Stoic views on the emotions represent a pivotal transition between the Aristotelian and Kantian accounts of virtue. Of course, Stoic views are complex and by no means embody an homogenous doctrine. There are significant differences articulated in the early Stoa, as well as between it and its later, Roman manifestation. The later Stoics are often criticized for lacking the theoretical rigor and philosophical interest of the earlier Stoa. I, myself, am not particularly sympathetic to this criticism. True, the later Stoics often present their philosophical views in a homey way with an eye to therapy, but their concern to see ethical inquiry as a practical subject matter puts them squarely in the Socratic tradition. In this vein, they follow closely the example of Socrates, who demanded of his interlocutors that they submit for crossexamination not merely entertained beliefs, but those that they sincerely lived by. In extending the project of moral therapy, the later Stoics make an invaluable contribution to ethical inquiry.

Before discussing this contribution, it will be helpful to sketch very schematically the relevant lines of the Stoic transition. For our purposes, what is most important is the Stoic objection to Aristotle's account of the passions and their role in his account of virtue. By isolating reason as the exclusive ground of morality, the Stoics pave the way for Kant's rational grounding of morality. Moreover, their account of nonmoral goods (the so-called preferred indifferents) and the relation of these to the moral good foreshadows Kant's own distinction between the nonmoral and the moral.

OPENING A DIALOGUE ON THE EMOTIONS

In this chapter I, set the stage for a dialogue between Aristotle and Kant on the subject of the emotions and their place in morality. On a traditional reading of both authors, the contrast is drawn along the following lines: On an Aristotelian account, virtue is expressed not merely in fine action but in fine emotions as well; both action and emotion are morally praiseworthy aspects of character. Kantian theory, in contrast, locates moral merit narrowly in dutymotivated action, with emotions or feelings often viewed as detracting from, or at least not adding to, what is morally meritorious. I adhere to the general lines of this Aristotelian sketch, while breaking from the Kantian one. In place of the traditional Kantian account, I argue for the importance of a composite conception of virtue which includes cultivated emotions that support moral interest. This interpretation pays heed to the grounding of morality in practical reason, and to the interface of practical reason with our affective natures. That is, I take seriously the Kantian moral project as a project both in the metaphysics of morality and in moral anthropology – in the grounding of morality and in the application of morality to the specific conditions of human nature, including our emotional natures. We shall come to this in Chapter 4. For now, the focus will be principally on Aristotelian virtue.

The last chapter discussed the notion of Aristotelian particularism, so called because of Aristotle's clear emphasis on moral judgment as a matter of assessing the particulars of a situation. Particularist theories, such as Aristotle's, have often been labeled intuitionistic, the tag bearing the implicit charge that focus on the particulars is incompatible with appeal to more general grounds or rules through which one's deliberation can be checked, and that such focus is characterized by an immediacy of discernment that bypasses discursive capacities. In the last chapter I countered both these charges.

First, despite Aristotle's own caution about reliance on rules, they nonetheless play a limited role in his theory, as summary guides that inform perception as well as heuristics and exhortatives useful for the practice of morality. What they are not, however, is either comprehensive or determinately guiding. As such, Aristotelian rules do not take the form of universal generalizations from which particular directives deductively follow. Rather, to the extent to which norms implicit in the virtues can be expressed by rules, those rules are qualified by the locution “for the most part” (hōs epi to polu). They hold generally and characteristically, but with no presumption that they will obtain across all conceivable cases. Even so, Aristotle more typically thinks of norms embodied in commitments to ends – “to be temperate,” “to be courageous” – with latitude as to the circumstances of fulfillment.

SOME BACKGROUND

In preceding chapters we have begun to consider Kant's position on the emotions and their place in his conception of morality. We have warned repeatedly that Kant's familiar castigation of the emotions is part of a more complex story he has to tell, which it is now time to explore.

Kant's position on the emotions is no simple matter. But in many ways it can be understood through the lens of the Enlightenment. Like many members of what Peter Gay has called the international family of philosophes, Kant was an appreciative and well-educated reader of antiquity, and in particular of the Latin Stoics. There is a clear dialectical engagement with the Stoics in his writing, and many of his more familiar views about the emotions echo that identification. What is emphasized in these views is a self-governance by reason that would be undermined by undue reliance on emotion. Under Stoic tutelage, he often tags the emotions as maladies in need of spiritual healing. And like the good doctor so familiar in Stoic philosophy, Kant outlines a nosology of different manias with recommendations for their cures. Again, following Stoic tradition, a therapy that emphasizes the authority of reason is crucial for reform. However, Kant typically stands in two worlds, with one eye toward antiquity and another toward the nearer horizon. What is closer at hand is the view that emotions can be a salutary part of our nature; they are an inescapable part of our psychology that can be linked to taste and aesthetics, and to our humanity as well as our happiness.

