will not be able to recognize it if he should find it. This is Meno’s paradox, but Socrates rejects it.

Socrates posits that “as the soul is immortal, has been born often and has seen all things here and in the underworld, there is nothing which it has not learned.” Because of this, Socrates says, men do not ever learn anything, but only ‘recollect’ that knowledge which their souls already possess. Meno is skeptical, so Socrates offers to demonstrate his claim, and asks Meno to call one of his slaves, that Socrates may talk with him.

Now Socrates asks the boy a series of questions regarding geometry, of which Meno avers the boy has never been taught. By the end of Socrates’s questioning, the boy has come to be able to tell how to construct a square with twice the area of a given square. Now Socrates asks Meno whether the boy has “in his answers, expressed any opinion that was not his own.” When Meno agrees that he has not, Socrates presses the issue, asking “So these opinions were in him, were they not?” Upon Meno’s further agreement, Socrates asks “then if the truth about reality is always in our soul, the soul would be immortal so that you should always confidently try to seek out and recollect what you do not know at present–that is, what you do not recollect?”, and Meno again agrees that Socrates is right.

Finally Socrates states his rejection of Meno’s paradox. He says: “I do not insist that my argument is right in all other respects, but I would contend at all costs both in word and deed a far as I could that we will be better men, braver and less idle, if we believe that one must search for the things one does not know, rather than if we believe that it is not possible to find out what we do not know and that we must not look for it.”

Having established that it is worthwhile to seek knowledge, Socrates moves on to inquiring whether virtue can be taught, as Meno originally asked him. Socrates says, at length, that if virtue is knowledge, then it can be taught, but then questions whether virtue is knowledge–using Meno’s question about the teachability of virtue as a cunning way to inquire into the nature of virtue, which he said he preferred to learn first, but which Meno wished to ignore.

Socrates says that if one wishes to learn a thing, he should go to one who knows it and charges a fee for teaching it, since it would be foolish to seek to learn from those who do not know a thing, and since no one would pay to be taught if the teachers could not improve their pupils. He goes on to say that if virtue were teachable, then virtuous men would certainly teach their sons to be virtuous. He then provides examples of virtuous men whose sons were not virtuous, taking this as proof that there were no teachers of virtue. And, he says, “if there are no teachers, neither are there pupils”, and “a subject that has neither teachers nor pupils is not teachable”, and so virtue cannot be taught.

After coming to this conclusion, Socrates distinguishes between knowledge and ‘true opinion’, saying that these two things, and these two alone, could give correct guidance. Since virtue cannot be taught, it is not knowledge, but must be true opinion. Socrates and Meno agree, then, that true opinion, like knowledge, does not come to men by nature but must be acquired. Since only knowledge can be taught, true opinions must be acquired in some other way. Therefore, Socrates claims, virtue “comes to those who possess it as a gift from the gods.”

I have some disagreement with Socrates. In particular, his theory that the soul is immortal and that all knowledge is merely ‘recollected’, rather than learned, is poorly supported by his demonstration with the slave. Even if we accept that the slave truly does come to know how to construct the square with twice the area of a given square, and is not merely saying what he believes Socrates wants to hear, Socrates’s argument is weak. Socrates argues as though his questions convey no information, but they are in fact highly leading. I contend that Socrates did not awaken knowledge in the slave by questioning him, but provided knowledge to the slave by his choice of questions. That is, the slave deduced the answers thus:

1. Socrates knows the answer to the problem he has set me.
2. Socrates’s questioning is purposeful.
3. Since (1) and (2), when Socrates presents me with something and asks whether it is true, it is likely to be true.
4. Socrates has constructed a square and asked whether it answers the problem set me.
5. Since (3) and (4), this square likely answers the problem set me.

So, although Socrates does not explicitly state “this is the answer to the problem,” by his questioning he reveals the answer to the problem. If we accept that it is possible to verify the truth of something without first knowing in advance of reaching the conclusion whether it is true, then we may even be able to eliminate ‘likely’ from this reasoning. Whether this is acceptable isn’t totally clear. For example, I would say that I do not, at this moment know what 17 multiplied by 29 equals. But, merely by considering, I can come to the conclusion that it equals 493, and so I now do know the answer to that question, though the knowledge has not been conveyed to me by any outside agent. If we believe that men can only come to know a thing if the knowledge is conveyed to them, then, as Socrates says, we must accept that I always knew the answer to that question, but merely did not then recall it. I am not satisfied with this characterization of knowledge.

Further, I take issue with Socrates’s claim that a man who knows a thing must be capable of teaching it, and that no one who does not know a thing could teach it. I think it is easy enough to accept that it is possible that merely knowing a thing does not necessarily imply the ability to teach that thing, so I will not defend my claim of that here. Rather, let me demonstrate that it is possible to teach a thing without knowing it.

Imagine, if you will, that a man who does not know Chinese is given a book filled with Chinese passages which describe leatherworking, a subject the man is unfamiliar with, and a set of instructions for which passages to read out in response to a student’s questions, though the questions are themselves in Chinese, so the man cannot even understand what he is being asked. If he follows the instructions he is given, and dutifully repeats the words he does not understand, he can teach the student leatherworking. This is, of course, a modification of the Chinese Room argument. One may insist, I suppose, that either the book, or better the author of the book or the instructions was truly responsible for teaching the student, and that Socrates’s argument still holds. Let us try another thought experiment, then.

A man is hired to investigate the contents of a chemical sample. He has, himself, no expertise with chemistry–he is merely given the tools to identify the contents of the sample, and asked to record his findings. When he has done this, he reports what he has found to men who do know about chemistry, but do not know the contents of the sample. When he has given his report, the chemists now know, from the contents of the sample he investigated, that the sample was created by combining two other chemicals. They did not know this before, and the man who taught them still does not know it.

In some ways, both of these examples require a somewhat uncomfortable definition of teaching. But if we do not accept, in the second case, that the man taught the chemists, then we must instead say that the knowledge was generated spontaneously–not, perhaps, so different from Socrates’s claim that virtue is granted by the gods. Even if, as Socrates says, my argument is not correct in every particular, I still contend that Socrates’s characterization of knowledge is not supported by his arguments.

It’s all well and good putting together a list, but at the rate I’ve been reading the entries on the list, I’ll certainly be food for worms long before I finish reading them all. So, to encourage myself to make better progress, I’ll be posting my thoughts here as I go along. I already keep a reading journal, which I feel is essential to getting the most out of reading. This will be a more public form of that.

What this all means is that this blog will contain my unrehearsed commentary on what I’m reading. Many of the items on my list are fairly serious reading–it begins with the dialogues of Plato, for example–so I expect I’ll publicly humiliate myself by misunderstanding what I’ve read on more than one occasion. Hopefully the desire to avoid that will prove incentive enough to prevent me making any unbearably foolish mistakes.