For an exhaustive study of what we know on independent grounds about the characters who appear in Plato's dialogues, I would recommend Debra Nails' The People of Plato . In many cases, we have independent evidence that the positions that are held by the characters in Plato's dialogues corresponds to views held by the historical figures with the same names. At the same time, though, it is simply not clear how faithful Plato was to the details of their positions. For this reason, when speaking of the position that is articulated by the character Callicles in Plato's Republic , it is best to attribute the view not to the historical Callicles, not to Plato (since, such an attribution would suggest that Plato endorses this argument), but to the character Callicles in Plato's Republic .

The history of philosophy is studied in philosophy departments forthe purpose of understanding whether a particular philosophical claimis true. To this end, historians of philosophy examine the particulararguments that have been offered for views held in the past, becausearguments, if they are good ones, will imply that their conclusions aretrue. This enterprise is different from the discipline often known as“the history of ideas,” because such a history need not focus on andexamine arguments that people provided for their views. Instead, thehistory of ideas often focuses on questions like— How did thisparticular idea help to legitimize the ruling class or patriarchy? Orhow was this sort of idea attractive to a person who suffered physicalabuse at a young age? Or how did Athenian Imperialism lead to anexposure to Egyptian ideas? These questions are interesting to help toexplain why certain people came to hold particular views, but answersto these questions do not take us much closer to understanding...

Socrates makes this remark in the Gorgias in a context in which he’s arguing against Polus’ conception of the good life– that is, the life that is good for the person who is living it. He is not arguing for the greater importance of moral value over prudential value (or what Sally calls individual well-being); he is arguing that a person who cares solely about his own individual well-being, as Polus does, should be concerned never to do injustice. This is not because he should worry about getting caught, or about the possibility of someone taking revenge on his unjust actions, but solely because being an unjust person, in itself, is a bad state to be in-- that is, bad for the person who is unjust. In fact, Socrates believes that being a virtuous person is of overriding prudential value. No other thing comes close to virtue in prudential value, and so, whenever one is faced with the choice between being virtuous and not being virtuous– no matter what benefits might result from one’s vicious actions-...

I wonder whether there isn’t a bit more to your worry that there issomething immoral involved if you were to visit your mother despite thefact that you really didn’t want to or if you were to give free Frenchlessons to an acquaintance whose company you didn’t enjoy. To explore this idea, I’d like to step back and focus on a presupposition behind your question– namely, that you do have a moral duty to your unpleasant acquaintance to talk French to himfor an hour each week and that you do have a moral duty to visit yourmother despite your disinclination to do so. Do you really have theseduties? Surely you don’t have a general duty to speak French for anhour a week to just anyone who asks for the favor, and surely you don’thave a duty to visit for the holidays just anyone who wants you to. Sowhy should an acquaintance or your mother have any special claims onyour time, company, and conversation? Let’s begin with yourmother. Like most mothers, I’ll assume, she’s done a lot for you. Sheprovided...

Just to set the record straight. Some such claim is often attributed to Socrates on the basis of his remarks in Plato’s Apology (21a-e), but the claim that he actually makes is much less paradoxical. Socrates reports that his friend Chaerephon went to the oracle at Delphi to ask if any person was wiser than Socrates. The oracle apparently answered, no. After having cross-examined lots of people who had a reputation for wisdom and having discovered as a result that their reputation was undeserved, Socrates drew the following conclusion about the significance of the oracle’s answer: “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 when I do not know” ( Ap . 21d-e).

Peter is right. Many have taken the Socrates of Plato’s early dialogues to be a skeptic at least with regard to knowledge of the most worthwhile things. My own view is that, at least as he’s represented in the Platonic dialogues, Socrates is not a skeptic. He did not believe that it was impossible to acquire such knowledge. In fact, he devotes his life to acquiring such knowledge. He simply believed that it was very difficult to acquire such knowledge and that no one that he had yet met had done so. How, then, might he respond to Alex’s worries that his position is paradoxical? He would first have to explain that he could be wiser than someone else without being in a cognitive state that would qualify as knowledge. He would then have to explain that when he speaks of knowledge of worthwhile things, he primarily has in mind knowledge of what things are most worthwhile, that is, what things are the most worthy goals to which we should devote our lives ( Ap . 29d-30b). On Socrates’ view,...

By “Socrates,” I’ll assume that you are referring to the characterSocrates found in Plato’s early, so-called Socratic dialogues, acharacter who many (though not all) ancient scholars believe accurately represents theviews of the historical figure Socrates. It’s easy to bepuzzled by Socrates’ attitude toward moral facts. He’s famous forexposing his fellow Athenians’ lack of moral knowledge and forproclaiming that he has no moral knowledge of his own. One possibleexplanation of everyone’s moral ignorance is that there are no moralfacts to be known. However, it seems to me that this cannot beSocrates’ explanation, since Socrates justifies many of his own actionsby appeal to moral considerations. Consider, for example, the followingstatements: “Then I showed again, not in words butin action, that, if it were not rather vulgar to say so, death issomething I couldn’t care less about, but that my whole concern is notto do anything unjust or impious. That government, strong as it was,did...

In Plato’s Cratylus , the character Socrates makes thefollowing comment about Heraclitus: “Heraclitus is supposed to say thatall things are in motion and nothing at rest; he compares them to thestream of a river, and says that you cannot go into the same rivertwice" (402a). Ever since Plato, the view that we can’t step twice intothe same river has been attributed to Heraclitus. However,let’s consider the following two fragments about rivers that manyancient scholars regard as Heraclitus’ own words (in translation): "On those who enter the same rivers, ever different waters flow– and souls are exhaled from the moist things" [B 12]. "We step and do not step into the same rivers, we are and we are not" [B 49a]. Inthe first fragment, Heraclitus suggests that we do step into the samerivers, even though the water in these rivers changes. The secondfragment raises interpretative problems of its own, but here tooHeraclitus speaks of the same rivers. So how can we choosebetween...