Socrates and the
Socratic Turn
Socrates
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Not interested in questions about the nature of
reality
Instead he asked questions about ‘the state of
one’s soul’
What is courage?
 What does it mean to be a good person?
 What is justice?
 What is piety?
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Socrates II
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This is called ‘the Socratic Turn’
Symbolically: Socrates ‘turning away’ from nature
and to the self
 First time that the human mind and condition
becomes the target of philosophical inquiry
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Examples:
No one knowingly does evil
 Justice is not ‘might makes right’
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Euthyphro
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Brief Review of Story in context of life and
death of Socrates
1st attempt: “Doing what I am doing”

This is an example not a definition
What all examples have in common
And
Having that in common makes them examples
Euthyphro II
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2nd attempt: “Loved by the gods”
3rd attempt: “Loved by ALL the gods”
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Divine command theory
Euthyphro Question
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Does God command it because it is good,
or is it good because he commands it?
Intrinsic vs. relational properties
Male vs. Brother
 Weight vs. Mass
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Not the way we think loving works
If relational then morality is completely arbitrary

E.G. should God command us to murder children it
would be morally permissible to do so
Plato
Greek Philosopher
Knowledge of the Good
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Socrates claimed that the virtuous person is one
who knows the Good
It is then of the utmost importance to figure out
how one can actually know the Good
This is the project that Plato takes up
 His goal is to try and show how knowledge of the
Good is possible
 But in order to answer that he must first answer the
more general question: how do we know anything?

What is Knowledge?

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I parked my car in the lot, do I know where my
car is?
Knowledge requires certainty

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Object of knowledge can’t change
If what can be known can’t change, then
physical world can’t be an object of knowledge

It is in a constant state of flux (becoming)
What is Knowledge? II

So, if we are to have real knowledge it must
meet the following requirements
Unchanging
 Non-physical
 eternal
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Plato’s strategy is to look for an area where there
is some knowledge already and then try to figure
out what is going on there

Geometry/mathematics
The Argument from Mathematics
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How is it possible that we know that 2+2=4 or
that A2+B2=C2
Mathematical truths do not change
2 is prime, and will always be prime
 2 is even and will always be even
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2 is that the number two?
NO! It is a representation of the number two
 Cat is that a cat? No!

The Argument from Mathematics II
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In the same way, this is not a
triangle, it is a representation of one
Triangles and numbers do not exist physically
No one has ever seen the number two
 Triangles are made of lines, which are made of
points, which have no dimensions
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But they MUST exist

For otherwise mathematics would not be about
anything and so would be false
The Correspondence Theory of
Truth
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For a sentence to be true is for it to accurately
represent reality
So the sentence ‘the cat is on the mat’ will be
true if
There is a cat
 There is a mat
 And the former is on the latter

The Argument from Mathematics III
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The same is true of mathematical statements
For 2+2=4 to be true there must be
The number two
 The number four
 They must be related in the way the sentence says
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For A2+B2=C2 to be true there must be
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Right triangles
Theory of the Forms
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So, numbers and geometrical shapes exists as
non-physical, eternal, and unchanging objects
that are the objects of knowledge
We get in touch with these objects via the use of
reason
Plato is a rationalist
 Knowledge can only be achieved via the use of
reason
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These non-physical objects are called Forms
Theory of the Forms II

From the Greek ‘eidos’
Means idea, but not in the way that we use the word
 These Ideas exist outside of the mind, outside of
time and space
 The mind is able to ‘grasp’ these forms
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Two more arguments for Forms
Degrees of perfection
 One over Many

Degrees of Perfection
Degrees of Perfection II

How do you know that the triangles are not
perfect unless you know what the perfect one is
like
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And you are able to compare
This, says Plato, is true of everything
You know that some actions are not perfectly just
 But how could you know this unless there was
Perfect Justice and you knew it?
 That is the Form of Justice

The Form of Tree
Those are
trees
One Over Many
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The Forms explain why it is that we categorize
certain objects as male but not others
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There is a Form for every thing that objects have in
common
When you see that an object is, say, a desk you
are grasping the Form of that object
The objects are said to ‘participate’ in the Form
An object can participate is many Forms at the
same time
Human
The
Beautiful
The Divided Line
The Good
Metaphysics
Epistemology
Higher
Forms
Reasoning
Intelligible
World
Knowledge
Lower
Forms
Visible World
Sensible Obj
Images
Reasoning
Perception
Imagination
Opinion