Socrates on self-improvement : knowledge, virtue, and happiness / Nicholas D. Smith, Lewis & Clark College.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Smith, Nicholas D., 1949- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Socrates.

Plato.

Ethics.

Self-actualization (Psychology).

Knowledge, Theory of.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xix, 182 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York, NY, USA : Cambridge University Press, 2021.

Summary:

What model of knowledge does Plato's Socrates use? In this book, Nicholas D. Smith argues that it is akin to knowledge of a craft which is acquired by degrees, rather than straightforward knowledge of facts. He contends that a failure to recognize and identify this model, and attempts to ground ethical success in contemporary accounts of propositional or informational knowledge, have led to distortions of Socrates' philosophical mission to improve himself and others in the domain of practical ethics. He shows that the model of craft-knowledge makes sense of a number of issues scholars have struggled to understand, and makes a case for attributing to Socrates a very sophisticated and plausible view of the improvability of the human condition.

Contents:

Cover

Half-title page

Title page

Copyright page

Contents

Preface

P.1 The Origins of This Project

P.2 Intended Readership and Structure of the Book

P.3 Methodological Issues

P.4 Texts, Translations, Acknowledgments

Chapter 1 Socrates as Exemplar

1.1 An Inconsistency in Plato's Portrait?

1.2 Plato's Socratic Hagiography: A (Very) Brief Review of the Evidence

1.3 Socratic Virtue Intellectualism

1.4 The Socratic Disclaimer of Knowledge

1.5 A Way Out: It Is Not "All or Nothing"

1.6 Craft and Definitional Knowledge

1.7 The Relative Importance of Different Skills

1.8 Two Alternatives Considered

1.9 Summary and Conclusion

Chapter 2 Socrates as Apprentice at Virtue

2.1 Introduction

2.2 Is Socrates Not the First?

2.3 Only Socrates

2.4 Being an Artisan and Performing the Functions of a Craft

2.5 How Socrates Performs the Craft of Politics

2.6 Summary and Conclusion

Chapter 3 Socratic Motivational Intellectualism

3.1 Introduction

3.2 Socratic Pragmatism

3.3 Eudaimonism

3.4 Egoism?

3.5 Making Motivational Intellectualism Explicit

3.6 The Denial of Akrasia

3.7 Nonrational Desires

3.8 Emotions and Appetites

3.9 Persuasion

3.10 Punishment

3.11 The Gadfly's Sting

3.12 The Pain of Shame

3.13 The Damage That Is Done by Wrongdoing

Chapter 4 Socratic Ignorance

4.1 Introduction

4.2 Types of Ignorance

4.3 How to Tell That Someone Is Ignorant

4.4 The Sources of Ignorance

4.5 The Socratic Elenchos

4.6 Elenchos and the Rational Remediation of Ignorance

4.7 Definitional Knowledge and the Improvability of Epistemic Success

4.8 Elenchos and the Nonrational Sources of Ignorance

4.9 Deliberation in Ignorance

4.10 Rational Preference

4.11 The Threat of Skepticism (and Practical Paralysis).

4.12 Reining in the Problem of Ignorance

4.13 An Important Text

4.14 What Socrates Believes

4.15 Socrates' Reasons

4.16 The Lesson of Plato's Euthyphro

4.17 Summary and Conclusion

Chapter 5 Is Virtue Sufficient for Happiness?

5.1 Prologue

5.2 Did Socrates Accept That Virtue Was Sufficient for Happiness?

5.3 Doing Well in the Euthydemus

5.4 The Luck Factor

5.5 Achieving Virtue

5.6 The Stoic Socrates

5.7 Human Vulnerability

5.8 Moral Harm

5.9 Summary and Conclusion

Chapter 6 The Necessity of Virtue for Happiness

6.1 Introduction: Are We All Better Off Dead?

6.2 Death Is One of Two Things

6.3 The Euthydemus Again

6.4 Improvable Knowledge and Virtue Again

6.5 Virtue and Happiness in Other Dialogues

6.6 Just How Skillful Is Skillful Enough?

6.7 Degrees of Demandingness in Skills

6.8 The Teachability of Skills

6.9 Revisiting the Demandingness of Skills

6.10 Contextualizing the Demandingness of Skills

6.11 Returning to Virtue

6.12 Becoming and Being Positively Happy

6.13 Ashes to Ashes ...

6.14 Summary and Conclusion

Afterword: Review and Assessment

A.1 Charity in Interpretation

A.2 Socrates' Motivational Intellectualism

A.3 The Craft Model

A.4 Socrates on the Connections Between Virtue and Happiness

A.5 The Improvability of Knowledge, Virtue, and Happiness

References

Index of Passages

General Index.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 11 Jun 2021).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-009-02752-2

1-009-02771-9

1-009-02595-3

OCLC:

1246677327