draft of 10-11-04
PHIL 100: Socrates and Plato
Fall 2004; David O. Brink
Handout #4: Virtue and Happiness in the Socratic Dialogues

A central issue in Socratic ethics is how to reconcile the eudaimonist assumption that virtues must benefit their possessor with recognition of familiar other-regarding virtues, such as justice, inasmuch as other-regarding demands sometimes seem to require the agent to sacrifice his own interests for the sake of others.  These issues are not discussed systematically in any one (clearly) Socratic dialogue.  Plato does not addresses this worry about the eudaimonist defense of justice until the Gorgias and the Republic.  But we can bring together different ideas from the Socratic dialogues that bear on this issue.

(A) Socrates makes the eudaimonist assumption that the virtues must be admirable and beneficial (La 192c; Ch 159bd, 160b de, 175e).

(B) In the Euthydemus Socrates claims that we all aim at happiness (279a, 282a).

(C) The benefits in (A) and the happiness in (B) are the agent's (La 181ce, 192d,; Ch 169b, 173e) (cf. Ap 28b, 29b, 30bd, 35bc, 36c, 41de; Ch 171e 172a, 176; Cri 54b).  In the Apology Socrates claims that his practical deliberations ought to be guided only by considerations about the justice or injustice of a course of conduct (28b), and he believes that a good or virtuous person cannot be harmed (41d).  In the Crito Socrates believes that his practical deliberations about whether to escape should be guided only by whether that would be a just course of action (48c-d), because he thinks a good life just is the life of justice (48b).  In both the Laches and Charmides the investigations begin with the assumption that the virtues in question would improve and benefit young men if they were to acquire them.  And at the end of the Charmides Socrates assumes that if one had reason to be temperate it must be because temperance promotes the happiness of the person who has it (175d-176a).

(D) There is an underlying problem reconciling eudaimonism with other-regarding virtue, such as justice.

  1. Justice is a virtue.
  2. Virtues benefit their possessor.
  3. Conventional justice often requires the agent to benefit others at her own expense.
  4. Conventional justice = justice.
(2) expresses the eudaimonist assumption on which Socrates and his interlocutors all agree.  In the Gorgias Callicles appeals to (1)-(3) to deny (4).  In the Republic Thrasymachus appeals to (2)-(4) to deny (1).  By contrast, Socrates and Plato are committed to (1), (2), and (4).  They deny (3), insisting that properly understood the other-regarding demands contribute to the agent's own good.

(E) There seem to be four possible strategies for reconciling eudaimonism with virtues, such as justice.

  1. Revise the ordinary list of virtues (in particular, drop the other-regarding ones).
  2. Revise ordinary views about the virtues on the list (e.g. reconstrue justice so that it contains few, if any, other-regarding demands).
  3. Revise ordinary assumptions about the best or most reliable means to happiness.
  4. Revise ordinary assumptions about the nature of happiness.
Thrasymachus opts for (1); Callicles opts for (2); Socrates must opt for (3) or (4).

(F) (i) Socrates pursues option (3) if he treats virtue as having only instrumental value.  Irwin appeals to the Lysis for principles that would commit Socrates to assigning instrumental value to virtue (Plato's Ethics, sections 46-51).

The Lysis argues that our actions and desires are always directed at a final good.

  1. Many things are desired for the sake of something else.
  2. Not everything can be desired for the sake of something else.
  3. Hence, there must be some thing(s) desired not for the sake of something else, but for its (their) own sake(s).
It's clear from the Euthydemus that Socrates regards happiness (eudaimonia) as one such final good (279a, 282a).  The eudaimonist assumption appears to make happiness the only final good.  But the Lysis also claims that insofar as one thing is desired or chosen for the sake of a final good that is different that first good is not valuable itself, but only instrumentally valuable (219c-220b).  Irwin sees here an argument committing Socrates to assigning only instrumental value to virtue.
  1. Insofar as x is chosen for the sake of some other thing y, then x is only instrumentally valuable.
  2. Virtue is chosen for the sake of happiness (eudaimonism).
  3. Hence, virtue is only instrumentally valuable.
Plato and Aristotle, who are also eudaimonists, can and will avoid this instrumentalist conclusion by denying the major premise.  They will claim that x can be chosen for the sake of something else y without x being only instrumentally valuable.  But Socrates accepts the major premise.  Does that mean that he is committed to instrumentalism?

Socrates can avoid this instrumentalist conclusion while accepting these premises if he denies that virtue is distinct from happiness.  He seems to identify justice and happiness in the Crito, and the identity of virtues and happiness might be the best explanation of his belief that virtue is both necessary and sufficient for happiness (Ap 28b, 29b-30b, 30d, 32bc, 36c, 41de; Cri 48cd, 49b).

