Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Socrates and the supremacy of virtue
- Chapter 2 Determining virtue in the here and now: Socrates in the Apology and Crito
- Chapter 3 The supremacy of virtue in the Gorgias
- Chapter 4 Trying (and failing) to determine what virtue is
- Chapter 5 Socrates and Thrasymachus: Republic 1
- Chapter 6 The benefits of injustice
- Chapter 7 Early education and non-philosophers in the Republic
- Chapter 8 Aiming at virtue and determining what it is
- Chapter 9 Epilogue
- Bibliography
- Index locorum
- General index
Chapter 8 - Aiming at virtue and determining what it is
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Socrates and the supremacy of virtue
- Chapter 2 Determining virtue in the here and now: Socrates in the Apology and Crito
- Chapter 3 The supremacy of virtue in the Gorgias
- Chapter 4 Trying (and failing) to determine what virtue is
- Chapter 5 Socrates and Thrasymachus: Republic 1
- Chapter 6 The benefits of injustice
- Chapter 7 Early education and non-philosophers in the Republic
- Chapter 8 Aiming at virtue and determining what it is
- Chapter 9 Epilogue
- Bibliography
- Index locorum
- General index
Summary
JUST ACTIONS AND THE JUST SOUL IN REPUBLIC 4
Near the end of Book 4, the argument turns back to just actions, a just soul, and the relationship between the two. The infamous tripartite account of the soul has been completed, with its rational, spirited, and appetitive parts, corresponding to the three classes of people in the ideal city. Socrates has also located courage, wisdom, and moderation in the tripartite soul. In terms familiar from chapter four, he has described what it is to be courageous, wise, and so on, rather than providing an account of what courageous or wise actions are. This is largely what leads commentators to say that he has abandoned behavioral definitions of the virtues. And indeed Plato does not attempt to put what all and only virtuous actions have in common into purely non-evaluative terms. But that does not mean that the question of determining which actions are the virtuous ones – that is, the question that such a behavioral definition intended to answer – can be simply skipped over and replaced by the question of what it is to be virtuous. For when we turn to the account of a just soul we find that nothing obviates the necessity of correctly identifying virtuous actions and performing them, if one hopes to become just and put one's soul in the proper order.
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- Information
- Aiming at Virtue in Plato , pp. 247 - 281Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008