There is a story that I have heard told many times.

A very poor farmer lives in a small town on the outskirts of a large kingdom. One morning, the farmer awakens to find that a beautiful and wild stallion has wandered into his field. The farmer catches the stallion and puts it in his corral. The townspeople come to the farmer and say, “This is good, you have managed to catch a beautiful stallion.” The farmer replies, “I don't know if it is good, what I do know is that I now have a stallion.”

The next day, the king himself happens to be passing through the farmer's village. Upon seeing the stallion, the king feels he must own this beautiful animal. He sends his servant into the farmer's home to offer him a large amount of gold in exchange for the horse. But the farmer refuses to sell the animal at any price and the king rides away very angry. Seeing what has happened, the townspeople go to the farmer and say, “This is bad, you might have a beautiful horse, but you are still a poor farmer and the king is now angry with you as well.” The farmer replies, “I don't know if it is bad, what I do know is that the king is angry with me.”

That night while the farmer is sleeping, the stallion breaks free from his stall and vanishes into the surrounding forest.

Upon being asked what is pious, the character Euthyphro in Plato's Euthyphro eventually responds with “what is loved by the gods” (10d–11c). Socrates does not dispute this, but neither does he find it satisfying. Socrates questions Euthyphro further: is a thing pious because the gods love it, or do the gods love it because it is pious? Even today, this is appreciated as a compelling argument against the notion of divine decree. It can't be the case that what is good or morally right is so only because God has decided that it is so. For, how did God choose and decide which actions to love and condone? Did God choose arbitrarily? Did it just so happen that murder ended up on the list of things that are morally wrong, when it could have, by God's whim, been condoned as right? Even if we choose our actions because we think that God approves of them, the argument in the Euthyphro suggests that God's love does not make these actions right – God came to love them because they were, somehow, already, morally correct. If this is the case, then there is a moral truth that is independent of God. This conclusion has often (I think, incorrectly) led philosophers to suggest that there are abstract and universally applicable moral truths or principles that antedated human existence, and that should govern our conduct – if we can only figure out what they are.

While we need to understand Socrates' theory of desire in order to comprehend the view put forth in the Socratic dialogues, this is not sufficient in order to understand Socrates' claims concerning happiness, virtue, and knowledge. We also need to understand Socrates' theory of the good, the bad, and the neither-good-nor-bad. To put it simply, Socrates believed that the only good thing was happiness, the only bad thing was misery, and everything else was neither-good-nor-bad (NGNB). While this threefold classification falls out of the text in a relatively straightforward manner, it is difficult to figure out how virtue fits into it – nor is it immediately obvious how vice should be classified. We will take a careful look at how these elements fit into his schema in the next chapter.

In this chapter, through an analysis of what Socrates says about the good, the bad, and the NGNB, we will see that he provides no metric for evaluating any action or object other than its actual capacity to render its possessor either more or less happy. There is no principle, no “moral” notion of good, to which we must look, in order to decide what is the best action for us to perform in our current situation.

It is widely agreed that Socrates holds virtue to be identical to knowledge.

In recent Socratic scholarship, much debate has centered on two questions: first, did Socrates find virtue to be sufficient for happiness? And second, regardless of whether virtue is sufficient for happiness, is it necessary for happiness? In this chapter I will show that these questions are irrelevant to Socrates' mission. I will also connect the question of the necessity of virtue for happiness to the debate over whether virtue is a mere instrument for the procurement of happiness (which I discussed above, 116–17 and 128–32).

Debates over necessity and sufficiency are fueled by the assumption that we must attribute to Socrates a theory that post-Kantians would recognize as a moral one. The volatility of these debates is a symptom of the fact that it is difficult to find a post-Kantian notion of morality in Socrates' statements concerning virtue and happiness. The project of finding a moral view in the Socratic dialogues is complicated by the fact that Socrates evidently reduces the (now – intuitively – moral) notion of virtue to craft or scientific knowledge, and also by the fact that he sees the goal of human life as the maximization of individual happiness. Furthermore, as if this didn't make the project of uncovering some sort of moral underpinnings for Socratic ethics difficult enough, Socrates – at critical moments – even reduces happiness to pleasure!

