The Republic: Protagoras, Gorgias, and Meno

The Republic: Protagoras, Gorgias, and Meno

One vigorous line of thought in contemporary moral philosophy, which I shall call ‘Neo-Aristotelianism,’ centers on three things: (1) a rejection of traditional enlightenment moral theories like Kantianism and utilitarianism; (2) a claim that another look at the ethical concerns and projects of ancient Greek thought might help us past the impasse into which enlightenment moral theories have left us; (3) more particularly, an attempt to reinterpret Aristotle’s ethical work for the late twentieth-century so as to transcend this impasse.

The "Neo-Aristotelian" Rejection of Plato

Neo-Aristotelians like Martha Nussbaum(1) and Alasdair MacIntyre,(2) in spite of their many differences,(3) are therefore united not only in their positive turn to Aristotle but also in their rejection of Plato and Plato’s Socrates.(4) And yet some features of these rejections invite further reflection. Nussbaum, for example, consistently recognizes that the Socratic-Platonic project requires us to remake ourselves: "In short, I claim that [in the Protagoras] Socrates offers us, in the guise of empirical description, a radical proposal for the transformation of our lives." (FG 117, LK 112) But to what extent has she done justice to the particular kind of remaking Plato has Socrates offer us? More pointedly, does she acknowledge the extent to which Socrates aims at focussing his interlocutors on a process of questioning, rather than simply handing doctrine over to them?(5) Or has her Socrates been flattened out, his dialogical style rendered monological, so as to support her overall thesis more easily?(6) As for MacIntyre, does he see clearly enough the parallel between his own work and Plato’s when he says that in his earlier dialogues "Plato is pointing to a general state of incoherence in the use of evaluative language in Athenian culture" (AV 131)? Mutatis mutandis, isn’t this precisely what the opening chapters of After Virtue attempt to show? And to what extent must MacIntyre’s "quest for the good" in his crucial chapter "The Virtues, the Unity of a Human Life and the Concept of a Tradition" be committed to a Platonic, rather than Aristotelian, notion of the good? When he says "now it is important to emphasize that it is the systematic asking of these two questions ["What is the good for me?" and "What is the good for man?"] and the attempt to answer them in deed as well as in word which provide the moral life with its unity" (AV 219, emphasis added), isn’t it Plato’s Socrates who serves as the ultimate source of inspiration here?