This book began life in my final two years at Yale, and then grew to completion during the past six years at Georgetown. Its conception, however, was even earlier, for as I wrote the Fabric of Character, Kant's voice insistently pressed for inclusion in the discussion. It took many years to shape the conversation Kant would come to have with Aristotle. The themes I have settled on are those that I think are central to the debate, though by no means exhaustive. As readers will see, the debate is a reconstructed one. Careful attention is paid to the details of texts, but with an eye toward creating a shared discourse rather than a mapping of actual lines of transmission and debt. The felt need to bring Aristotle and Kant together in conversation has, of course, not been mine alone. With the flourishing of studies in the history of moral philosophy, others too have found points of intersection and contrast, which were often obscured in earlier, overly neat categorizations. I have profited from this general resurgence in history of philosophy studies as well as from the shifting interest in normative ethics toward taking a more serious look at texts and the complex stories they have to tell. In ancient ethics, I have learned enormously from the recent work of Julia Annas and Martha Nussbaum, and in Kantian studies, from Barbara Herman and Onora O'Neill's pioneering work.

THE THRESHOLD DIALOGUES

On basic issues of moral philosophy Plato remains faithful to the position presented in the Gorgias. In particular, it remains his view that the goal of rational politics is the same as the goal of moral education: to produce virtue in human souls. That will require a technikos, an expert on aretē. But the technikos of the Gorgias is not yet the philosopher-king. For that we will need the psychology, epistemology, and metaphysics of the Republic. So there is room for a large development of Plato's thought between the Gorgias and the middle dialogues: Symposium, Phaedo, and Republic.

It is in this intervening space that I would locate the seven threshold dialogues: Laches, Charmides, Euthyphro, Protagoras, Meno, Lysis, and Euthydemus. These dialogues present and elaborate themes that come together in the central books of the Republic, where technē becomes dialektikē, the master art of the philosopherking. Now for Plato a technē is defined by reference to its object or subject matter. The object of dialektikē will be the forms or essences of things. So the most decisive step in Plato's gradual articulation of the technē of the philosopher-king will be his introduction of the notion of essence in the dialogues of definition. I suggest that the search for essence in the Laches, Euthyphro, and Meno is from the start future-oriented, that is to say, designed to prepare the way for the doctrine of Forms. But Plato's mode of exposition is so subtly ingressive that this design can only be perceived retrospectively, from the vantage point of the middle dialogues.

The seven threshold dialogues form a diverse group.

THE PLAGE OF THE GORGIAS

With the Gorgias we encounter one of Plato's greatest works, as it is also one of his longest. (Of all the dialogues, only the Republic and the Laws are longer.) Nowhere are the philosophic and dramatic components in Plato's art more powerfully blended than in the confrontation here between Socrates and his three successive interlocutors. Plato has taken up the old Greek moral theme of the choice between two lives and transformed it into a philosophical debate on the principles of morality and the nature of the good life. And by bringing both Socrates and his adversaries so vividly to life, Plato has represented these issues with unforgettable intensity.

The Gorgias is also a foundational text for two areas of philosophy; it is the first major work both in ethics and in political theory. Some of the same issues are discussed in the Crito, where Socrates gives his reasons for not escaping from prison. So Plato may be said to have founded moral philosophy twice: once in the Crito and a second time in the Gorgias. Plato was of course anticipated here by Socrates, to an extent that we cannot determine. And the power of the Gorgias largely derives from the fact that Socrates in this dialogue represents both the historical individual and also Plato's philosophical reflection upon the meaning of Socrates' life and death.

The Crito exemplifies moral philosophy by demonstrating how one can bring reason to bear on an important practical decision. Socrates is depicted as someone who is always ready “to obey the argument (logos) which, upon reflection, seems to me the best” (46B).

INTRODUCTION: TWO EARLY DIALOGUES

We do not know how Plato's career as a writer began. But it is reasonable to suppose that the Apology came first, not long after the event of the trial, and perhaps before the new genre of “Socratic discourses” had taken on definite shape. Plato's first venture in this new form would probably then be the Crito, since this is a sort of sequel to the Apology. Like the Apology, the Crito is still closely connected to the final events in Socrates' life, and concerned to explain the meaning of his life and death to a larger reading public. With the Ion and Hippias Minor we encounter something new.

These two dialogues are, with the Crito, the shortest of all Plato's works, and they are likely also to be the earliest. For the Ion we have some evidence pointing to a date in the late 390s, before Plato had decided to abandon hopes of a political career and become a fulltime philosopher and writer. It seems natural to think of these brief pieces as the apprentice exercises of a master craftsman, practising his art on the small jar.