No matter how we interpret the conclusion to Socrates' Meno argument, it implies that desiring something bad is tantamount to desiring to be harmed, which is desiring to be miserable and unhappy. This carries two further implications: first, harm is always harm to the self and benefit is always benefit to the self. Second, bad is simply this harm to the self and good is just this benefit to the self.

Socrates seems to neglect a whole category of examples when he equates bad with harm and good with benefit. What of a person who benefits from performing a bad action, where “bad” is here understood as something like “morally wrong?” Socrates' controversial conclusion to the Meno argument and its entailments call our attention to many passages throughout the Socratic dialogues that make it apparent that Socrates is an egoist.

In the Gorgias, we saw Socrates base an entire argument about who has power on the assumption that power – if it is a worthwhile commodity – is good for its possessor (33n.16). Later in the Gorgias, Socrates argues that justice benefits the self (474c4–d2, 475b3–d6), and that it is to be prized because it is better for the agent than the alternative (470e4–11).

In Chapters 4 and 9, we will see that, in the Protagoras, Socrates describes all deliberation concerning voluntary action as a cost/benefit analysis concerning which alternative will bring about the most pleasure for the agent over the long run.

In looking at the Euthydemus, Gorgias, Lysis, and Meno I have stated that Socrates' theory of the good, the bad, and the NGNB serves as the centerpiece for all his pronouncements on ethics. I now turn to the Charmides, for further evidence. Here, we see how this theory concerning the assignment of good and bad values operates as a touchstone for Socratic ethics, even in a dialogue that doesn't develop these ideas explicitly. We also see the profound ramifications that Socrates' commitment to this theory of valuation has for his views on ethics: it eliminates any distinction between virtue and scientific knowledge, as well as any distinction between science and morality.

In the Charmides, Socrates discusses the nature of sophrosune. This Greek term is most often translated as “temperance” in English, although it is also commonly agreed that “temperance” does not really capture the connotations that this word held in ancient Greek. Some other possible translations are “self-control,” “sobriety,” “discretion,” and “moderation.” However, all these indicate a mastery of bodily desires. In his discussions of sophrosune, Socrates seems to intend a reference that includes, but also goes beyond, such mastery. He speaks of a well-thought-out approach to all of life's decisions. Thus, “equanimity” might be the best English equivalent of this Greek word. Still, I will use the popular term “temperance” in my discussion.

As is common in the early dialogues, Socrates is less than forthright in stating his own views concerning the nature of temperance.

I was born with an appetite for metaphysics and action theory, but my taste for ethics has been slow to develop. I am uncomfortable (and often frustrated) with the initial steps taken in ethical theory. The foundations of ethical theory can be understood as forcing a choice between two horns of a dilemma: either we embrace relativism, or we acknowledge the existence of universal ethical principles. Both of these horns are problematic. The difficulties of ethical relativism have been understood at least since Plato's Euthyphro: ethical relativism does not allow us to ask why any particular culture or person exhibits a particular ethical practice. The only explanation that can be offered for why a practice has been adopted is that its practitioners believe it is correct. But relativism does not invite us to give a philosophical answer to the interesting and important questions about why any particular person or culture believes a particular practice is correct. On the other hand, if there are universal ethical principles, we are equally at a loss to explain why these principles exist and not others. We can no more say why these principles govern ethics than we can say why these laws of physics govern the physical world. In neither case can we uncover a reason to invest in a given set of moral principles or a particular ethical practice. Why are we supposed to adhere to a particular ethical system and entreat others to do so?

Informal discussions of human motivation typically start with several common assumptions that are generally considered uncontroversial: while we often want what is best for us and for others, there are also times when we want things that are bad for others and (or) for ourselves. In fact, our desires for bad things often compete with our desires for good things, and the former often overcome the latter. There are bad people – evil ones even. They are bad because their desire to do what's bad almost always wins out over their desire to do what's good. They seek to harm others as a way of benefiting themselves. The most dangerous are those who are very knowledgeable. Smart but evil people are far more effective in harming others than are the ignorant and foolish ones. Even if we focus on good people (people who want to be good and benefit themselves and others), we find that many of them allow their desires for the bad to overwhelm their desires for the good. Weakness of will is a major reason why even good people often do bad things. One of the major problems with the world is that most people usually think about themselves and what is good for them, personally, when they act. The world would be a better place if, rather than focusing on our own self-interest, we were to focus on what is good for others.