(ii) Another potential source of evidence for instrumentalism comes from Socrates's craft analogy.  Socrates seems to assume that crafts have products or goals that are distinct from crafts skills that reliably produce these products or goals (La 185b-e, Ch 165-175d).  On this view, it would seem that virtue must aim at something distinct from itself -- presumably, happiness -- and that virtue is to be valued as a reliable means for producing happiness.  In the Charmides Critias does challenge the assumption that all crafts have a distinct product at which they aim (165e-166a).  However, Socrates replies that even if some crafts (e.g. geometry) do not produce artifacts, they nonetheless all have subject matters and aims that are distinct from the craft activities themselves (166a4-8).  But even if all crafts require distinct subject matters and aims, we may wonder whether craft skills need be only instrumentally related to securing these ends.  Perhaps carpentry skills are causally responsible for producing good houses or furniture.  But is the playing of musical instruments in the right way only causally related to good orchestral performance?  Here, one is tempted to say the skills in question make a constitutive, and not merely causal, contribution to the product or aim.  This is a possible interpretation of the craft analogy, but I am not sure that it is Socrates's.  So, whereas it might be possible to accept the craft analogy without any commitment to instrumentalism about the value of virtue, I am not sure that Socrates understood the implications of the craft analogy this way.

This means that there is suggestive but inconclusive evidence for instrumentalism.  The Lysis principle does not require instrumentalism if Socrates identifies virtue and happiness.  Though the craft analogy, as such, does not require instrumentalism, Socrates may have understood it in a way that does.

(G) But instrumentalism is hard to square with Socrates's belief that virtue is necessary and sufficient for happiness (Ap 29b-30b, 30d, 36c, 41c-e).  Indeed, Socrates appears to identify happiness and justice in the Crito (48cd).  Insofar as he accepts the unity of the virtues (La 199e, Pr 358d-), this gives him reason to identify happiness not just with justice but with virtue as such.  These claims give Socrates reason to re-examine our assumptions about happiness (and pursue F4, rather than F3).

He undertakes this sort of project at Euthydemus 279a-281e.  He begins by noting that most people would recognize a variety of goods -- various external goods (e.g. health, beauty, strength, noble birth, power, honor); virtues such as justice, temperance, and courage; good fortune; and wisdom (279a-d).  This four-part list is a little odd, inasmuch as externals seem to be or include goods of fortune, and wisdom is a virtue or perhaps, for Socrates, the ultimate virtue, under which other virtues can be subsumed.  Perhaps this is why the discussion goes on to focus on the comparative merits of wisdom and good fortune (279d-282a).  Sometimes Socrates argues for the conclusion that wisdom is the greatest good, but for the most part he wants to defend the even stronger claim that wisdom alone is valuable.

At one point, Socrates argues that because externals are neutral or harmful without wisdom, externals themselves are neither good nor bad (281d-e).   Is Socrates entitled to conclude that externals have no value per se or that one should care only about wisdom?  Consider three possible lives.

  1. The life of externals without wisdom.
  2. The life of wisdom without externals.
  3. The life of wisdom and externals.
We can agree with Socrates that (2) is better than (1).  But this comparative claim does not require that we assign no value to externals.  And even if we did deny value to externals, as such, we could still maintain that (3) is better than (2).  But then Socrates is at most entitled to the claim that wisdom, as such, is better than externals, as such.  He has not shown that externals have no value or that we should care only about wisdom.  But then it's hard to see why we should agree with Socrates that the wise person cannot be harmed.  He needn't claim this in order to claim that one is always better-off preferring wisdom to externals.

Socrates also argues that good fortune is not something additional to wisdom.

This is an especially implausible argument for sufficiency as applied to other-regarding virtues, such as justice.  As Glaucon and Adeimantus will argue in Republic ii, even if justice is usually (on-balance) beneficial, it appears not to be infallibly beneficial.  In some circumstances, it looks like I would gain most by committing undetected acts of injustice.  Indeed, the argument isn't even compelling for wisdom when understood in more self-regarding terms as prudence (288d8-e2).  First, normal circumstances presumably include some degree of good fortune.  Presumably, normal circumstances include my being healthy, which is already a matter of good luck.  Second, wisdom may not infallibly produce the right results.  External forces may disrupt the normal processes, as when an unexpected natural disaster prevents me from getting to my coronation/wedding/LSAT on time.  And, third, successful production of goods may not be sufficient to a secure a complete good.  Bad luck may intervene subsequently to deprive you of goods reliably produced, as when a drought destroys all one's efforts to improve the lives of peasant farmers or a terrorist attack kills one's loved ones.  But this also suggests that Socrates has no plausible argument for claiming that good fortune has no independent value, which could in principle conflict with wisdom or other virtues.  Indeed, nothing in this argument seems to establish even the weaker thesis that wisdom plays a greater role in happiness than good fortune.

The Socratic dialogues contain intriguing but apparently inadequate ideas about the relation between virtue and happiness.  There is a prima facie difficulty reconciling the eudaimonist assumption with the recognition of familiar other-regarding virtues.  If Socrates is to avoid highly revisionary claims about the virtues, he must either argue that other-regarding virtue is a reliable instrumental means to the agent's own happiness or identify happiness with virtue.  Though there is some evidence that Socrates may have been attracted to instrumentalism, the instrumental justification of virtue is hard to square with the Socratic claims that virtue is necessary and sufficient for happiness.  While the identity of virtue and happiness would explain these claims, the arguments for this thesis in the Euthydemus are not compelling.  To see these issues addressed squarely, we have to wait for the Gorgias and the Republic.