Formally speaking, the Ion and the Hippias Minor are quite similar to one another. Like the Crito, both are in simple mime form, without a prologue or narrative frame. In the Ion Socrates has a single interlocutor (as in the Crito); in the Hippias Minor he has two interlocutors, although one of them, Eudikos, speaks only very briefly. Both dialogues consist of two symmetrical sections in which Socrates questions his interlocutors, separated by an intermediate passage in which he develops positive views of his own.

ERŌS AND PHILIA

No philosopher has had more to say about love than Plato. From the literary point of view his interest in the subject – or shall we say his passion – was favored by the fact that erōs was independently established as a central theme in the tradition of Socratic literature. But in strictly philosophical terms the importance of this subject in Plato's thought is greater than is commonly realized. I shall argue that Plato's theory of erōs provides an essential link between his moral psychology and his metaphysical doctrine of Forms. So it is for good reason that Plato selects the discussion of erōs in the Symposium as the occasion for announcing to the world the new conception of reality represented by the Forms. From the point of view of ingressive exposition, we can see the Symposium as providing a transitional moment between the inconclusive treatment of virtue, knowledge, and education in the aporetic dialogues, and the great constructive theories of the Phaedo and Republic.

To avoid misunderstanding, we must qualify the sense in which Plato develops a theory of love. First of all, the Greeks have two terms corresponding to “love” in English or amour in French: erōs and philia, which are quite different in meaning from one another. Plato's theory is almost exclusively concerned with erōs. Furthermore, Plato's account of erōs is developed less for its own sake than for further philosophical purposes, which are moral and metaphysical. We are principally concerned here with this broader function of the theory. But first we need to take account of the contrast between erōs and philia.

THE SOCRATIC LITERATURE

We begin this study of Plato's Socratic dialogues with a survey of what is known about other Socratic writings in the same period. That is not a familiar starting-point. In other fields, and notably in biblical scholarship, genre studies have become commonplace. Students of the New Testament, for example, have found it fruitful to compare the literary form of narrative and discourses in the different Gospels. It may come as a surprise, then, to realize that (as far as I can tell) there has never been a comparative study of the Socratic dialogue form. This may be due in part to the mistaken belief that Plato was not only the perfecter but also the inventor of this form. But such was certainly not the case. Aristotle in his Poetics refers to the Sōkratikoi logoi (“Socratic discourses,” or “Conversations with Socrates”) as an established literary genre. And in his lost dialogue On Poets Aristotle is said to have named a certain Alexamenos of Teos as the originator of this genre. Unfortunately, nothing more is known of Alexamenos.

What is known is that quite a number of friends and followers of Socrates celebrated his memory in literary form, after his death. Aside from Plato's work, only the writings of Xenophon have survived intact. Nevertheless, we have significant remains from at least four other Socratic authors: Antisthenes, Aeschines, Phaedo, and Eucleides. And we have at least anecdotal information concerning a fifth author, Aristippus. Until recently the fragmentary material for these other “minor Socratics” had rarely been studied with care.

TWO INTERPRETATIONS OF THE PHAEDRUS

The Phaedrus is, in a sense, the last Socratic dialogue. Not that Socrates disappears from Plato's work; the continuity of literary form is preserved by Socrates' presence in every dialogue except the Laws. He plays an important and unprecedented role in the Parmenides; he is the principal speaker in the Theaetetus and also, for one last time, in the Philebus. The Theaetetus even imitates the formal pattern of an aporetic dialogue. But in comparison with earlier dialogues the portrayal of Socrates in the Theaetetus is rather wooden and didactic, and even more so in the Philebus. The Phaedrus is the latest work in which Plato's talent as a writer is displayed in its full intensity. It is also the work in which Plato reflects most explicitly on the role of writing in philosophy. So it is fitting that we conclude this study of Plato as author of Socratic dialogues with a consideration of the Phaedrus.

This dialogue occupies a unique place among Plato's literary masterpieces. It does not have the dramatic power of the Protagoras, Symposium, and Phaedo, or the magnificent argumentative structure of the Republic. But in the Phaedrus Plato shows himself the master of a new kind of art. First a pastoral dialogue with the charming picture of Socrates wading through a cool stream on a hot day, stretching himself on the grass in a shady spot near a shrine to the nymphs, with the music of cicadas all around in the noonday heat. This romantic description of nature is unparalleled in Plato, and rare in Greek literature.

WHAT IS PLATO'S THEORY OF FORMS?