We now come to know Socrates' thoughts on the NGNB rather well. We have analyzed Socrates' description of it in the Gorgias and Euthydemus, we have seen how it informs his discussion of friendship in the Lysis, and we have noted its operation as a background assumption in the Charmides. We have also seen that it allows us to discern an appropriate Socratic connection between virtue and happiness. In this chapter, we will look at yet another dialogue in which Socrates' views on the NGNB loom large, despite the fact that there is no direct mention of it. We will see that Socrates' assertions in the Protagoras, that pleasure is what is good and pain is what is bad, also get their stark and elegant structure from his thesis concerning the good, the bad, and the NGNB. Once we recognize that Socrates' discussion of pain and pleasure in the Protagoras contains both the structure and the substance of his views on the NGNB, we will begin to at least approach an answer to the question of what Socrates thought happiness was.

PAIN AND PLEASURE IN THE PROTAGORAS

We have already discussed Protagoras 351b–358e as our source for Socrates' rejection of synchronic belief akrasia and knowledge akrasia (77–81).

Arts to Be Separated from Statesmanship

The final definition begins (287B) with the Stranger's observation that the art of the king (or statesman) has been separated from many others of similar sort, in particular from other arts concerned with herds. This was accomplished in the course of the initial definition. Directly parallel is the separation of weaving from other arts of prevention, accomplished by the initial definition of the weaver's art (see Figure 5.1 and Table 5.2).

But there are still countless (μυρίοι: 279A3) people who challenge the king in his role of caring for cities (περὶ τὰς πόλεις ἐπιμελείας: 279A2). These others must be separated off as well. It was for this purpose expressly (279A) that the paradigm of weaving was introduced.

By the time the final definition has been completed, statesmanship has been distinguished from four classes of skills that also pertain to the care of cities. For reasons that at first appear unclear, the Stranger is careful to enumerate the membership of each class in specific sequence. Let us begin our examination of this final definition with a consideration of the lists of skills (corresponding to those of Table 5.2) to be separated from the art of statesmanship.

The first group of skills to be set aside fall under the general class of contributory causes (τῶν … συναιτίων: 287B6–7), in contrast to that of direct causes to which the statesman belongs.

Platonic Uses of the Term παράδειγμα

Use of παράδειγμα in the standard sense of example can be found throughout the corpus. In the Apology, Socrates suggests that the oracle's pronouncement about none surpassing him in wisdom is a matter of singling him out as an example (παράδειγμα: 23B1) to illustrate the wisdom of recognizing one's own ignorance. In the Phaedrus, he cites his speeches on love as providing an example (παράδειγμα: 262D1) of how a knowledgeable orator can mislead his audience; in the Philebus, he alludes to examples (παραδείγματα: 13C8) of pleasures being at odds with one another; and so forth.

While there is nothing idiosyncratic about Plato's use of παράδειγμα in the sense of example, there is another use of the term in several middle and late dialogues that is distinctly Platonic. For example, Socrates declares in the Republic that the philosophic rulers shall look upon the Form of the Good as a pattern (παραδείγματι: 540A9) for the right ordering of the state. At Theaetetus 176E3, he speaks of patterns (Παραδειγμάτων) of happiness and misery as making a stand in reality. Timaeus, in his namesake dialogue, identifies “patterns that are intelligible and always the same” (παραδείγματος … νοητὸν καὶ ἀεὶ κατὰ ταῦτὰ ὄν: 48E5–6). And the youthful Socrates, at Parmenides 132D1–2, expresses confidence in Forms as patterns (παραδείγματα) fixed in nature. As each passage makes clear in its own way, the term παραδείγματα in this second sense serves as an alternative designation for Forms or Ideas.