Socratic Justice

Abstract

OR centuries sociologists have drawn inspiration from Plato's Republic. Of the two minds represented in the work-Plato's, and that of his teacher, Socrates-it is the tutor's which makes the more fundamental and penetrating contribution to social science. It is popularly conceived that Socrates, like the enfant terrible, had a habit of asking awkward questions, and is to be patronized as an early seeker after truth, but that Plato was the man with the constructive ideas. Grote, in his great work, Plato and the Other Companions of Socrates, brings his superb scholarship to the task of proving that, in general, Socrates did not enlighten, but merely puzzled, and that even if he had a consistent ethical doctine it was never stated. It is true, indeed, that Socrates is unable to draw the dialogue of the Lysis to a satisfactory conclusion through failing to see the ambiguity in his loose use of the terms "because of" and "for the sake of,"' but where is the philosopher who is immune from occasional logical error? In his masterly volume on Plato,2 Professor A. E. Taylor, referring to the Lysis and the Parmenides, writes, "In neither case need we suppose that Plato's real intention is to leave us merely befogged." This can readily be granted, but the plain fact would seem to be, in the instance of the Lysis at least, that Socrates, whose name should be read in preference to Plato's, was himself befogged-by his own terminology; and Professor Taylor's ingenious though somewhat labored attempt to bring order out