It would be difficult to overstate the importance of the concept of Forms in Plato's work. As the distinctive object of philosophical knowledge, the Forms in the Republic provide the criterion for distinguishing philosophers from non-philosophers. The Forms play this central role in Plato's epistemology precisely because they constitute the basic entities in his ontology. Furthermore, as source of value and ultimate object of desire, the Forms are equally fundamental in Plato's moral psychology, as we have seen in Chapter 9. In ethics and political theory they provide a paradeigma, a pattern to be imitated in the moral life as well as in the construction and government of the best city. In theology also the Forms are paradigmatic, since it is by their relationship to the Forms that the gods themselves are divine (Phaedrus 249c). In the Cratylus and the Sophist the Forms provide the basis for a theory of language; in the Timaeus they constitute the framework for Plato's cosmology and philosophy of nature. In the Symposium and Phaedrus the Form of Beauty functions as a principle for esthetics and above all for an account of love, including an account of that privileged form of erōs that constitutes the life in philosophy. No doctrine in the history of philosophy has been more ambitious, and few have been so influential.

Nevertheless, the status of this doctrine in Plato's work is problematic in more than one respect.

THE PLAGE OF THE PROTAGORAS AMONG THE DIALOGUES

Among the seven works grouped together here as threshold dialogues, the Protagoras is clearly the literary masterpiece. It is the longest of the seven, roughly the same length as the Symposium and Phaedo. As an exemplar of Plato's dramatic art the Protagoras is rivaled only by the Symposium in the number and eminence of the speakers, the vividness of the dialogue, and the diversity of the action. Plato has taken pains to create here a brilliant picture of Athenian culture in the last years of the Periclean age, a half dozen years before his own birth, as backdrop for a full-scale treatment of the question raised by Socrates in the Laches: what is the proper goal of moral education, and how can this goal be achieved?

But if the Protagoras is one of the most brilliant of Plato's dialogues, it is also one of the most perplexing. There is, first of all, the question why Socrates' offers such an elaborate misinterpretation of Simonides' poem. This episode has often been an embarrassment to admirers of Socrates, since he seems here to be playing the part of the sophist rather than that of the philosopher. There is the much-discussed problem of Socrates' identification of pleasure and the good in the final argument, which is unlike what we find in any other dialogue. And there is also the strange denial of akrasia in the same argument: the denial of what we call weakness of will or yielding to temptation, acting against one's better judgment.

THE IMPORTANCE OF SOCRATES

In Plato's work the presence of Socrates is overwhelming. Out of twenty-five or more dialogues, Socrates is absent from only one: the Laws. (And this is so exceptional that Aristotle, in a slip, can refer to the Laws as one of the “discourses of Socrates,” Politics 11.6, 1265a11.) Even in Plato's latest period, where Socrates, though present, is normally replaced as chief speaker by a visitor from Elea or Locri, he can still surprise us. In the Philebus he resumes once more the role of protagonist when the topic under discussion returns to familiar Socratic territory, the relation between pleasure and the good.

It is not simply Socrates as dramatis persona who persists throughout Plato's work. It is Socrates as the martyred embodiment of a moral ideal and also Socrates as the paradigm philosopher, tirelessly pursuing intellectual inquiry by the method of question and answer. If for Plato the highest form of philosophical activity is named “dialectic,” the art of conversational discussion, that is an obvious reminder that the method of Socratic conversation remains Plato's model for philosophic teaching and research.

THE PROBLEM OF INTERPRETING THE DIALOGUES

An anecdote reports that, when Plato was about to submit a set of tragedies for competition at the Dionysian festival, he encountered Socrates on his way to the theater. After this conversation with Socrates, so the story goes, Plato returned home and burnt all his poetic compositions. If this story is not true, it is certainly ben trovato. Plato had the dramatic gifts of a Sophocles or Euripides, but he decided to exploit them in a different literary form. In the preceding chapter we surveyed the new genre that the development of Greek letters had provided for his use: the logos Sōkratikos, or “conversation with Socrates.” Since it was Socrates who had made Plato a philosopher, it was by writing about Socrates – more exactly, by representing Socrates in his writing – that Plato could legitimately deploy his dramatic powers in the service of philosophy.

Plato's compositions in the dramatic dialogue form achieved an immense literary success. But Plato's use of this form, in which he himself never appears, creates formidable difficulties for the interpretation of his thought. The anonymity of the dialogue form presents the interpreter with a problem that is unparalleled for any other philosopher. According to a Platonic doctrine suggested in many places and crystallized in the Republic, the philosophical vision tends to see things together, to seek for unity in the midst of diversity and plurality. But where is the unity to be found in Plato's own vision? Since we never hear Plato's own voice, how can we know where, and to what extent, what Socrates says represents what Plato thinks?